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October 7849~June 1850 carried on, rain only falling for a short period in the spring. In my last letter I mentioned the perfection to which all vegetables & most fruits arrived, but I mistated the crop reaped of wheat, it should have been from 1 bush. seed 160 bush1 were gathered into the garner which you will allow was a good yeild to the Farmer, wheat selling at $~,OO the bushl."" Soon as the season is sufficiently advanced many will start for the mines which from all accounts are inexhaustible & it is expected that the emigration of last year will be but as the drop to the bucket compared to those that will follow, it is presumed from its position between the Rocky Moun- tains & the Sierra Nevada that this will be the place where emigrat- ing Compys will rest & refit both with teams & provisions & the journey from the States to Califor will be thus more easily accom- plished."" I must not omit one of the minor advantages of residing here, which in most other places would be turned to Individual emolument. The face of the whole country plainly betokens its volcanic origin & there are many sulphurretted springs & other evidences of internal but sleeping fires scattered about the Country, the advantage I particularly alluded to, is that of being able to take a most luxurious warm medicated bath, costing but trouble of walking to the spring; this is situated about 1~4 mile from 23 The price of wheat fluctuated greatly as the tide of emigration reached Salt Lake City. By July I.3 a bushel of wheat was selling for $5.00 and within another month had advanced to $8.00. An August report by the L.D.S. leadership cited some comparative prices, "Wood is worth $10.00 per cord; lumber five dollars per hundred; wheat eight dollars per bushel; adobes one dollar and seventy five cents per hundred; common labor two dollars; mechanics three dollars per day. Doubtless as soon as the immigration is past breadstuffs will fall." Newcomb, "Journal," p. 117; Manuscript History, August 1850, p. 60. 24 Unruh estimated that at least 10,000 forty-niners or two-fifths of the entire emi- gration to California chose to go by way of Salt Lake City in 1850. There are numerous diaries and journals which describe these emigrant stopovers in the City of the Saints during the first two years of major travel, but a July 1850 observation perhaps best sums up the attitude of the Mormon settlers: "Our flour mills are all crowded, grinding for the immigrants, who are hanging around in hungry hordes, begging for enough to feed them to the gold mines, for which they pay twenty five dollars per hundred pounds. Some gold diggers have come from the States with their knapsacks on their backs: hundreds have taken Hasting's Cut off: . . . "Our city has been filled with lawyers, doctors, jurists, merchants, mechanics, etc., who after cursing Joseph Smith all their lives as a money digger, are marching half dis- tracted with excitement and gold fever, to quickly lay down their honorable, legal, or sacred professions for the honorable calling of digging money." Unruh, Plains Across, pp. 120,303; Manuscript History, July 1850, p. 59. 83 |
