Urbanized Colonialism in SLC and its Continued Mitigation of Native Ecology and Peoples

By Parviz Faiz

Graphic by Jas Calcitas


In the six years I’ve spent living in the Great Basin’s largest urban conglomerate, no change has been more transparent than the visual of gentrified apartment complexes nestled within the smog-soaked streets of Central City. Even though the two have grown side by side, general knowledge suggests they have no related qualms. Gentrification within Salt Lake City’s urban core has varying negative effects but, in theory, its greatest benefit would be the reduction of auto-commuting emissions. It wasn’t until I dove into the history of the “Grid City’s” nutritiously large blocks, that I realized how intertwined the two are. Simply put, both phenomena are, and continuously, catalyzed by colonialist manifestation. While profit-driven gentrification dilutes Salt Lake’s embodied history, challenges facing sustainability are facilitated by a complete disregard for ecology within the city’s infrastructure.

A deeper look into the formation of the city’s foundation shows the continuous mitigation of both native people and ecology for the benefit of western idealism, more specifically Mormonism. Rather than work alongside the valley’s environmental restraints and Indigenous society, Mormon settlers quickly irradiated whatever characteristics of the land they found unattractive. Just as gentrification counties do, creating amenities to bring in foreign populations, with no regard for the wellbeing of who or what called the area home prior, disconnects residents to the historical significate of the area. These disconnections continue to forge environmental degradation and cultural assimilation in Salt Lake City and other cities across the American West.

A history of mitigation in Salt Lake Valley

After several unprosperous attempts to find religious strife, Joseph Smith’s band of weary Mormon pioneers slowly made progress across a rapidly industrializing American-Midwest. More often than not, fleeing from localized outrage. The spread of their newfound belief, and how said belief was propagated, perpetuated resistance in small communities throughout Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. Encounters frequently ended with violence, eventually leading to Smith’s murder in June of 1843. Brigham Young took reign after the prophet’s death and by 1847 the Mormon pioneers made their way to the valley now encircling a modern-day Salt Lake City. The sanctity of finding a permanent home was a relief for many of the settlers, but Smith’s vison encompassed much more. Dry, barren, and remote, the ecology of a seemingly untouched Salt Lake Valley didn’t possess qualities classically desired by western spirituality. Pre-existing the transcendentalist movement of the mid-1800s, segregation of humans from nature was seen as a moral necessity for early colonizers. The chaotic and unforgiven qualities of the wilderness symbolized hardship, while cultivation represented the reward of an easier life. The taming of the wilderness presents a closer connection to God. Thus, only when the wilderness appeared tame is when it was considered safe to venture and reap the fruits of the local landscape. Motivated by this outdated philosophy, Smith’s end goal was to settle and fabricate a “holy-city”. A plan documented as the Plat of Zion.

The Plat mirrored practices of Manhattan’s grid system remodel in 1811, offering superior infrastructure, education, and community engagement with virtually no violence or crime. Smith believed this goal could be achieved by directly connecting residents to the pastoral. 660 x 660-foot blocks would allow members of the church to practice agriculture within the urban fabric, a quality viewed as paramount in Smith’s adaptation of infrastructure development. In his mind, various grains and low hanging fruit would fill this urban utopia. 132 feet wide roads would allow support for agricultural practices, while the definitive edges would promote densification in future time. By connecting his followers to the pastoral paradise stripped from human touch, Smith could, in theory, create a perfect city. A city within the Garden of Eden. The dream of the late prophet was reignited by the determination of his followers. Using only tools carried with them, these settlers started to forge the beginnings foundation of “their” city.

By the time Mormons arrived, native tribes such as the Ute, Shoshone, and Goshute were no longer living in year-round villages within the valley, they had transitioned into a more mobile people setting up seasonal and short-term camps. It’s likely these tribes had already started their seasonal rounds in the uplands when settlers arrived in late July, portraying the valley as abandoned or empty. Just as the first English settlers saw the desolate, plague-ridden, villages of Plymouth as an invitation from God, the Mormon pioneers saw the deserted valley as a sign that this is, indeed, “the place”. As temperatures dropped, mobile tribes would migrate down the foothills and settle near the area surrounding geothermal warm springs, as was common practice throughout the Great Basin region. Warm springs throughout the Great Basin were often identified as Sacred Sites, a legal term, by local tribes. Conflict between tribes and settlers was rare in the early days of Salt Lake City, allowing transplant residents to easily repurpose the Wasatch Warm Springs and Hot Springs Lake on the Northside of town for recreation. After disputes and federal cases determining what colonialist group owned the rights to the springs, the Mormons or Gentiles, the geothermal springs became substantially developed. The lake was drained, springs were diverted, or capped, and recreational and industrial infrastructure overtook the vicinity.

During this time, direction from geographical surveys, most notably advised by John Wesley Powell, were blatantly ignored. “A Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of The United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah,” examined the idea of development centered around watersheds rather than contemporary political boundaries. Powell’s report contradicted the American dream of manifestion, limiting the country’s ability to grow based on the constraints of natural capital. Several prominent figures, including territorial governors William Gilpin and William Stewart, expressed disgust toward Powell’s proposed plan. It simply contradicted westward expansion. Powell’s guidelines were shunned, allowing Brigham Young and his followers to eventually make “the desert bloom”.

 

How Mormonism miniated native culture through forced integration

Focus on Indigenous Peoples in the West grew post-Civil War as the US Army set their sights on “protecting” infrastructure. Mormon settlers within the Cache Valley wrote to Young in Salt Lake City, complaining about conflicts with the local Shoshone. These letters were sent to a federal judge who ordered arrest warrants for tribal leaders. Tensions rose and in 1863 the 2nd Regiment California Volunteer Cavalry attacked the tribe, in an event now known as the Bear River Massacre. Hundreds of Shoshone warriors were slaughtered, along with the tribe’s winter supplies. After the attack, the Northern portion of the valley opened up to Mormon settlement. Many survivors of the massacre were adopted by Mormons, subconsciously leaving descendants of the massacre as modern-day members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Just as settlers manipulated the native ecology for physical benefit, the integration of Native peoples helped facilitate the mitigation of culture and tradition.

Assimilation around the turn of the century was metabolized as the “Indian Student Placement Program” a foster program that emphasized the importance of LDS morality among primary Navajo children. The idea of “Indian Boarding Schools” had been in existence for several decades. Armed conflict between Indigenous Peoples and settlers confined tribes to reservations or prison camps. Education was seen as the tool to transform “savages” into “productive members of society”. Quietly transitioning from a physical to mental battle, eradication of Native life was the end goal of US settlers. They arrogantly believed in the superiority of their colonist society. Although Young encouraged his followers to tend to native children as their own, LDS theory stated there are two distinct phenotypes of Native people. The light-skinned “Nephites” were seen as righteous and civilized people while the dark skinned “Lamanites” were portrayed as idle, savage, and bloodthirsty, for which they were "cursed by God". Native children were placed in foster homes with the promise of better education. Manipulation of school programs allowed families and business owners to use the program as free child labor for agricultural and domestic work. It was believed Young himself adopted a native girl as a “daughter” even though she was treated as a servant more than anything. Removal of Native youth devastated community networks. When parents refused to let their children go, federal agents would withhold resources sent to reservations or simply take them by force. Several lawsuits and allegations of sexual abuse were filed against the program, although no justice has been served.

Impacts on the environment

The 20th century saw the. assimilation of Indigenous peoples through an overarching presence of the Western faith, while early manipulation of biomes catalyzed the disconnect between residents and natural resources. Urban agricultural plots in the heart of Salt Lake City saw a heavy decrease in popularity, as post World War industrialization promoted a new style of life. Mixed-use dirt roads were filled with cement, allowing residents to easily move past the boundaries set in the Plat of Zion. Suburban sprawl incentivized auto-centric infrastructure, while the valley’s unique topography trapped in pollutants by forcing cold air systems beneath hot air, a phenomenon coined as an inversion. 

As expansion pushed outward, the need to dissociate the arid landscape of Salt Lake Valley grew. More and more of the valley used grass to maintain the lush imagery that became standard around the city center. The hot summers dried out the acres of newly plotted Kentucky Bluegrass. Untreated agricultural water, used to facilitate the growth of agricultural plots in the 19th century, transitioned to sustain suburban lawns at an unmetered flat rate. This availability of “secondary” water promoted water use rather than conservation, leading residences on the Wasatch Front to consume an average of 242 gallons of water per day.

In less than a century, mitigation of anything besides early manifestation of the Church of Latter-Day Saints was widespread, solidifying segregation in Salt Lake City’s demographics and the soon transparent impact on sustainability. Following the rapid growth of Wasatch Warm Spring’s recreation facilities, hardships during the Great Depression left the area rundown and in 1942 it fell to foreclosure. After several unprosperous attempts to revive the springs, the end of the Wasatch warm springs became conclusive when the State of Utah acquired the property to build a new section of highway between the tight corridor of the Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake. Not long after the construction of I-15, the 50 or so springs that once shine as a beacon of tourism and beauty fell to extensive gas pipelines and oil refineries, junkyards, and industrial mining ventures that directly overlie the original springs. Residue from industrial pollutants floods the valley, disproportionality affecting Salt Lake City’s redlined neighborhoods West of I-15. I find it ironic how an area of common good, held sacred to those inhabiting the land before us, has been completely removed for a facility that benefits the economy at the expense of those who now live here.

Connection to Salt Lake’s native population and ecology has become diluted in the everyday life of the average resident. For generations, belief been has all but limited to nothing besides Christianity. Assimilation has pushed out those who have called the Salt Lake Valley home and replaced it with a population that has manipulated local ecology for their benefit. The subconscious draining recourses sustaining the Great Basins’ natural biomes have disproportionately pushed pollutants into neighborhoods of color and lead to drastic measures to sustain the valley’s overuse of water. A spread of pipeline plans promoting Utahan’s unhealthy relationship with water have turned up in recent years as the state’s population is expected to double by 2050. 

The front runner of these proposals is the “Bear River Development Project”. A plan focusing on the diversion of one of The Great Salt Lake’s primary tributaries for domestic use along the Wasatch Front. Because evaporation is the Great Salt Lake's only outlet, centuries of hazardous residue from agriculture and industry have settled on the lake’s floor. Dust and chemicals from an exposed lakebed can easily be pushed into the air, worsening Salt Lake City’s air quality exponentially. A look at the now barren Owen’s Lake and Aral Sea can easily paint a picture of a future Great Salt Lake if the protection of native ecology is not supported.

In order to eradicate systematic racism and environmental degradation in our communities, an understanding of how these foundations exist in the blueprint of Western cities and culture must be addressed. Positive change cannot be made if the mitigation of Native people and ecology are still prevalent in the infrastructure we continuously interact with.