Desert Between the Mountains: Mormons, Miners, Padres, Mountain Men, and the Opening of the Great Basin, 1772-1869

On July 24, 1847, a band of Mormon pioneers descended into the Salt Lake Valley. Having crossed the Great Plains and hauled their wagons over the Rocky Mountains, they believed that their long search for a permanent home had finally come to an end. The valley was an arid and inhospitable place, but to them it was Zion.

They settled on the edge of an immense, uncharted, and self-contained region covering over 220,000 square miles, or one-fifteenth of the area of the United States. The early-...