Deseret can have a little coastline, as a treat.
There was almost a Mormon Navy?
What are the oceans if not one giant salt lake?
The Scientology Navy: the prequel?
Never heard of this, interesting. Thanks for sharing
I recently learned that the Mormons settled and resettled in several states before finally staying in Utah. It's quite an interesting story, especially given that most religions are so ancient that it's very hard to track their origins today.
Johnny Harris has great videos about it, this one for instance.
Yeah, they kept getting kicked out. Mostly for being bad neighbors - or at least not being able to read the room.
Seriously, American Puritans. They'd move en masse to an area, try to impose their religion on everyone, piss everyone off, get driven out, then cry about it.
Sounds an awful lot like Desert
The name Deseret derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon.
A remarkable coincidence that it's also in the middle of the desert
Living in Baja, I'm at least thankful for not having mormon craziness right next door.
Imagine northern Baja during Prohibition in the United States, jam-packed with bars catering to gringos looking to get plastered. That's how Tijuana grew from a sleepy town to city virtually overnight back then. Many people still see Tijuana as a drinking-spree place, in reputation. Now imagine it was still that way, at that 1920s level of intensity.
Imagine polygamy as part of daily religion and politics in the area. With so much territory equaling political agency, Deseret might have openly maintained their backwater, backwards attitudes towards women to this day. It would have seeped into Mexico. It would be part of the conversation.
As it stands, we are buffered from those crazy mormon bastards by a series of layers with other types of crazy, and currently Baja could not have had better luck than with a neighbor like blue, progressive California.
Thank god we don't have Texas or Arizona next door. Sorry about that, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas. We got lucky there in Baja.Would have controlled Lake Tahoe and most headwaters of the Sierras. Sneaky
How were the borders of the area they wanted decided on?
I'm pretty sure it's just the entire American great basin
Hunh, you're right. Plus (of course!) a whole bunch of sea access.
I am not sure that northwest corner of Utah was worth giving up all that other territory. /s
