Salt Lake City

Public Lands Department

publiclands@slcgov.com

First Encampment Park

History of First Encampment Park

First Encampment Park is located at 1704 South 500 East, the approximate location where the First Pioneer Company of the Church ​of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints camped when they first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 22, 1847.

After leaving Emigration Canyon, pioneers traveled southwesterly along Emigration Creek till they reached a bank positioned where Emigration and Parley’s Creeks come close together. The pioneer company’s clerk wrote, “We descended a gentle sloping tableland to a lower level where the soil and grass improved in appearance… The Wheat Grass grows 6 or 7 feet high, many different kinds of grass appear some being 10 or 20 feet high- after wading through thick grass for some distance, we found a place bare enough for a camping ground…”

Two days later, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young arrived at the second encampment two miles north in City Creek, where they began to grow crops and establish the lay of the land.

150 years later, in 1997, the small pocket park was established. Its granite stone landscape bears the names of the first pioneers to arrive and represents the Wasatch Mountains and Emigration Canyon through which they traversed.