The advance party of Mormon settlers arrived in Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

The following day Great Salt Lake City was platted.

In 1888 the City government set aside twenty acres on the broad, level top of the hill for the capitol to be built when Utah should become a state.

The Capitol Hill District, covering 1,880 acres and containing 74 contributing buildings, is the oldest surviving residential area in Salt Lake City. Its streets and houses document over one hundred thirty years of residential construction and neighborhood development. The scale and irregularity of the streets and blocks are not typical of the rest of Salt Lake, either today or in the past. Rather they were a product of the steep hillside which made the area unattractive for redevelopment and ensured its survival.

The District preserves a representative cross section of the City's and the State's architectural and historical resources, ranging from the high style mansions of Arsenal Hill to the tightly packed workmen's cottages of Reed Street. The buildings and patterns of neighborhood life on the Hill are representative of other early neighborhoods of the City now broken or vanished.

View the National Register Nomination Form and accompanying photographs for the Capitol Hill Historic District.