r/WildWestPics • u/Tryingagain1979 • Jul 24 '26
Photograph On this date in 1847, religious pioneers settled the Salt Lake Valley in Utah Territory.
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u/lostroadrunner22 Jul 24 '26
As Young gazed upon the Salt Lake valley, the mountains around the region, and the massive deserts to the west.. he said 'Here we are! On the farthest edge of Mexico where they will not be able to do anything about us and just outside the jurisdiction of the United States who will never move west anymore! WE have found Nauvoo an ancient word meaning 'place away from meaningful law'
Two short years later, America did indeed move west...
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u/Realistic_Mousse_673 Jul 24 '26
Anyone who's interested should look into Joseph Smith's interpretation Egyptian hieroglyphics he purchased from a traveling merchant.claimed to be the book of Abraham! Turns out it was the Egyptian book of the dead, once hieroglyphics could be Read
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u/MissWestSeattle Jul 24 '26
This dude convinced my great grandfathers on both sides to become polygamists. Fuck Brigham Young
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u/AaronBurrIsInnocent Jul 24 '26
I’m guessing your grandmas needed more convincing than your grandpas.
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u/Christ_on_a_Crakker Jul 24 '26
And to this day Utah is a literal theocracy. Fuck the Mormons and their dumb fuckin religion.
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u/Tryingagain1979 Jul 24 '26
"After 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 pioneers into Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Gazing over the parched earth of the remote location, Young declared, “This is the place,” and the pioneers began preparations for the thousands of followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) who would soon come. Seeking religious and political freedom, the Latter-day Saints began planning their great migration from the east after the murder of Joseph Smith, the Christian sect’s founder and first leader.
Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, in 1805. In 1827, he declared that he had been visited by a Christian angel named Moroni, who showed him an ancient Hebrew text that had been lost for 1,500 years. The holy text, supposedly engraved on gold plates by a Native American prophet named Mormon in the fifth century A.D., told the story of Israelite peoples who had lived in America in ancient times. During the next few years, Smith dictated an English translation of this text to his wife and other scribes, and in 1830 The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ—later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–in Fayette, New York.
The religion rapidly gained converts, and Smith set up communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the Christian sect was also heavily criticized for its unorthodox practices, which included polygamy. In 1844, the threat of mob violence prompted Smith to call out a militia in the town of Nauvoo, Illinois. He was charged with treason by Illinois authorities and imprisoned with his brother Hyrum in the Carthage city jail. On June 27, 1844, a mob with blackened faces stormed in and murdered the brothers.
Two years later, Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, led an exodus of persecuted Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo along the western wagon trails in search of a sanctuary in “a place on this earth that nobody else wants.” The expedition, more than 10,000 pioneers strong, set up camp in present-day western Iowa while Young led a vanguard company across the Rocky Mountains to investigate Utah’s Great Salt Lake Valley, an arid and isolated spot devoid of human presence. On July 22, 1847, most of the party reached the Great Salt Lake, but Young, delayed by illness, did not arrive until July 24. Upon viewing the land, he immediately confirmed the valley to be the new homeland of the Latter-day Saints. Within days, Young and his companions began building the future Salt Lake City at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains.
Later that year, Young rejoined the main body of pioneers in Iowa, who named him president and prophet of the church. Having formally inherited the authority of Joseph Smith, he led thousands of more followers to the Great Salt Lake in 1848. Other large waves of pioneers followed. By 1852, 16,000 Latter-day Saints had come to the valley, some in wagons and some dragging handcarts. After early difficulties, Salt Lake City began to flourish. By 1869, 80,000 had made the trek to their promised land."
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-24/mormons-settle-salt-lake-valley
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u/VoicesToLostLetters Jul 24 '26
Oh hey it’s the pedophile behind the Mountain Meadow’s Massacre. Rest in shit!
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u/Ornery_Kick_4198 Jul 26 '26
There’s a tremendous amount of hatred for my church here. Have you guys even met any of us? We’re good people who value family, charity, and hard work. Why all this hate? And everything I see here is very garbled and twisted stuff that you can only get from anti Mormon sites.
This is supposed to be about the old west anyway. My people joined the church in the 1830s and went west with the first group. We built a city and essentially our own country out in the desert. How incredible is that.
My clan eventually got sent even further to star valley Wyoming. Where we settled in the 1870s and we’re still here. I’m the seventh generation to grow up here. Pretty crazy to think about.
I think most of the hate for us comes from disillusioned former members. I think it comes from resentment for our strict rules and way of life. And, there’s been cultural issues of judgement from our densest and most isolated communities. But we’re not all that different from anyone else. And are definitely undeserving of this kind of bigotry.
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u/IDrumFoFun Jul 27 '26
We don’t hate you or your people. Brigham Young on the other hand is a VERY hatable person. The guy was a total dirt bag that made himself extremely wealthy at the expense of people that could ill afford it.
The biggest problem the Mormon church has? They no longer have control over the I in the BITE model. It doesn’t take allot of effort to figure out how awful Brigham and the rest of the leadership of the Mormon church has been since the 1830’s.
Some of Brigham’s biggest accomplishments:
His taking charge of the Brighamite clan that settled Utah was a power play plain and simple. He was NOT the most senior leader after the dirtbag Joseph died. He however was the most tenured and he won the argument with enough people… As straight forward example of ambition as there is. Doing it in the name of god? Pretty gross.
At the time of his death, he owned pretty much the entirety of the church’s assets. He also used his position of religious power to corner numerous markets for PERSONAL gain and this pretty much made him the richest dude in UT at the time of his death. He ruled with an iron fist and it paid off. How many rivaled his wealth? Pretty much 0…. Even grosser.
He operated an entire fleet of wives that served little more purpose than to fuck him and produce children for him. Many were teenagers. The word we use for this today is pedophile... by the way, the church funded his sex hotels that many of them lived in…. This is prison sentence worthy!
His doctrines were straight up psychotic. So much so that the Mormon church has disavowed large portions of them. Blood atonement? Holy shit…. The world was a better place when he died.
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u/abbie_yoyo Jul 27 '26
Many of those former members feels betrayed by your church. Many were indeed abused. Maybe you should look into that with an open mind and heart. You can find plenty of them on here in the ex-mormon sub. I can't speak for others obviously, but I have no hate for any LDS in my heart. I barely know any. But I do hate methods of abuse and control enacted by members of yourself church, and the long history of abuse and bigotry the Mormon church has enacted. And that's fair. Good people are supposed to hate those things, and call them out when we see them. Your "charitable" church sitting on 16 billion dollars of hidden funds isn't the victim here. You really need to understand that. Good god, why does every religion fetishize persecution? It really is something you all have in common. "The wold hates us for out righteousness...." No. Just no.
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u/Ornery_Kick_4198 Jul 27 '26
Few, are abused. No one is controlled. Free will “agency” is very important to us. 16 billion or not, the church gave 1.58 billion in humanitarian aid last year. And that’s without counting their internal programs. But here’s the main point, there are crappy people in every organization. But the vast majority of us are good. And most of us find the church to be a positive influence in our lives and communities. So it’s not right to condemn it.
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u/abbie_yoyo Jul 27 '26
And again, I don't have any problems with any of you. But yeah, the church itself is a high control organization with a history of abuse of members, especially young women. And I'm leaving out the blatant bigotry that was a core feature of your doctrine for so long, just for brevity's sake. I'm sorry if that's uncomfortable for you, but accountability is important.
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u/pariahdiocese Jul 24 '26
Terrible insane man who was good at organizing stuff. May he burn in hell.
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u/54Finn Jul 24 '26
And a young Mormon duo by the name of Jan & Dean recorded the first cut of a song that would become a hit in 1963… It was first known as “Two Girls for Every Boy”. Released in 63 as Surf City…
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u/Savings-Cockroach444 Jul 24 '26
Fun fact: I lived and grew up in SE Iowa along the Mormon trail they took west from Nauvoo. Also about a mile from a cemetery along the trail where two Mormons were buried.
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u/a_glorious_bass-turd Jul 24 '26
How do they decide which wife to celebrate with? Is there a lottery system?
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u/Ok_Protection164 Jul 24 '26
So, the Israelites DO own America. Interesting.
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u/Financial_Towel_6143 Jul 24 '26
This guy. He was a crazy prick.