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Show detachment, he set out on the 9th of August for California, to draw the pay due his men from the Government. West of the Sierras he met the returning Battalion boys and informed them that it was President Young's wish that such of them as were without means should remain in California, work through the winter and come on to the Valley with their earnings in the spring. Accordingly about half of them turned back; some to find employment at Sutter's Mills, and next to be heard from in connection with the world-renowned gold discovery of January, 1848. The others continued on to Salt Lake Valley, where they arrived on the 16th of October, bringing with them wheat, corn, potatoes and garden seeds to augment the stores of the infant colony. Thus it was that these members of the Mormon Battalion, with their comrades who had preceded them, became identified with and worthy to be numbered among the Pioneers of Utah. Indeed, all the Battalion deserve honorable mention in this connection, since they helped to conquer the land out of which Utah was created. The colonies planted by the Utah Pioneers on the shores of the Great Salt Lake formed the nucleus of Western civilization, and made possible the settlement of the surrounding States and Territories. Colorado, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, Nevada (once a part of Utah), Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico indirectly owe their existence to Utah and her founders. California and Oregon-sparsely settled by eastern emigration early in the "forties"-saw no such organized effort at colonization as Utah witnessed in the days of Brigham Young. Indeed, no such effort was necessary on the fertile shores of the Pacific, as was imperative in reclaiming the arid wastes of the Great Basin. But even California is indebted to Mormon colonists for her first newspaper, published by Brannan's colony in 1846, and it was the picks and shovels of the Mormon Battalion boys that brought to the surface the first grains of yellow metal declared by their foreman, James W. Marshall, to be gold; a discovery that made California the mightiest of the Pacific States and revolutionized the commerce of the world. In the light of these facts, what wonder that the Utah Pioneer Jubilee should be regarded by its projectors and promoters as a Jubilee for the whole Western region ? |