The community was originally settled in 1854 under the name of E.T. City, in honor of Ezra T. Benson. It was renamed Lake Point in 1923.[3]
A 2021 feasibility study for the proposed Lake Point incorporation area indicated an estimated population of 2,599.[4] During the 2021 United States elections, the residents of Lake Point voted to become a city with a five-member council; the first city council was then elected the following year.[5][6]
History
Military cartographers and early pioneers
John C. Frémont, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was commissioned by the US Government to explore the Mexican territory west of the Louisiana Purchase with a special interest in the terrain and various routes that could link the Midwest to California. In the summer of 1843 Fremont took a smaller team from his men and veered off the Oregon Trail at Fort Hall to the Bear River into its terminus at the Great Salt Lake. He explored the lake on an eighteen-foot inflatable rubber boat loaded with provisions and produced a map of the lake and its surroundings.[7]
From 1843-1846 Fremont made several expeditions which included a route south of the Great Salt Lake and eastward to the Humboldt River in Nevada. In January 1846, Fremont met with Lansford Hastings, another explorer military man who shared a passion for driving settlement in California. A year earlier, in 1845, Hastings published a popular book called "The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California" which contained a passage that said the quickest route to the San Francisco Bay was a diversion from Fort Hall on the Oregon Trail "...bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake".[8] Fremont's detailed explanations of his most recent expedition south of the Great Salt Lake was received with much enthusiasm by Hastings. In 1846 Fremont would continue to publish details of his explorations through Utah and Nevada and Hastings set out with teams of men in recruiting settlers to use the Hastings Cutoff.[9]
Emigrant Trail Park in Lake Point, Utah
The Donner Party were numbered among these same initial pioneers on the Hastings Cutoff, but were slowed down for a variety of reasons including road building activities. Journal entries and interviews describe the Donner Party meeting the "Hastings Trail" on the south side of the Great Salt Lake in August 1846. In later interviews Donner Party member, Reed, was quoted multiple times saying that they had met Lansford Hastings near the landmark (on the eastern border of Lake Point) known as Black Rock and that they were the ones who had given the rock its name.[10]
Brigham Young had studied the published maps and articles written by John Fremont which greatly influenced his route and destination for a new Mormon settlement.[11] The Brigham Young led the first Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley almost a year after the Donner Party first arrived. On July 27, 1847, just 3 days later, Brigham Young and 16 other men set out to examine the Hasting Cutoff trail along the south side of the lake and to evaluate the water, soil, timber, and other natural resources of Tooele Valley. No bold plans for the valley materialized in that expedition but it was concluded that there was potential for pastorage.[12]
Similar to John Fremont, the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers ordered Captain Howard Stansbury to take his team to the Salt Lake Valley to gain better understanding of the land around the Great Salt Lake for purposes of supply and travel routes, and to document resources, indigenous peoples, and Mormon settlements.[13] In November 1849, Stansbury and his team had made a trip around the Great Salt Lake and came into the Tooele Valley. Their team had cattle and constructed an adobe structure for those watching the herd. The structure made an impression because it was one of the first known buildings in the valley. The location made an impression as well because it was adjacent to a large rock tower that had already served as a landmark for travelers. The rock tower became known as Adobe Rock.[14]
E.T. City
Benson Grist MillAdobe Rock
Pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Lake Point on July 27, 1847. The team of men included Brigham Young and Orson Pratt. Pratt wrote in his journal that "We continued on about 4 miles further [beyond Black Rock], when we reached a valley putting up to the southward from the lake." Very little happened for two years from that initial visitation, Mormon settlers did travel the area and perhaps dwelled in an official capacity, but the Tooele Valley wasn't formally organized as a colony for members of the Church until Apostle Ezra T. Benson hired men to build mills and watch his cattle in the valley. Cyrus and Juda Tolman along with Phineas R. Wright were brought in to build sawmills and a grist mill. And John Rowberry and Robert Skelton followed shortly after in December 1849 to winter Benson's cattle. When the 1850 census was taken a year and a half later, all 5 men and their families were accounted for as living in Settlement Canyon in what is now Tooele City.[15]
On April 24, 1850 Ezra T. Benson visited the new settlement and organized the first LDS branch with Rowberry as Bishop. By late Spring and Summer of that year more Mormon settlers came into the valley including Peter Maughan and his family.[16] Tooele County was organized in April 1851 with Peter Maughan appointed to the position of County Clerk. In 1852 Settlement Canyon Fort, which included Peter Maughan's home, was dissembled and moved closer to present day city center in Tooele. In November 1853, Maughan, Rowberry, and Bates were appointed a committee to both "...locate E.T. City and for building a dam at Rock Springs [Adobe Springs Creek]." In 1854 $700 was expended to build the dam, which failed because the water seeped through an underground passage so that water would not rise. The committee then had to spend an additional $300 to bring water from Twin Springs to the location of the new settlement; Twin Springs was the same source of water for the Benson Grist Mill which was completed that same year. In August 1854 the Maughan house was dissembled and moved for a second time, now to the location that was selected for E.T. City. There were others who joined him who built small houses along the north-south road. In October 1854, Maughan was appointed as the Presiding Elder over E.T. City.[17][18] According to the Utah Centennial County History Series, E.T. City was a precinct named after Ezra Taft Benson that extended from the Benson Grist Mill to E.T. Hill (Adobe Rock), and all the way over to Black Rock (Great Salt Lake). This was formalized in 1855 by Ezra Taft Benson who represented Tooele County in the Utah Territorial Legislature.[19]
The first year of farming in E.T. City in 1855, the crops showed great promise of reaching maturity until they were destroyed by a massive swarm of grasshoppers. In 1856 the watering of their crops brought out saleratus in the soil that destroyed most of that year's harvest. Upon hearing the plight of the people in the new settlement, Brigham Young permitted a committee of 6 men led by Maughan to explore Cache Valley for a new location. They departed on July 21, 1856 and returned home safely. In late August, Brigham Young allowed for any man and his family to leave E.T. City to go with Peter Maughan to settle in Cache Valley. Some were glad to do so. They arrived at their new location in September of that same year and built Maughan's Fort which became Wellsville, Utah. In 1860, Ezra T. Benson joined Maughan to direct religious affairs and assist in settling the Cache Valley area.[20][21]
Tourism and The Utah Western Railway
Kennecott Copper SmelterSheep Herding in Lake Point, Utah
Less than a year later, in the spring of 1871, Jeter Clinton's Lake House was built at a location called Clinton's Landing in Lake Point. From Young's Lake Side resort one could pay 25-cents "to ride on the City of Corinne, a steamboat, going to Lake Point on the south shore".[22] Within 4 years, and two railroad companies later, John W. Young became president of the newly formed Utah Western Railway and Heber P. Kimball treasurer and superintendent of construction.[23] On February 7, 1875 they connected Salt Lake City to a train stop called Lake Point, adjacent to this station was Clinton’s new three story Lake Point Hotel with bath houses and a dock prepared to receive the City of Corinne Steamboat. In 1877 John Muir wrote, "Lake Point is only an hour or two from the city, and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for excursions; and then, besides the bracing waters, the climate is delightful...The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers, and the lovely mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort for pleasure and health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run from the city, and parties, some of them numbering upwards of a thousand, come to bathe, and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides together".[24]
Early railroading was very difficult with many smaller railroads ultimately folding and becoming part of larger railroad companies. On September 16, 1877 the Utah Western Railway completed its initial buildout to receive freight from Stockton, Utah, but the company was losing money.[25]
The acquired Clinton land and the buffalo were part of a real estate scheme to sell subdivided cottage lots with beautiful planted trees, gardens, and culinary water wells with the tourist attraction of a Buffalo Park. The venture was unsuccessful and on February 18, 1893, Glasmann’s Buffalo Park Land Company sold its seventeen American bison to John E. Dooley. The bison were herded around the lake up to Farmington and loaded on a flat boat to become the nucleus of the buffalo herd on nearby Antelope Island.[26]
A Highway Town and Extraction Economy
In late June of 1892, Mary Ann Maughan, the wife of the now late Peter Maughan, wrote in her diary about a trip that took her to various places to visit friends and graves. She described visiting the Garfield Resort, seeing the buffalo herd at Buffalo Park, and noted that "...the place where E.T. City once stood there are only a few houses there now". The community had changed a lot since she and her husband left to help settle Cache Valley. The necessity of keeping a settlement close together for fortification purposes became less important as the threat from the Goshute tribe was neutralized, and E.T. City had diffused well beyond the E.T. Canal into larger owned properties spread out along several branching roads. In some cases, all that remained of the older cabins were remnants of rock chimneys.[27]
↑Alexander L. Baugh, “John C. Frémont’s 1843–44 Western Expedition and Its Influence on Mormon Settlement in Utah,” in Far Away in the West: Reflections on the Mormon Pioneer Trail, edited by Scott C. Esplin, Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Craig K. Manscill (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 23–55.
↑Hastings, Lansford W (1845). The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. Cincinnati: Shepard & Co. The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described.
↑Rosen, M Daniel. "Donner Party Diary". donnerpartydiary. Retrieved January 31, 2023. We then followed Hasting's road around the Lake without incident worthy of notice until reaching a swampy section of the country west of Black Rock, the name we gave it". "We overtook Mr. Hastings at a place we called Blackrock, south end of Salt Lake, leaving McCutchen and Stanton here, their horses having failed.
↑Alexander L. Baugh, “John C. Frémont’s 1843–44 Western Expedition and Its Influence on Mormon Settlement in Utah,” in Far Away in the West: Reflections on the Mormon Pioneer Trail, edited by Scott C. Esplin, Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Craig K. Manscill (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 23–55.
↑Maughan, Heber Chase (September 8, 1938). "Peter Maughan Dead at Ellen Maughan's Home". MSS B 289 The Works Progress Administration (Utah Section) Biographical Sketches, ca. 1930-1941 (Interview). Interviewed by Spencer, Mae. Logan, UT: Utah State History.
↑Ricks, J. E. (1956). "The Settlement of Cache Valley". Utah Historical Quarterly. 24 (4): 318–337. doi:10.2307/45057869. JSTOR45057869. S2CID127812108. Retrieved January 30, 2023. As Brigham Young sadly reflected over these losses, he was confronted even more urgently with the necessity of finding more suitable land for colonization. From Tooele in 1856, Peter Maughan went to the Mormon leader and described the desolation in Tooele. Successive years of drought, saleratus, and grasshoppers had destroyed the crops of the settlers, and the Indians had stolen many cattle. Some of the settlers lacked food, and many faced starvation. Peter Maughan wanted to go to a more promising region to settle, and Brigham Young was faced with a dilemma. He weighed in his mind the dry regions in the south with their milder climates, but disheartening droughts, against the rich grasslands of the north with their devastating winters. Might not new settlers on the northern frontier suffer the same fate which overtook the cattle the year before, or might they not face massacre by the Indians? But the people of Tooele must have relief, and, as Peter Maughan wrote in his journal: 'On the 21st of July 1856 I was sent by President Brigham Young to pick out a location in Cache Valley for a settlement. Brother Z. Riggs, G. W. Bryan, William Maughan, J. Tate, M. Morgan and myself started and made a choice of the south end of the valley for our location'. When Peter Maughan reported his explorations to the Mormon leader, he received permission to lead a party of volunteers to settle in Cache Valley. Late in August, a small group left Tooele bound for the northern country. They were: Peter Maughan, G. W. Bryan, John and William Maughan, Zial Riggs, Francis Gunnel, D. Thompson, William Hamblin and probably Tom Wright. Seven of them were accompanied by their families. They traveled through Box Elder Canyon and went through Sardine Canyon to the valley. In her journal Mary Ann Weston Maughan, who drove the first wagon to the site of the new settlement, wrote: 'When we got to the mouth of the canyon we stoped to look at the Beautiful Valley before us, my first words were, O What a beautiful valley. We drove on to the creek near where Bro Bankhead's home now stands, here we camped on the 15th day of September 1856 [the brethren] have put up sufficient hay then they mead corrolls for our stock then some log cabins for us to live in, mine was small'...In 1860, Apostle Ezra T. Benson came to live in Logan and to direct religious affairs. From that date these men worked together to colonize the territory, to form wards, to name towns, and to nominate bishops whom the people voted to sustain. Peter Maughan also was chosen the first probate judge, and he administered the law in the valley. In each community a bishop was chosen, and he rendered justice and led the people in economic activity as well as in religious affairs. He was in reality the 'father' of his ward.
↑Carter, Kate B. (1975). Our Pioneer Heritage, Volume 18. Salt Lake City, Utah: Daughters of Utah Pioneers. p.10. Mr. H. P. Kimball, treasurer and superintendent of construction of the U.W. Railway Co., returned from the east on Saturday night September 2, where he has been with Mr. John W. Young, president of the same company. Mr. Kimball went east as agent of the Salt Lake, Sevier Valley and Pioche R.R. Co., to settle up with the creditors thereof and to assist Mr. Young in the business of the new company. All of the debts of the old company have been assumed by the Utah Western, and the old company have agreed to transfer to the new all of their claim to the following rolling stock, grade, bridges, &c., and receive therefor stock in the new company..
↑Muir, John (1918). Steep Trails. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp.121–125. OL6610854M. The nearest point on the shoreline is distant about ten miles from Salt Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy character of the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad, at a distance of twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point, where the shore is gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine retreating bays that seem to have been made on purpose for bathing. Here the northern peaks of the Oquirrh Range plant their feet in the clear blue brine, with fine curbing insteps, leaving no space for muddy levels. The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers, and the lovely mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort for pleasure and health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run from the city, and parties, some of them numbering upwards of a thousand, come to bathe, and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides together...Since the completion of the transcontinental and Utah railways, this magnificent lake in the heart of the continent has become as accessible as any watering-place on either coast; and I am sure that thousands of travelers, sick and well, would throng its shores every summer were its merits but half known. Lake Point is only an hour or two from the city, and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for excursions; and then, besides the bracing waters, the climate is delightful. The mountains rise into the cool sky furrowed with cañons almost yosemitic in grandeur, and filled with a glorious profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of science, lovers of wildness, lovers of pure rest will find here more than they may hope for. As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the fountain azure of the Sierra.
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