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FHR-8-300A Cll/78) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR HERITAGE CONSERVATION AND RECREATION SERVICE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM ITEM NUMBER 8 wool growing, lumbering, and other rural pursuits, incorporated as Spring City. PAGE In 1870, the town was SIGNIFICANCE In town plan and in the distribution of farm land, Spring City (like other communities in the valley) adheres to a "farm village" system advocated by L.D.S. Church leaders. According to the village scheme, houses, barns, vegetable gardens and orchards would be contained within the boundaries of the village. The large town lots, approximately an acre each, easily accomodated this large number of buildings arid domestic activity. Farm land lay outside the village,, with farmers conmuting daily to their outlying fields. The farm village settlement pattern is commonly found throughout the world and is particularly linked to early English agricultural practices. Village living, however, proved unpopular in the United States where the "isolated farmstead" individualized pattern of land tenure predominated. 5 Communitarian thinking, inspired by the Utopian ferment of the early 19th Century, brought the village idea back into currency among groups advocating social reform.6 As part of this larger religious Utopia movement, the early Mormons were likely influenced in their town planning activity by the resurgence of the farm village pattern. The Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, outlined through his teaching a plan for the salvation of mankind. The Second Coming would not occur until the kingdom of God had been built on earth. The Saints were to "gather" together and build the City of Zion, a new Jeruselem, to await the millenium. The city of Zion would have a plan, and on June 25, 1833, the prophet delivered to his followers the "Plat for the City of Zion."7 Smith's "plat" basically called for a gridiron block arrangement, blocks divided into lots, center blocks reserved for Church buildings, wide streets, houses of brick or stone construction, and the town surrounded by fields. While some scholars have disputed the claim that Smith's "Plat" influenced town planning in Utah, it appears that L.D.S. planners in Utah realized the "general principles" of the "Plat of the City of Zion" even if their interpretations were never literal. 8 The perpetuation of the "Mormon Village" in the Great Basin has produced a distinctively religious landscape in the West. 9 While non-Mormon western ranchers chose the isolated farmstead, the Saints opted for the controlled atmosphere of the nucleated village. If mining boom towns grew in a haphazard organic fashion, the Mormon village was nurtured to maturity by the application of specific planning rules. Spring City is historically significant as an outstanding example of this "village" settlement type.