The pioneer West : $b Narratives of the westward march of empire
History
The pioneer West : $b Narratives of the westward march of empire
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.)
Walking in a northward direction up Main, otherwise called Whisky
Street, we could not but observe the “magnificent distances” of the
settlement, which, containing 9000-12,000 souls, covers an area of
three miles. This broadway is 132 feet wide, including the side-walks,
which are each twenty, and, like the rest of the principal avenues, is
planted with locust and other trees. There are twenty or twenty-one
wards or cantons, numbered from the S.E. “boustrophedon” to the N.W.
corner. They have a common fence and a bishop apiece. They are called
after the creeks, trees, people, or positions, as Mill-Creek Ward,
Little Cotton-wood, Denmark, and South Ward. Every ward contains about
nine blocks, each of which is forty rods square. The area of ten acres
is divided into four to eight lots, of two and a half to one and a
quarter acres each, 264 feet by 132. A city ordinance places the houses
twenty feet behind the front line of the lot, leaving an intermediate
place for shrubbery or trees. This rule, however, is not observed in
Main Street.
The streets are named from their direction to the Temple Block. Thus
Main Street is East Temple Street No. 1; that behind it is State Road,
or East Temple Street 2, and so forth, the ward being also generally
specified. Temple Block is also the point to which latitude and
longitude are referred. It lies in N. lat. 40° 45′ 44″, W. long. (G.)
112° 6′ 8″, and 4300 feet above sea level.
Main Street is rapidly becoming crowded. The western block, opposite
the hotel, contains about twenty houses of irregular shape and
size. The buildings are intended to supply the principal wants of
a far-Western settlement, as bakery, butchery, and blacksmithery,
hardware and crockery, paint and whip warehouse, a “fashionable
tailor”--and “fashionable” in one point, that his works are more
expensive than Poole’s[19]--shoe-stores, tannery and curriery; the
Pantechnicon, on a more pretentious style than its neighbors, kept
by Mr. Gilbert Clements, Irishman and orator; dry-goods, groceries,
liquors, and furniture shops, Walker’s agency, and a kind of restaurant
for ice-cream, a luxury which costs 25 cents a glass; saddlers, dealers
in “food, flour, and provisions,” hats, shoes, clothing, sash laths,
shingles, timber, copper, tin, crockery-ware, carpenters’ tools, and
mouse-traps.... The Tabernacle is 126 feet long from N. to S., and
64 wide from E. to W.; its interior, ceilinged with an elliptical
arch--the width being its span--can accommodate 2000-3000 souls. It
urgently requires enlarging. Over the entrances at the gable ends,
which open to the N. and S., is a wood-work representing the sun,
with his usual coiffure of yellow beams, like a Somali’s wig, or the
symbol of the Persian empire. The roof is of shingles: it shelters
under its projecting eaves a whole colony of swallows, and there are
four chimneys--a number insufficient for warmth at one season, or
for ventilation at the other. The speaker or preacher stands on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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