While Brigham Young had picked the site for the Capitol because it was centrally located in the Pauvan Valley near Chalk Creek, legislators wanted to have meetings in Salt Lake City. By 1858 a new, non-Mormon governor, Albert Cummings, was appointed by President James Buchanan and the official state Capitol moved to Salt Lake City.

In the decades between 1860 and 1930, before the house became a museum, the building served as an LDS school, a Presbyterian school, a public school, a library, a dentist shop and even housed the Deseret News, which moved presses there in 1858 to escape Johnston's Army.

Today, the building is visited by roughly 40,000 to 50,000 people yearly, said Gordon Chatland, park ranger with the Utah Territorial House Museum.

Roughly 40 percent of those visitors come on a sort of family history quest, Chatland said. The house is home to volumes of portraits and other artifacts belonging to early area pioneers.

Of course, Chatland expects an increase in attendance after the governor's speech.

"Oh, everybody's excited," he said. "We're going to do very well now."

State of the State address

Live TV coverage begins 6:30 p.m. today on KSL Ch. 5, KSTU Ch. 13, KTVX Ch. 4, KUTV Ch. 2.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com