known on the continent. It preceded by about a year the discovery of gold
in California, and gold, of course, was the lodestone that drew the
greatest of west-bound migrations. The Mormons, however, were first. Not
drawn by visions of wealth, unless they looked forward to celestial
mansions, they sought, particularly, valleys wherein peace and plenty
could be secured by labor. Nearly all were farmers and it was from the
earth they designed drawing their subsistence and enough wherewith to
establish homes.

Of course, the greatest of foundations was that at Salt Lake, July 24,
1847, when Brigham Young led his Pioneers down from the canyons and
declared the land good. But there were earlier settlements.

First of the faith on the western slopes of the continent was the
settlement at San Francisco by Mormons from the ship Brooklyn. They
landed July 31, 1846, to found the first English speaking community of
the Golden State, theretofore Mexican. These Mormons established the
farming community of New Helvetia, in the San Joaquin Valley, the same
fall, while men from the Mormon Battalion, January 24, 1848, participated
in the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort. Mormons also were pioneers in
Southern California, where, in 1851, several hundred families of the
faith settled at San Bernardino.

The first Anglo-Saxon settlement within the boundaries of the present
State of Colorado was at Pueblo, November 15, 1846, by Capt. James Brown
and about 150 Mormon men and women who had been sent back from New
Mexico, into which they had gone, a part of the Mormon Battalion that
marched on to the Pacific Coast.

The first American settlement in Nevada was one of Mormons in the Carson