section_path: Legacy/Impact
section_name: Impact
paragraph_text: Impact
  
  Young had many nicknames during his lifetime, among the most popular being "American Moses " (alternatively, "Modern Moses" or "Mormon Moses"), because, like the biblical figure, Young led his followers, the Mormon pioneers, in an exodus through a desert, to what they saw as a promised land.
  
  He credited Young's leadership with helping to settle much of the American West:
  
  During the 30 years between the Mormons' arrival in Utah in 1847 and 1877, Young directed the founding of 350 towns in the Southwest. Thereby the Mormons became the most important single agency in colonizing that vast arid West between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.
  
  Memorials to Young include a bronze statue in front of the Abraham O. Smoot Administration Building, Brigham Young University; a marble statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol, donated by the State of Utah in 1950; and a statue atop the This is the Place Monument in Salt Lake City.
  
  Young had many nicknames during his lifetime, among the most popular being "American Moses " (alternatively, "Modern Moses" or "Mormon Moses"), because, like the biblical figure, Young led his followers, the Mormon pioneers, in an exodus through a desert, to what they saw as a promised land.
  
  He credited Young's leadership with helping to settle much of the American West:
  
  During the 30 years between the Mormons' arrival in Utah in 1847 and 1877, Young directed the founding of 350 towns in the Southwest. Thereby the Mormons became the most important single agency in colonizing that vast arid West between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.
  
  Memorials to Young include a bronze statue in front of the Abraham O. Smoot Administration Building, Brigham Young University; a marble statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol, donated by the State of Utah in 1950; and a statue atop the This is the Place Monument in Salt Lake City.