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No Mormons

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
What if Joseph Smith never founded Mormonism? What would the settlement of the Mountain West look like? What would Utah, especially, look like?
 
The world suddenly got an awful lot more boring.

In terms of more practical effects, the entire Mountainous West would be a lot less developed.

Utah certainly would have far less of a population, as pretty much all early immigration was driven by Mormon converts gathering there. Brigham Young was far less of a religious innovator than Joseph Smith, Jr. ever was, but he was something that Smith never came close to being, a shrewd and savvy businessman, and an astute politician. The entire Mormon corridor happened by design. Brigham Young was determined that the Mormons should control all routes from East to West, and so put up strategic Mormon outposts and settlements wherever it seemed like a good likely spot for pioneers to pass through and needing to restock their supplies. It ran from as far north as Alberta in Canada to Chihuahua in Mexico. Without Mormonism, we in all likelihood wouldn't have that Mecca of Vice, Las Vegas, since it was founded by Mormon pioneers for the very purpose of controlling the transcontinental passage. This central control allowed the Mormon community to grow rich, and this helped develop the area further.

Well... I suppose the Baker-Fancher emigrant party isn't complaining...
 
The world suddenly got an awful lot more boring.

In terms of more practical effects, the entire Mountainous West would be a lot less developed.

Utah certainly would have far less of a population, as pretty much all early immigration was driven by Mormon converts gathering there. Brigham Young was far less of a religious innovator than Joseph Smith, Jr. ever was, but he was something that Smith never came close to being, a shrewd and savvy businessman, and an astute politician. The entire Mormon corridor happened by design. Brigham Young was determined that the Mormons should control all routes from East to West, and so put up strategic Mormon outposts and settlements wherever it seemed like a good likely spot for pioneers to pass through and needing to restock their supplies. It ran from as far north as Alberta in Canada to Chihuahua in Mexico. Without Mormonism, we in all likelihood wouldn't have that Mecca of Vice, Las Vegas, since it was founded by Mormon pioneers for the very purpose of controlling the transcontinental passage. This central control allowed the Mormon community to grow rich, and this helped develop the area further.

Well... I suppose the Baker-Fancher emigrant party isn't complaining...

What about the effects on the evangelization of Oceania? In our timeline, the Mormons played a big role in it. What other Christian denominations could take their place?
 
What about the effects on the evangelization of Oceania? In our timeline, the Mormons played a big role in it. What other Christian denominations could take their place?

Did they? Polynesia and Melanesia are almost entirely mainline Protestant or Catholic, though it's true LDS has had some success in Tonga (nothing remotely like what the Church claims.) Even in Samoa and Hawaii, the American territories, it's very much a niche faith.

Given that most of the LDS activity in the Pacific got started from the 1890s on, I doubt that it's removal makes much of an impact on the conflict between the various Protestant missionary societies (British, German, American) and the French Catholics (largely Marist) on the other hand.
 
Without Mormonism, we in all likelihood wouldn't have that Mecca of Vice, Las Vegas, since it was founded by Mormon pioneers for the very purpose of controlling the transcontinental passage. This central control allowed the Mormon community to grow rich, and this helped develop the area further.

"No Mormons, no Vegas" is NOT the butterfly I was expecting!
 
"No Mormons, no Vegas" is NOT the butterfly I was expecting!

Those Mormons I have met were oddly proud of the fact that Mormons founded Las Vegas, this despite the fact that they were very conservative in their interpretation of the Word of Wisdom.
 
Admittedly, Mormonism wasn't inevitably going to settle Utah and the surrounding region. Indeed, Joseph Smith, Jr. during his last few years were actually sending Mormon scouts around in North America to see if they could find a place where they might be able to set up an independent community. Fawn Brodie speculates in No Man Knows My History that Joseph Smith probably would have preferred to continue pushing west to California had he remained alive, as it was more in fitting with his natural adventurous spirit.

I am particularly fond of the story of Lyman Wight, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, whom Smith had given instructions to prior to his death to try to establish a permanent Mormon settlement in Texas. And once Smith was no more, that's where Lyman Wight went. Brigham Young did on occasion write to him and try to persuade him to join the other Mormons in Utah, but Wight refused. The Prophet had told him to go to Texas, and that's where he was going to remain, and where he eventually died.
 
The existence of John Moses Browning being butterflied away would be rather significant for the world of firearms. I'm no expert but the Browning 9mm automatic, Browning Automatic Rifle and Browning Light Machine Gun were all pretty significant landmarks.
 
Mormon settlement didn't have much to do with the early development of Nevada or Las Vegas. Nevada was actually the least populated state in the United States until the 1960 Census, when Alaska entered with an even lower population (source). It spent a lot of time losing population, and even ended up with a lower population in the 1900 Census than it did in the 1870 Census, the first one it took part in as a state.

By 1900 Las Vegas had a population of only 22 people (source), but it did had the fortune of being between Salt Lake City and the Pacific Ocean when the railroads were looking for an outlet (source). Some of the railroads were shut out of San Francisco (the major California city at the time) and they settled on Los Angeles as an alternative site. Las Vegas benefited from being in the middle of the route. Los Angeles obviously benefited from being at the end of the route.

In the 1930s Las Vegas benefited from being only 26 miles or so away from Boulder City when the Hoover Dam was being constructed. Boulder City is one of the two cities in Nevada that have a prohibition on gambling, so Las Vegas was one of the closest cities to the Dam where people could partake in it. Since Las Vegas was close to the Dam and already had a railroad it was also a logical location for building military facilities to protect the Dam, leading to the development of what would eventually become Nellis Air Force Base.

With the start of the Cold War the military presence around Las Vegas increased significantly. A large portion of Nevada was turned into the Nevada Test and Training Range for aircraft training and testing. The Nevada Test Site was also established within that zone after the United States government decided that a continental nuclear test site would be more secure and less expensive than the various Pacific sites that had been used up until then, although there were many other candidates for the site.

Starting in the 1950s, money from organized crime and money launderers started coming in, something that probably accelerated even more after Cuban casinos became inaccessible following the rise of Fidel Castro. The nuclear arms race was also accelerating, leading to more activity at the Test Site. It even went on to play a role in the Space Race after President Kennedy called for additional nuclear thermal rocket funding in his famous 1962 Moon speech (source):

Secondly, an additional twenty-three million dollars, together with seven million dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.

Then, in 1966, Howard Hughes, at the time the richest person in the United States, rode into the city on a private train before taking up an extended residency in the city, one that would last until his death in 1976. He injected massive amounts of money into Las Vegas and helped make it less of a boom town. Hughes actually stayed in the penthouses of hotels across North America throughout the 1960s, so it's possible he could have ended up dominating another city if he had stayed somewhere else.
 
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