Some Utahns Went for the Gold in California

Becky Bartholomew History Blazer, November 1996 Some young men in Utah naturally hankered toward the California gold fields discovered just six months after the Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. But Brigham Young, favoring an agrarian rather than mining economy, firmly discouraged them: “If you Elders of Israel want to go to the gold mines, go and be damned.” On …