Salt Lake City, 1887.

Description

A scarce 1887 view of Salt Lake City, Utah, highlighting the city’s rapid development in the preceding years. It is oriented towards the northeast with the Wasatch Mountains in the background at right.

Main St., with the Salt Lake Temple near its terminus, is highlighted. The temple took nearly forty years to construct and is displayed here as nearly completed in the background at left-center, along with the adjoining Salt Lake Tabernacle. A streetcar network centered on Main St. is visible; at the time, these were mule-pulled cars, but electrified streetcars were introduced in the years following this view’s publication. 

Rail lines belonging to the Union Pacific trail off in the background at far left towards Ogden, near where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869. While already a considerable town by 1869, the completion of the railroad and a corresponding mining boom attracted new money and migrants to the city, quickly transforming it into the thriving city seen here. 

The inset at the bottom-left is Fort Douglass, built during the Civil War and used to secure U.S. government control of the area in the wake of the Utah War, as well as to protect the Central Overland Route. The fort can be seen in the main view on a hilltop in the background at right, land that was later turned over to the University of Utah. The inset at the bottom-right is the Salt Lake City Council Hall, or simply City Hall.

Census

This view was prepared by S.W. Darke & Company in 1887 and lithographed by August Gast. It was included in Darke’s guidebook Salt Lake City Illustrated. The view is independently cataloged among the institutional holdings of the University of California Berkeley, the Library of Congress, and Brigham Young University, while the entire 1887 edition of Darke’s Salt Lake City Illustrated is held by some fifteen institutions in the United States.