🇺🇸 United States · Rocky Mountains
Salt Lake City is a singular place: capital of Utah, world headquarters of the Mormon Church and, at the same time, one of the great outdoor capitals of the United States. Founded in 1847 by Mormon pioneers fleeing persecution and looking for an isolated place to settle, today it is an orderly, clean city ringed by the imposing Wasatch mountains, whose snowy peaks peek out from almost every corner downtown.
Its historic heart is Temple Square, the central complex of the Mormon Church, with its great granite temple, the Tabernacle (famous for its choir and its acoustics) and immaculate gardens. But the city has changed a lot: alongside that heritage there is a growing food and beer scene, lively neighborhoods, museums and an increasingly diverse population. And barely half an hour from downtown are some of the best ski resorts in the world, with that dry, abundant snow Utah promotes as 'the greatest on Earth'.
This guide covers Salt Lake City with a practical eye: what to see at Temple Square and downtown, how to use the city as a base for skiing or for Utah's national parks, what to know about the state's peculiar alcohol laws, how to see the Great Salt Lake and when to go depending on whether you're after snow or summer mountains. SLC is efficient, safe and an unbeatable gateway to the American West.
The Great Salt Lake region was for millennia the territory of Indigenous peoples such as the Shoshone, Ute and Goshute. In July 1847, a group of Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young reached the valley after fleeing religious persecution in the east; according to tradition, on seeing the valley Young declared 'This is the place'. They were looking for a remote spot, then in Mexican territory, to establish their community far from conflict. The pioneers laid out the city on its characteristic orderly grid around the future temple, developed irrigated agriculture and began a massive settlement of the territory. After the war between the US and Mexico, the area passed to the United States. The arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 (whose historic joining was celebrated at Promontory, to the north) connected Utah with the rest of the country. Tension between the Mormons and the federal government —partly over the practice of polygamy, which the Church officially abandoned in 1890— delayed Utah's admission as a state, which only came in 1896. In the 20th century, Salt Lake City diversified with mining, industry, commerce and, later, technology. A recent milestone was the 2002 Winter Olympics, which projected the city to the world and reinforced its identity as a ski capital. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of red canyons and Mormon pioneers: ancestral territory of Utes, Paiutes, Goshutes and Navajos, settled by Brigham Young's saints from 1847, home of the Great Salt Lake, of the Golden Spike that joined the railroad from coast to coast and of the five most spectacular national parks in the country.
Read the history of Utah →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In July 1847, a religious leader sick with fever, looking out from a wagon at an arid, dusty valley that nobody else wanted, is said to have spoken barely six words: 'This is the right place'. From that phrase, and from the stubbornness of the thousands of pioneers who followed it, one of the most singular cities in the United States was born. But long before that wagon, the valley already had a long history. For thousands of years, the Great Salt Lake valley and the Wasatch mountains around it were the territory of Indigenous peoples. The Shoshone, the Ute (who give the state of Utah its name), the Goshute and the Paiute lived in the region, adapted to a harsh, arid environment, living from hunting, fishing and the gathering of seeds and plants around the water sources.
The Great Salt Lake is the remnant of the ancient Lake Bonneville, an enormous Ice Age lake that covered much of western Utah thousands of years ago. As it receded and evaporated, it left behind this terminal salt lake —with no outlet to the sea— whose waters concentrate the salt, and the vast flat salt pans of the west of the state.
The first European and American explorers and trappers arrived in the early 19th century, but the region was still remote and thinly settled when, in the middle of the century, it became the destination of one of the most remarkable religious migrations in United States history.
The story of Salt Lake City is inseparably tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Founded in 1830 in the eastern United States, the Church and its followers suffered intense religious persecution that pushed them further and further west, until the murder of their founder, Joseph Smith, in Illinois in 1844.
Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons decided to migrate en masse to a remote place then outside the United States (it was Mexican territory), where they could practice their faith in peace. After a long and painful journey by wagon across the plains, the first group reached the Great Salt Lake valley in July 1847. According to tradition, on contemplating the arid, isolated valley, Brigham Young pronounced the famous phrase: 'This is the right place'.
The pioneers got to work immediately. They laid out the city on a wide, orderly grid, with big blocks and streets numbered outward from the temple, which would be the spiritual and geographical center. They developed irrigation systems to farm dry soil, a feat that made agriculture possible. In the following decades, tens of thousands of Mormon converts from the United States and Europe migrated to Utah, also founding hundreds of settlements across the territory under the Church's direction.
After the war between the United States and Mexico (1846-1848), the territory of Utah passed into American hands, which placed the Mormon community under federal authority and generated friction. There were tensions and even a brief conflict, the 'Utah War' (1857-1858), between the community and the US government.
A decisive milestone was the railroad. In 1869, the two lines of the first transcontinental railroad met at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake, in a historic ceremony with the Golden Spike. The rail connection pulled Utah out of its isolation, boosted mining and trade, and drew in non-Mormon population ('gentiles'), diversifying society.
The biggest obstacle to Utah becoming a state was the practice of polygamy (plural marriage) by the Mormon Church, which the federal government fought with severe laws. After years of pressure, the Church officially abandoned polygamy in 1890 through a manifesto. That cleared the way and, in 1896, Utah was finally admitted as the 45th state of the Union, with Salt Lake City as its capital.
Through the 20th century, Salt Lake City diversified its economy beyond agriculture and the Church. Mining (copper, at the gigantic Bingham Canyon mine, one of the largest human excavations in the world), industry, commerce, military bases during the world wars and, later, the financial and technology sectors, transformed the city and its surroundings, the so-called Wasatch Front, into a prosperous metropolitan area.
The Mormon Church remained central to the city's identity —with Temple Square, the Church's world headquarters and the largest genealogy library on the planet— but SLC's society became ever more diverse, with immigrant communities, a growing non-religious population and an expanding cultural and culinary life.
The moment that projected Salt Lake City to the world was the 2002 Winter Olympics. The city and the neighboring Wasatch mountains showed the planet their exceptional ski infrastructure and their famous dry snow, cementing Utah as one of the great winter sports destinations. Today, Salt Lake City combines its singular pioneer heritage with a dynamic present as an outdoor capital, a base for Utah's national parks and a fast-growing city, which will host the Winter Olympics again in 2034.
Two phenomena finished defining the Salt Lake City of the 21st century, and neither has anything directly to do with religion. The first is the snow. The Wasatch mountains, which rise just east of the city, receive enormous amounts of extraordinarily dry, light snow every winter: when Pacific storms cross the Great Salt Lake they load up with moisture and dump on the mountains a powder so famous that the state legally trademarked it on its license plates: 'The Greatest Snow on Earth'. That snow, together with the fact that the resorts are half an hour from downtown and the airport, turned the area into one of the great ski destinations in the world, something the 2002 Winter Olympics showed the whole planet. Salt Lake City will host the Winter Olympics again in 2034.
The second phenomenon is economic. Since the start of the 21st century, the Wasatch Front corridor, between Salt Lake City and Provo, has become one of the fastest-growing technology hubs in the United States, nicknamed 'Silicon Slopes' (a play on words with Silicon Valley). Software, finance and technology companies moved in, drawn by the skilled workforce, the low taxes and the quality of life, and the city received a strong wave of migration that made it younger, more diverse and more expensive.
That growth coexists with serious challenges: air quality, which worsens in winter because of the temperature inversions that trap smog in the valley, and above all the crisis of the Great Salt Lake, whose level fell to historic lows because of drought and water consumption, exposing a dry bed loaded with toxic dust that worries scientists and authorities. Today's Salt Lake City is, then, a city of contrasts: deeply marked by its pioneer and Mormon heritage, but also modern, tech-driven and turned toward the mountains, and aware that its future depends on how it manages the water and the air of its own valley.