Deseret News 175 years: From settlement to 3.5M people

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An estimated 20,000 Indigenous people lived in what is now Utah when the Mormon pioneers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847.
Those Native Americans included members of the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Shoshone and Navajo tribes. The pioneers themselves numbered around 1,637 that first year.
'When the pioneers arrived here, there was already a substantial Indian civilization and culture existing,' Elder Marlin K. Jensen, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a July 24, 2010 speech on what is now celebrated as Pioneer Day.
The pioneers no more 'discovered' the Great Basin than Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America, he said.
Elder Jensen, a former church historian who is now an emeritus general authority, cited a July 31, 1847, journal entry from Mormon pioneer William Clayton: '(The Shoshone) appear to be displeased because we have traded with the Utahs, and (the Shoshone) say that they own this land and the Utahs have come over the line.'
'The truth of the matter is that the Mormon pioneers had 'come over the line' as well,' Elder Jensen said. 'Perhaps only Brigham Young, with his prophetic gifts, could have foreseen at that time that the tiny trickle of pioneers who were then coming into the Great Basin would one day, in just a few years, grow into a mighty stream of immigrants.'
As more pioneers arrived, the population in the territory grew to an estimated 3,000 in 1848. Two years later, it more than tripled to 11,380. And over the next decade, it swelled to 40,273 in 1860, a 253% increase, according to U.S. census figures.
Though not at that rapid rate, Utah has sustained marked growth since 1900. More recently, it was the fastest-growing state in the country from 2010 to 2020.
As of July 2024, Utah had a population of 3.5 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Among the few possessions those early pioneers lugged across the plains was a Ramage printing press in an ox-pulled wagon. Named after American printing press manufacturer Adam Ramage, pioneer William Phelps bought the press in Boston. It was used to print the first issue of the Deseret News on June 15, 1850.
Since that day, the Deseret News has chronicled life in what is now Utah and beyond, including the state's dramatic growth over the past 175 years.
The early settlers immediately began planting crops and building houses in their new high desert home. And Brigham Young started making plans.
'Although the struggle for survival was difficult in the first years of settlement, the Mormons were better equipped by experience than many other groups to tame the harsh land. They had pioneered other settlements in the Midwest, and their communal religious faith underscored the necessity of cooperative effort. Basic industries developed rapidly, the city was laid out, and building began,' according to historytogo.utah.gov.
Settlement of outlying areas began as soon as possible. Between 1847 and 1900, the Latter-day Saints founded about 500 settlements in Utah and neighboring states.
The dawn of the 20th century brought technological revolutions that would transform society. Salt Lake City saw its first automobile early in the 1900s, and the first airplane wasn't far behind.
A U.S. census bulletin dated Feb. 4, 1901, showed Utah — only admitted as a state five years earlier — with a population of 276,749, a 33% increase over a decade earlier.
'The population of Utah in 1900 is more than twenty-four times as large as that given for 1850, the year Utah was organized as a territory,' according to the bulletin.
In the Roaring Twenties, first letters then passengers began flying out of Salt Lake City's Woodward Field, a 100-acre landing strip the city bought in 1920 for mail operations. Named after local pilot John P. Woodward, the field evolved to become the Salt Lake City International Airport.
Utah experienced modest growth through the 1930s, but saw a rapid and sustained influx of immigrants through the 'war years,' the 1940s. Utah's population increased 25.2% during that decade — most coming on the Wasatch Front — as it grew from 555,310 to 688,862, according to HistoryToGo.
Immigration greatly increased the minority population, especially as Black and Hispanic people moved in to take defense jobs. Many immigrants during that period were not members of the predominant religion. The U.S. government also relocated 10,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast to Topaz, Utah, as part of an anti-Japanese movement during World War II.
In 1947, Utahns celebrated 100 years in the Salt Lake Valley. Despite earlier problems the U.S. government had with those 'pesky Mormons,' as the Deseret News-produced book 'Through Our Eyes' put it, all was forgotten. President Harry S Truman sent congratulations on the pioneer centennial:
'Utah stands in a proud place among her sister commonwealths. Her rich agriculture, her business and industry, her pioneering in social services, her zeal of education, and not the least, her men of wisdom and valiant women have given her prestige unexcelled by any other state.'
As of July 2024, Utah was 75.5% white, 16% Hispanic, 2.9% Asian, 1.6% Black and 1.6% Native American or Alaska Native, according to the U.S. census statistics.
Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the state's population kept a steady pace toward 1 million residents, finally hitting the mark in 1966.
Community leaders celebrated the achievement by greeting Utah's newest resident, Morris M. Arnold — dubbed 'Mr. Million' — with a 60-piece band as he stepped off the airplane from Kentucky.
The state's population reached 2 million just 29 years later. And 20 years later, the Beehive State hit that 3 million population milestone sometime in October 2015.
'Three million Utahns. Wow,' Pam Perlich, director of demographic research at the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, said at the time. She called it a 'stunning achievement' for a geographically isolated Intermountain state that in 1950 had only 500,000 residents who came and went based on the ebbs and flows of agriculture and mining.
The state picked up another 60,000 residents between July 2023 and July 2024, pushing it past 3.5 million, per the U.S. Census Bureau.
Last October, the Gardner Institute projected Utah would grow from 3.5 million to 4 million residents between 2024-2033, an average annual growth rate of 1.5%.
'The short-term projections indicate continued statewide population growth driven by a nearly 50/50 split between natural increase and net migration out to 2033. Continued economic growth largely drives this migration of new residents to Utah,' said Mallory Bateman, director of demographic research at Gardner. 'A combination of historical data, trends and local expert knowledge inform our baseline projection scenario.'
Utah's seven most populated counties in 2023 were Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber, Washington, Cache and Tooele, and that order is not expected to change by 2023, per the Gardner Institute.
The order of growth, however, differs for those counties.
Utah County is predicted to gain the most new residents (164,000), followed by Salt Lake (125,000), Washington (63,000), Davis (43,000), Weber (27,000), Cache (22,000) and Tooele (20,000).