Review by Ed Quillen
History – June 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
The State of Deseret
by Dale L. Morgan
Published in 1987
by Utah State University Press
ISBN 087421131X
Before matters were settled in 1861 with the creation of Colorado Territory within the United States of America, many republics, empires, territories, and states claimed jurisdiction over parts of Central Colorado: Spain, Mexico, Texas, France, California, to name a few.
Among these claimants was Deseret, a Latter-Day Saints theocracy resulting from the Mormon migration to the Great Salt Lake which began in 1847.
Severely persecuted in Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, the Mormons went west to settle in territory that was technically under the Mexican flag.
Boundaries were in a flux then, though. Mexico and the United States were about to go to war. There were rumblings of a Bear Flag Republic along the Pacific coast. The Republic of Texas might or might not permanently attach to the United States, and its borders were by no means settled.
Given those uncertainties, the Mormons moved quickly to establish their own claim. They had barely unpacked their wagons before they organized a civil government of a domain called “Deseret” — the word, from the Book of Mormon, means honeybee, a cherished symbol of work and thrift.
As conceived by Brigham Young (the most successful colonizer in the history of the West), Deseret embraced the Great Basin and the entire drainage of the Colorado River, along with the San Diego area for a seaport. Deseret covered Utah and Nevada, most of Arizona, and pieces of California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Petitions were duly sent to Washington for official territorial status, and routinely dismissed. Low population was the official reason, but the real reason was opposition to polygamy and theocracy–“separation of church and state” meant little when the officers of the civil government and of the church government were the same men.
In 1850, the proposed “state of Deseret” was whittled down to the “territory of Utah,” which was still big–all of present Utah, along with most of Nevada, the Western Slope of Colorado, and the southwest corner of Wyoming.
Thus, until Colorado Territory was organized in 1861, Gunnison was in Beaver County, Utah Territory, while Taylor Park was in Sanpete County, Utah, (most of the rest of our region was in Frémont County, Kansas).
There’s no record that the officials of these counties ever visited these remote areas, and so the expansive claims of Deseret, and then of Utah Territory, had little discernible effect on the evolution of Central Colorado.
The State of Deseret explains these developments, and covers a “shadow government” that operated for several years after Utah became a territory.
Little of this concerns our area directly, and Morgan’s writing style may be too dry and academic for most readers. Further, much of this small book is taken up with reprints of early constitutions and ordinances, valuable for the researcher, but tedious for the history buff.
–Ed Quillen