Salt Lake City

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This book deals with both the history and architecture of the Avenues Historic District -- primarily a residential district -- of Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City is no ordinary place. Its "hard-gutted individuality", as Western historian Dale L. Morgan called it, gives it a "contradictory charm". The city has an extraordinary and complicated past, full of paradoxes and irresolution about its image. This is the story of a frontier outpost, founded as a haven for religious refugees, that eventually becomes a melting pot for different kinds of people -- different voices, experiences, points of view, traditions, values, and ways of life. In fact, the city has emerged from the crucible of conflict, based partly on religion but also on race, class distinction, and gender. The author's goal in his thought-provoking overview, accented by 125 historical photographs, is not to shift from the "feel good" emphasis of traditional photo-histories but to augment that approach with information about societal change, a history of groups and traditions and of the ideas and experiences that have made the city what it is today.

As part of an online guide to the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Salt Lake City Corporation provides information about the city. Some of the topics discussed include winter Olympics events, the weather, tourist attractions, restaurants, transportation, community development, educational institutions, housing, building and zoning, building permits, and housing and neighborhood development. The information is available in PDF format.

Geologic exposures in the Salt Lake City region record a long history of sedimentation and tectonic activity extending back to the Precambrian Era. Today, the city lies above a deep, sediment-filled basin flanked by two uplifted range blocks, the Wasatch Range and the Oquirrh Mountains. The Wasatch Range is the easternmost expression of major Basin and Range extension in north-central Utah and is bounded on the west by the Wasatch fault zone (WFZ), a major zone of active normal faulting. During the late Pleistocene Epoch, the Salt Lake City region was dominated by a succession of inter-basin lakes. Lake Bonneville was the last and probably the largest of these lakes. By 11,000 yr BP, Lake Bonneville had receded to approximately the size of the present Great Salt Lake.