Demographics of Utah with no Mormon settlement.

[Walpurgisnacht]

Assuming that one of the alternate proposals to settle the Latter-Day Saints goes through (Joseph Smith doesn't die and OKs the settlement in South Texas, say, or Colonia Juarez takes off), what does the demography of OTL Utah look like? Without the Mormons' dedication to building a new society and their...cultural peculiarities, I'm not sure you'd be able to justify making it a whole state as opposed to an appendage of Nevada, but what happens next?

 

[Redolegna]

This might be of interest.

 

[Delta Force]

Assuming that one of the alternate proposals to settle the Latter-Day Saints goes through (Joseph Smith doesn't die and OKs the settlement in South Texas, say, or Colonia Juarez takes off), what does the demography of OTL Utah look like? Without the Mormons' dedication to building a new society and their...cultural peculiarities, I'm not sure you'd be able to justify making it a whole state as opposed to an appendage of Nevada, but what happens next?

Its possible that Nevada Territory won't be created if there aren't a large number of Mormons in the Utah Territory, with Utah becoming a state much earlier than it historically did. The main reasons for the creation and expansion of Nevada were anti-Mormon sentiment towards the Utah Territory and a desire to punish the Arizona Territory for its pro-Confederate sentiments.

The Nevada Territory was actually spun off from the Utah Territory in 1861 and expanded greatly afterwards. The western boundary of the Nevada Territory was defined as the 116th meridian, but in 1862 it was expanded westward to the 115th meridian to include new gold discoveries within the Utah Territory. Nevada continued to expand after gaining statehood in 1864, acquiring land up to the 114th meridian in 1866 and some land west of the Colorado River from Arizona Territory in 1866. That final expansion includes the area where Hoover Dam and Las Vegas are located, which is where the vast majority of the population and economic activity of the state now takes place.

 

[Coiler]

Interesting, could this (and other butterflies) lead to a western US with fewer but bigger states in it?

 

[Delta Force]

Interesting, could this (and other butterflies) lead to a western US with fewer but bigger states in it?

It would be a lot easier to come up with scenarios in which there are more states in the West.

The states in the West are already quite large compared to their predecessors (source). Georgia is the oldest state that is above average in its size, and it is just under 60,000 square miles. Missouri was already just under 70,000 square miles, and it was one of the largest states admitted prior to the Civil War (California, Texas, Michigan, and Minnesota are major outliers). Many of the Western states added in the 1889/1890 wave of new admissions are around 80,000 square miles or so (Montana is a massive outlier from that era). Arizona and New Mexico were the last two continental states that were added and they are among the largest.

It might be possible for there to be one or two fewer states depending on how the borders are adjusted, but if there are any fewer the remaining states would be very large. Utah would probably not include Nevada without significant territorial adjustments, as it would be significantly larger than any other state admitted, well above California in size. Nevada is also very mountainous, which is one of the reasons why it was so sparsely populated until almost a century after it became a state. The population of Nevada is still heavily concentrated along the border with California and in Las Vegas, and Central Nevada is one of the most sparsely populated areas of the continental United States. That's one of the reasons why the United States considered moving nuclear testing to Central Nevada in the 1960s before it became apparent the geology of the area was unsuitable (source).