PROVO

A short history of Provo

The Provo area was originally called Timpanogas, a Numic (Ute people) word perhaps meaning "rock river". The area was inhabited by the Timpanogos. It was the largest and most settled area in modern-day Utah. The ample food from the Provo River made the Timpanogos a peaceful people. The area also served as the traditional meeting place for the Ute and Shoshone tribes and was used as a common location for worship of their creator deity.

Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Spanish Franciscan missionary-explorer, is considered the first European explorer to have visited the area in 1776. He was guided by two Timpanogos Utes, whom he called Silvestre and Joaquín. Escalante chronicled this first European exploration across the Great Basin Desert. The Europeans did not build a permanent settlement but traded with the Timpanogos, whom they called Lagunas (lake people) or Come Pescado (fish eaters).

In 1847, the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, which was just north of Timpanogos Mountain. At first, the natives were friendly with the Mormons, but as relations deteriorated with the Shoshoni and Utes because of disputes over land and cattle, tensions rose. Because of the reported stolen goods of settlers by the Utes, Brigham Young gave small militia orders "to take such measures as would put a final end to their [Indian] depredations in future." This ended in what is known as the Battle Creek massacre, in modern-day Pleasant Grove, Utah.

The Mormons continued pushing into Timpanog lands. In 1849, 33 Mormon families from Salt Lake City established Fort Utah. In 1850, Brigham Young sent an army from Salt Lake to drive out the Timpanogos in what is called the Provo War. Escalating tensions with the Timpanog contributed to the Walker War. Fort Utah was renamed Provo in 1850 for Étienne Provost, an early French-Canadian trapper who arrived in the region in 1825.

As more Latter-day Saints arrived, Provo quickly grew as a city. It soon was nicknamed the Garden City, with a large number of fruit orchards and gardens there.

In 1872, a railroad reached Provo. Also that year, the Provo Woolen Mills opened, the first large factory in Provo; it employed about 150 people, initially mainly skilled textile laborers who had emigrated from Britain.

The construction of the blast furnace plant of the Columbia Steel Company in 1923-1924 marked the arrival of heavy industry in Provo, albeit most of the pig iron was shipped to the company's steel mills in California. The plant supplied manufactured gas to the area, and in 1948, Provo, via a pipeline to Salt Lake City, was connected to the interstate natural gas transmission system.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Provo, Utah, revision 1380968092 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.