Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The population was 199,723 at the 2020 census, while the Salt Lake City metropolitan area has an estimated 1.3 million residents and is the 46th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. It is also part of the larger Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo combined statistical area, an urban corridor along a 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front with a population of approximately 2.8 million. It is one of the principal urban centers within the Great Basin, along with Reno, Nevada.
Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by settlers led by Brigham Young who were seeking to escape persecution they had experienced while living farther east. The Mormon pioneers, as they would come to be known, entered a semi-arid valley and immediately began building an extensive irrigation network that could feed the population and foster future growth. Salt Lake City's street grid system is based on a standard compass grid plan, with the southeast corner of Temple Square serving as the origin of the Salt Lake meridian. Owing to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named Great Salt Lake City; the word "Great" was dropped from the city's name in 1868. Immigration of international members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), mining booms, and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad brought economic growth, and the city was nicknamed "The Crossroads of the West". It was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913. Two major cross-country freeways, I-15 and I-80, now intersect in the city. The city also has a belt route, I-215.
Salt Lake City has developed a strong tourist industry based primarily on skiing, outdoor recreation, and religious tourism. It hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics and was formally selected to host the 2034 Winter Olympics by the International Olympic Committee on July 24, 2024. It is known for its politically liberal culture, which stands in contrast with most of the rest of the state's highly conservative leanings. It is home to a significant LGBT community and hosts the annual Utah Pride Festival. It is the industrial banking center of the United States. Salt Lake City and the surrounding area are also the location of several institutions of higher education including the state's flagship research school, the University of Utah.
Sustained drought in Utah has strained Salt Lake City's water security, caused the Great Salt Lake level to drop to record low levels, and impacted the local and state economy. The receding lake has exposed arsenic which may become airborne, subjecting area residents to poisonous dust. The city is also under threat of major earthquake damage amplified by two offshoots of the nearby Wasatch Fault that join underneath the downtown area.
Before settlement by members of the LDS Church, the Shoshone, Weber Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. At the time of Salt Lake City's founding, the valley was within the territory of the Northwestern Shoshone. At the time of European contact, the Salt Lake Valley was inhabited by several Indigenous groups, including the Northwestern Shoshone and the Western Goshute (also spelled Gosiute), a distinct tribe with ancestral territory in the broader region. The Western Goshute had distinct names for key geographic features, including the Jordan River (Pi'o-gwût), City Creek (So'ho-gwût), and Red Butte Canyon (Pi'o-gwût, So'ho-gwût, and Mo'ni-wai-ni). The Goshutes (or Gosiutes) also lived in the vicinity of Salt Lake and the valleys to the west. The land was treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title held by the Northwestern Shoshone was ever ceded or relinquished by treaty with the United States. The first explorer of European descent in the Salt Lake area was likely Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, including some who traveled as far north as the nearby Utah Valley (the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante expedition were undoubtedly aware of Salt Lake Valley's existence). U.S. Army officer John C. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845. The Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846.
The settling of Salt Lake City dates to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in July 1847, during the Mexican-American War. They had traveled beyond the boundaries of the United States into Mexican Territory seeking a secluded area to safely practice their religion away from the violence and the persecution they experienced in the United States. Upon arrival at the Salt Lake Valley, president of the church Brigham Young is credited with declaring the location suitable for settlement. However, the precise wording of this statement varies across historical accounts, with some sources recording it as "This is the right place, drive on." According to Mormon historical tradition, Brigham Young experienced a vision of the Salt Lake Valley prior to the pioneer party's arrival in 1847, though this account appears only in later historical narratives. They found the broad valley empty of any human settlement.
Four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young designated the building site for the Salt Lake Temple. The Salt Lake Temple, constructed on the block later called Temple Square, took 40 years to complete. Construction started in 1853, and the temple was dedicated on April 6, 1893. The temple has become an icon for the city and serves as its centerpiece. The southeast corner of Temple Square is the point of reference for the Salt Lake meridian, and for all addresses in the Salt Lake Valley.
Following the 1847 measles outbreak that devastated the local Shoshone population, Shoshone residents taught the pioneers to harvest and prepare sego lily bulbs (Calochortus nuttallii) for food. The sego lily, a staple that the Shoshone had cultivated for generations, became an important nutritional resource during the pioneers' early years in the valley. The word 'sego' derives from the Shoshone term 'seego'. The sego lily was commemorated by the Sego Lily Dam, a flood-prevention infrastructure project in the shape of a giant sego lily, built in Sugar House Park in 2017.
The city was not platted until after the federal surveyor abandoned his post in 1857. In 1855 Congress directed the President of the United States to appoint a surveyor general for Utah Territory, and to cause that the lands of that territory should be surveyed preparatory to bringing them on the market. Because of numerous conflicts between the surveyor and the territorial government the first surveyor general abandoned his post in 1857, not to return till 1869.
In 1849, Brigham Young and other territorial leaders proposed the State of Deseret as a provisional government with an expansive territorial boundary and petitioned Congress for recognition as a state. Congress rejected this petition in 1850, established the Utah Territory in its place with substantially reduced boundaries, and designated Fillmore as its capital city. Great Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital in 1856, and the name later was shortened to Salt Lake City. The city's population continued to swell with an influx of converts to the LDS Church and Gold Rush gold seekers, making it one of the most populous cities in the American Old West.
The first group of settlers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with the first group of settlers in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. In 1852, the territorial legislature passed the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners formally legalizing slavery in the territory. On June 19, 1862, during the American Civil War, Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.