The State of Utah (IPAEng: ˈjuːtɔː or ) is a western state of the United States. It was the 45th state admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80 percent of Utah's 2,645,330 people, live along the Wasatch Front with Salt Lake City as the center. In contrast, vast expanses of the state are nearly uninhabited, making the population the sixth most urbanized in the U.S. The name "Utah" is derived from the Ute Indian language, meaning "people of the mountains".

Utah is known for being one of the most religiously homogeneous states in the Union, with approximately 58 percentU.S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, pp 99-100. Accessed 2008-07-02 of its adult inhabitants claiming membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church or the LDS Church), which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life. It is also known for geological diversity ranging from snowcapped mountains to well-watered river valleys to rugged, stony deserts and open plains.

The state is a center of transportation, information technology and research, government services and mining as well as a major tourist destination for outdoor recreation. St. George, Utah was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000-2005 with Utah being the sixth fastest growing state overall in 2006.

History

main: History of Utah

Mormon settlement

Brigham Young and the first band of Mormon pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Over the next 22 years, more than 70,000 pioneers crossed the plains and settled in Utah. For the first few years, Brigham Young and the thousands of early settlers of Salt Lake City struggled to survive. The barren desert land was deemed by the Mormons as desirable as a place they could practice their religion without interference.

It is not widely known that Utah was the source of many pioneer settlements located elsewhere in the West. From the beginning, Salt Lake City was seen as only the hub of a "far-flung commonwealth" of Mormon settlements. Fed by a constant supply of church converts coming from the East and around the world, Church leaders often assigned groups of church members to establish settlements throughout the West. Beginning with settlements along Utah's Wasatch front (Salt Lake City, then Bountiful and Weber Valley, then Provo and Utah Valley), irrigation enabled the establishment of fairly large pioneer populations in an area that Jim Bridger had advised Young would be inhospitable for the cultivation of crops because of frost. Throughout the remainder of the 1800s, Mormon pioneers called by Brigham Young would leave Salt Lake City and establish hundreds of other settlements in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, California, Canada, and Mexico - including such notable places as Las Vegas, Nevada, Franklin, Idaho (the first white settlement in Idaho), San Bernardino, California, Star Valley, Wyoming, and Carson Valley, Nevada.