🠈 Salt Lake City and County 🠊
The term "Salt Lake" is often used in reference to the Capitol City of Utah, the county that contains Salt Lake City and its suburbs, the metropolitan area associated with the city, the large salty lake to the West of the city or to the entire valley containing the Great Salt Lake and its salt flats (The actual valley of The Great Salt Lake includes most of Tooele County, Davis County, Weber County and Box Elder Counties.)
The 2010 census reported that Salt Lake City had a population of 186,440, Salt Lake County had a population of 1,029,655 and the Salt Lake Metro a population of 1,087,873.
The Salt Lake Valley had been used as home and hunting grounds for a variety of Native American tribes for millennia before the arrival of Europeans. Tribes included The Shoshone, Ute, Goshute and Paiute. The first Europeans to enter the valley were explorers and fur traders such as Etienne Provost (namesake of Provo), Peter Skene Ogden, etc.
Settlement of Salt Lake began in earnest with the arrival of the Mormon Pioneers who jumped the gun and emigrated from Illinois to Utah during the Mexican American War of 1846-1849—while the area was technically Mexican Territory. Brigham Young arrived in the Valley on July 24, 1847. Mr Young established the city as the headquarters for the LDS Church and set the coordinates for the valley centered on the LDS Temple in downtown Salt Lake City.
The pioneers had grand aspirations. Some of the Mormon pioneers had hoped to create a state (or separate nation) called Deseret. Deseret included all the land from the Continental Divide to San Diego. Aspirations for the state were slowly whittled down to the present day Utah.