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States & Territories

Utah

West

Brigham Young led the first company of Latter day Saint pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, declaring it the place after seventeen years of persecution and displacement across Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints has been headquartered there ever since. Temple Square in Salt Lake City, anchored by the granite temple completed in 1893 after forty years of construction, remains the church's global center. Utah's population is still majority Latter day Saint, giving the state a religious homogeneity unmatched elsewhere in the country.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
No Establishment 1
Utah's 1896 constitution, adopted on statehood, explicitly bars any union of church and state or any religious establishment, a provision written amid national scrutiny of the territory's Latter-day Saint majority.
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Latter-day Saint (Mormon) 2
Utah: Latter-day Saint is 50% of adults. Margin of error plus or minus 7.3 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/utah/
Geography
Census Region
West 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
From the Ute people, whose own name's original meaning in the Ute language is not firmly established. 1
Learn More
Fifty Percent and the History Behind the Number

Utah is the one state in the country where a single religious tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, makes up half the adult population outright, fifty percent in Pew's 2023-24 measurement, a concentration no other state approaches. That number is the end point of a specific and well documented history rather than a demographic accident. Brigham Young's pioneer company reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 after seventeen years of displacement from New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, and the settlers who followed him organized the provisional state of Deseret within three years, well before Utah territory was formally recognized by Congress in 1850 at a fraction of the boundaries Young had proposed.

Statehood itself was withheld for nearly half a century over a single religious practice. Congress refused Utah admission repeatedly while the church sanctioned plural marriage, and the impasse only broke after church president Wilford Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto formally ending the practice as official doctrine, clearing the way for statehood in 1896. Temple Square in Salt Lake City, anchored by the granite temple finished in 1893 after forty years of construction, predates statehood itself and remains the church's global headquarters. The fifty percent figure is what a religious community that built its own territory, waited out a federal standoff over doctrine, and never left the valley it settled looks like eight generations later.

Connections

Associated With

Brigham Young (Charles William Carter, c. 1865), Sacred Art & Iconography

This source names Utah directly: "Saints, taken circa 1865 by the Utah photographer Charles William Carter, showing Young's head and shoulders facing left."

Source Brigham Young Photograph, File Record (Wikimedia Commons, Carter, c. 1865)
Brigham Young Founds Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Spread Events

This source names Utah directly: "Latter day Saints were established in Utah in 1847, and two years before the St."

Source Brigham Young Academy (BYU Library, L. Tom Perry Special Collections)
Five Things You Should Know about the St. George Utah Temple (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Sources

This source names Utah directly: "George Utah Temple documents its 1871 to 1877 construction, its dedication in stages on 1 January 1877 and its formal dedication on 6 April 1877, and its standing as the first temple completed after..."

Source Five Things You Should Know about the St. George Utah Temple (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Department
Global, Continents

This source names Global directly: "of construction, remains the church's global center."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)
Judge Signs FLDS Trust Reform (Deseret News, 2006), Sources

This source names Utah directly: "published 27 October 2006, on a Utah 3rd District Court judge's order reforming the United Effort Plan Trust, describing it as a 110 million dollar trust at the time of the reform."

Source Judge Signs FLDS Trust Reform (Deseret News, 2006)
Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), Sources

This source names Utah directly: "consolidation in territorial Utah."

Source Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979)Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton
The St. George Utah Temple Is Dedicated, the Church's First Since Nauvoo, Spread Events

This source names Utah directly: "Latter day Saints were established in Utah by Brigham Young's 1847 arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, already recorded here, and roughly a decade before federal pressure over plural marriage began..."

Source Five Things You Should Know about the St. George Utah Temple (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Department
Winslow, 37,000 'Fundamentalists' Counted in and Near Utah (Deseret News, 2007), Sources

This source names Utah directly: "'Fundamentalists' Counted in and Near Utah," Deseret News, published 2007-08-11 and read 2026-08-16, reporting a census of Mormon fundamentalist groups compiled by fundamentalist historian Anne Wilde."

Source Winslow, 37,000 'Fundamentalists' Counted in and Near Utah (Deseret News, 2007)Ben Winslow

Regions Where This Is Principal

Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey, the atlas's only state where the Latter-day Saint movement leads.

Source Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape StudyPew Research Center
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2015View the Source
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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