The Path to Utah Statehood

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In 1890, after the Supreme Court upheld the Edmund-Tucker Act securing the government's right to seize the church's property, Mormon president Wilford Woodruff announced in a document known as "The Manifesto" that the church would renounce the practice of polygamy.

Utah was admitted to the United States on January 4, 1896, and that year sent its first two senators and one representative to Congress, all members of the Republican Party.

"Statehood is an extraordinary achievement, but it's born of the fact that the LDS people realized they had to change to conform with the mandates that were coming out of Washington D.C., of what the voice of the public was demanding from Utah."

-- Ken Verdoia, journalist

"Utah begins to look like it has importance to the nation. After all, it has two senators. We have electoral votes to deliver, right, so you begin to take part in the life of the country."

-- Sarah Barringer Gordon, historian

Map: United States, 1900
Link to the text of the Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto.