lake needed horses and wagons, tools, implements of husbandry and
building; and gold was valuable only as it represented a means of
obtaining these. Gold became so plentiful and was withal so
worthless in the desert colony that men refused to take it for
their labor. The yellow metal was collected in buckets and
exported to the States in exchange for the goods so much desired.
Merchandise brought in by caravans of "prairie schooners," was
sold as fast as it could be put out; and strict rules were
enforced allowing but a proportionate amount to each purchaser.

Within a few months after the first settlement of Utah, public
schools were established; and one of the early acts of the
provisional government was to grant a charter to the Deseret
University, now known as the University of Utah.

Up to 1849, Utah had no political history. Settling in a Mexican
province, the contest to determine its future ownership by the
United States then in progress, the people in common with most
pioneer communities established their own form of government.
But in February, 1848, the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo gave
California to the United States; months passed, however, before
the news of the change reached the west. Early in 1849, a call
had been issued to "all the citizens of that portion of Upper
California lying to the east of the Sierra Nevada mountains" to
meet in convention at Great Salt Lake City; and there a petition
was prepared asking of Congress the rights of self-government;
and pending action, a temporary regime was established, under the
name of the Provisional Government of the State of Deseret.

"Utah" was not the choice of the people as the name of their