Salt Lake by numbers

Brigham Young, in part, selected the Salt Lake Valley as the best place for Mormons to settle because of numbers, or rather the lack of them.

Few American Indians lived in what is now Salt Lake County in 1847. According to Linda Sillitoe's book, "A History of Salt Lake County,"therewere large numbers of Utes living around Utah Lake but few in Salt Lake County proper. Also, with mountain-man settler Miles Goodyear laying claim to the Ogden area, and the rugged and narrow Devil's Gate making lower Weber Canyon travel so difficult, Salt Lake County was the "right place" for settlement.

Numbers are also important in the county's grid street system, with blocks being numbered out from the Salt Lake LDS Temple site. Almost no matter where you are in the valley, it's difficult to get lost.

Salt Lake City had some 1,700 settlers during that first winter of 1847-48. Sillitoe wrote that one historian called Salt Lake an instant city, boasting almost 5,000 inhabitants by its first anniversary. Indeed, the original Salt Lake City was called "Great Salt Lake City" until 1868.

Although the second winter in Salt Lake was much harsher than the first, food supplies were better. One unnerving aspect was all the wild animals — particularly wolves — in the county in the early winter of 1848. A total of 84 settlers on Christmas Day killed two wolverines, 331 wolves, 216 foxes, 10 minks, nine eagles, 507 magpies and 898 ravens.

Numbers also haunted the pioneers in June 1848 as hordes of crickets gobbled up crops. It took the miracle of the seagulls devouring them to save their food supply.

During the period from 1860-80, Salt Lake City's "gardenlike squares subdivided into a more crowded and jumbled metropolis," Sillitoe wrote.

She also noted that outlying settlements, like Murray and Sandy, became hubs for farming and other work.

The coming of the railroad in the late 1860s brought an even greater influx of people and business into the Salt Lake area. Before the railroad arrived, there were only 700 non-Mormon settlers among the 11,000 Salt Lake County residents. By 1874, non-Mormons made up 25 percent of the residents. Today that number is about 46 percent.

As the "Crossroads of the West," the Salt Lake area has always been a place of numbers.

Today, Salt Lake County is the most populous of Utah's 29 counties, but what about its other numerical quantities and qualities?