Downtown Salt Lake City by the Mormon pioneers. Downtown Salt Lake began to form in 1847 when Brigham Young chose the site of the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, forming the core of the settlement. Temple Square became the center of the grid system, bounded by South Temple, West Temple, North Temple, and East Temple Streets. Streets are named according to their distance and direction from the southeast corner of Temple Square; for example 200 West is two blocks west of this meridian, while 400 South is four blocks south. East Temple was popularly known as Main
History of Salt Lake City the Great Salt Lake Valley a year before the Mormon pioneers. This group had spent weeks traversing difficult terrain and brush, cutting a road through the Wasatch Mountains, coming through Emigration canyon into the Salt Lake Valley on August 12, 1846. This same path would be used by the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers, and for many years after that by those following them to Salt Lake. On July 24, 1847 143 men, three women and two children founded Great Salt Lake City several miles to the east of the Great Salt Lake, nestled in the northern most reaches of