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Show Page 159 northern wall. From here the mountains could be measured - the expanse of "a lone peak" southeast of camp, six thousand feet above the valley floor; a "Sugar Loaf Peak" capping the west range was sixteen miles away. Plotting three blocks south and three blocks west, Orson lined up the main thoroughfares of Salt Lake City while all around him men dug pits for brick-making and sowed buckwheat in the parched clay of the valley bottom. For days Orson continued carefully staking off streets of the city that remained only a vision in Brigham Young's mind, the vision of Zion, where men would be stewards of the land rather than traffickers. On Friday, the Twelve met at the new-finished dam on the city creek and were baptized again by Young: "This we considered a privilege and a duty. As we had come in a glorious valley to locate and build up Zion, we felt like renewing our covenants." After this ordinance was performed, the Prophet re-confirmed and sealed the apostleship upon each, just as the sun disappeared behind the lake islands. The next day Brigham Young, Moses-like, took the Twelve into council to select their inheritances. Land was not to be bought or sold, but to be apportioned on the basis of need and willingness to work. Brigham directed the Twelve to stake off the blocks around the temple for their own and their companies' use: the new arrivals would then have homesteads already allotted to them. Brigham Young claimed the blocks east of the temple, Heber C. Kimball the north, and Orson was assigned all the property running in a line south for four blocks. The "Pratt district" today encloses everything between Main and West Temple as far as Broadway, one of the most valuable commercial zones in the West. Looking over his inheritance that day, however, Orson saw 1 only cement-hard clay and weeds. The toilsome and euphoric days were filled with re-baptisms, as each |