10. Why Are the Streets So Wide in Salt Lake City?
Walking a block in Salt Lake City probably takes longer than in any other American city. First-time visitors to SLC’s downtown often ask for directions, are told their destination is “four or five blocks away“, and discover that means a fifteen or twenty-minute hike. While similar-sized cities such as Austin or Little Rock have downtown blocks measuring 300 x 300 feet, or 200 x 200 feet in the case of Portland, SLC’s downtown blocks are a whopping 660 x 660 feet.
Downtown SLC’s streets are similarly wide: at 130 feet, they are double the width of Manhattan’s. That is because the Mormon faith’s founder, Joseph Smith, thought cities should have large blocks, to allow for small farming plots. When the Mormons reached Utah in 1847, church president Brigham Young added wide streets to the plan, in order to allow ample room for farmers to turn their cattle around, without “resorting to profanity“.
