Salt Lake City

Vol. 1
No. 10

August
1925

Salt Lake City, Industrial Center of the Intermountain West

Fertile Soil, Rich Mining Resources, Manufacturing, and Access to Wonderful Scenery Are Among Its Innumerable Attractions

SALT LAKE CITY, the largest city in Utah, is the center and heart of the rich intermountain region. It has transportation facilities to serve most effectively that entire territory, as well as the Pacific Coast, the Northwest and the Central States. It is a great commercial and distributing center, and its opportunities in industry and manufacturing are equally great because raw materials are easily available for every type of industry.

Transportation facilities are already there to take care of great business expansion.

The territory surrounding Salt Lake City has fertile soil for bounteous crops and orchards, and there are millions of acres of land susceptible of irrigation and reclamation. The largest open cut copper mine in the world is located near Salt Lake City, at Bingham. In this vicinity also are mines which in 1923 produced 28 per cent of the nation's silver; 18.1 per cent of the lead; 16 per cent of the copper, and 6.35 per cent of the gold.

The great resources of Utah have been only partly developed. Iron ore, limestone and coking coal, found in Utah in vast deposits within short distances of each other, assure the success of the n e w I y established steel industry, which promises to make Salt Lake City a great iron and steel center, rivalling Chicago, Gary and Pittsburgh.

Mining, smelting, fruit and vegetable canning, packing plants, beet sugar factories, flour mills, milk condensories, dairying, stock raising, farming, wholesaling and jobbing are among the important industries of which Salt Lake City is the commercial center.

Utah has more coal than the Ruhr, and the vast coal resources of the state have scarcely been touched. During fifty years of production, her estimated coal deposits have been decreased only one-half of one per cent. It is estimated that the coal resources of the state, which are producing at the rate of nearly 5,000,000 tons annually, are about 11,008,864,000 tons.

It is estimated conservatively that there is upwards of $50,000,000 of actual cash invested in Utah coal properties at the present time. Excellent coking coal is mined in large quantities, and superior coke made in the large coking ovens for industrial use, as well as gas coke for domestic use.

More than $1,000,000 a week is being taken from the ground in Utah. Since 1868 Utah has been one of the nation's leading metal producing states, its output to date having a value of $1,417,631,000, from which dividends of approximately $260,500,000 have been paid by 85 companies operating in fifteen separate districts.

The nation's largest silver mines are in Utah. Among the states in 1923 it ranked first in silver production, second in copper production, third in lead, and sixth in production of the precious metal, gold.

With the development of the mining industry, there has grown in Salt Lake valley the world's largest smelting center, where are located four copper and lead smelting plants that have an annual total capacity for the reduction of 4,500,000 tons of ore. The industry furnishes 85 percent of the freight traffic originating in the state, and its mines, mills and smelters furnish employment for 18,000 men, totaling a pay roll of approximately $30,000,000 annually.

In addition to the precious and semi-precious metal deposits there are vast stores of known iron and coal deposits, the world's largest alunite deposits, which are rich in potash and aluminum, and immeasurable tonnages of oil shales which government reports estimate contain more than 42,800,000,000 barrels of oil and 500,000,000 tons of ammonium sulphate. The world's largest deposits of hydro-carbons the annual production being 30,000 tons; gilsonite, elaterite and ozokerite, immense deposits of natural material from which cement is manufactured, and all classes of building materials, such as clays, gypsum, and building stone, including various colors of marble, are found within the state. Near Salt Lake City are 210 different minerals.

Active drilling operations are going on in several parts of Utah and indications are that oil in commercial quantities will be discovered. Utah is rich in timber resources which have scarcely been touched so far, owing to lack of proper transportation facilities.

In Salt Lake City the manufacturer finds raw material readily available, an adequate and dependable supply of hydro-electric power, fuel and water in abundance, and seven great railroads radiating from Salt Lake City for the distribution of his products.

Salt Lake City has established herself as the center in a manufacturing way, of the inter mountain territory. The value of products manuf a c t u r e d in Salt Lake City has reached a total of $103,814,000 yearly. Manufactured products in Utah increased from $50,000,000 in 1905 to $300,000,000 in 1920 -500 per cent.

In the past few years industries have been coming in more rapidly than at any time before in the history of the city. The industrial prospects have never been so bright and a number of the largest manufacturers in the country are preparing to establish branch factories in the city.

In the last three years new industries have been established with an annual pay roll of about $4,008,400, and approximate investments totaling $5,000,000.

Salt Lake City is the distributing center for all merchandise in the intermountain territory, within a radius of about three hundred and fifty miles. Practically every national distributing sales organization has an office in Salt Lake City, because of its strategic location. There are 9,500 country merchants, in seven states, doing business with Salt Lake City's jobbers and wholesalers and manufacturers.

Salt Lake City being the commercial capital and situated in the center of a rich agricultural, mining and manufacturing district, is a natual distributing point. The jobbing interests are increasing with the growth of the city's population and the noticeable industrial expansion.

Salt Lake City is the wholesale headquarters for several hundred cities with a radius of six hundred to seven hundred miles. Salt Lake City supplies a retail trade territory several hundred miles in radius, the retail business of the city in 1923 totaling $52,312,000.

Salt Lake City's bank clearings in 1923 were $671,653,915.95, placing it first in bank clearings among cities of similar size in the United States. Indications are that the total for 1925 will be $50,000,000 in excess of 1923.

During the three years just past, Salt Lake City has issued 4,262 new building permits, with a total value of $17,889,396, a showing which clearly indicates the city's growth.

Salt Lake City is, also the "Center of Scenic America--the gateway to sixty-one national parks and monuments. The newly-famous scenic wonderlands of Southern Utah are attracting thousands of tourists every year,. Salt Lake City itself is a beautiful, progressive city, protected on the east by the majestic

Rockies, with seven picturesque canyons opening at the city's very edge. To the west lies the famous inland salt sea, the Great Salt Lake, so salty that you float with ease on its surface.

THE transportation service rendered by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and facilities it has provided, have unquestionably assisted in the development, progress and growth of Salt Lake City and the state of Utah.

Its advent into Utah fostered the building of many towns along its lines, and it now serves more important cities and towns in Utah than any other railroad.

It has always had more miles of rails in Utah than any other railroad.

It serves a larger area of Utah's agricultural and mining territory than any other railroad.

Its pay roll is the largest of any railroad in Utah. The money it pays out in wages is spent in Utah for the necessities and luxuries of life. Flowing through natural channels of trade, this money greatly enhances Utah's commercial prosperity.

It pays more taxes than any other railroad in Utah and thereby makes a greater contribution to the upkeep of its highways, the support of its schools, county and state institutions and governmental bodies.

Besides having the largest pay roll and tax disbursement of any railroad in Utah, it spends in the state annually large sums for materials, fuel and supplies.

In 1924 it disbursed in the state of U t a h, $7,737,490.37. T h i s amount was spent as follows: Pay roll, $6,064,386.70; taxes, $643,407,066; fuel, $683,158.85; material and supplies, $346,537.16.

Combining most advantageously the greatest number of facilities and conditions necessary for successful manufacturing and merchandising the widest variety of commodities, Salt Lake City is rapidly becoming the industrial center of the intermountain west. The very fact of this concentration of varied commerce and industry gives Salt Lake City a special cumulative advantage, widening as this progressive metropolis grows.

salt lake city downtown view 1925 d1-10.jpg (100001 bytes)

Downtown Salt Lake 1925

Utah State Capitol at Salt Lake City

Union Depot

Stockyards