If the Mormons never existed what would the West look like?

Question

Lets say the Mormons never existed would Utah exist? Or would it be added to Nevada or maybe Idaho, Wyoming. Since the Mormons played big part in settling the west. What would it look like?

Answer 1

It would be all hispanic.

Answer 2

It would look like Nevada and Wyoming.

Answer 3

It'd be full of sprawling growth and strip malls and freeways.

:-)

Communities would have sprung up in the same areas to restock the wagon trains heading for the coasts in any case, but growth would have been slower.

It's hard to think of anything the LDS did that any other immigrating group would not have done.

There's a lot of folklore about Mormons coming to a desolate place, but in fact there were large areas in the mouths of canyons that were very attractive and other settlers would have been there within decades. The local native tribes were not as difficult to live near as other areas. It wasn't a bad place.

Answer 4

It's important to understand that Mormons had a huge impact on colonizing and organizing the West. A good portion of the west was organized by the Mormons. Utah is just a cropped down version of what it used to be. The Mormon's came west and organized what was called The 'State of Deseret'. Click on this link to see how much of the West that it encompassed... http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily...

So much of California, Nevada, Arizona and parts of Wyoming and Colorado, Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico were organized by the Mormons just as Utah because they were all part of the same state until by either President Phillmore or Buchanan, out of spite for the Mormons, they divided the territory into what is now Utah...

An interesting note is that Las Vegas was actually founded by the Mormons..

Answer 5

No Mormon churches?