Walk around Salt Lake City and you’ll notice. Temple Square dominates downtown. The church runs its worldwide operations from there. Sixteen temples operate throughout the state.
Joseph Smith founded the religion in 1830. He was 24 years old, living in upstate New York. His story goes like this: an angel called Moroni told him about gold plates buried nearby. These plates supposedly contained writings from ancient Hebrews who sailed to America around 600 BC. Smith said he translated.
That translation became the Book of Mormon. According to the book, Jesus visited these ancient Americans after his resurrection.
Smith held his first official church meeting on April 6, 1830 in Fayette, New York with six founding members. Converts started flooding in. Thousands joined within a few years.
Trouble followed them everywhere. Locals got nervous when too many Mormons moved into an area. Mormon voting blocs meant Mormon control of local politics. Violence broke out. In Missouri, the governor actually issued an order in 1838 declaring Mormons “must be exterminated or driven from the State”.
They fled to Illinois. Smith founded a city called Nauvoo and became its mayor. Then a local newspaper started accusing him of polygamy. Smith ordered the printing press destroyed. Things escalated. A mob killed him in jail on June 27, 1844.
Brigham Young took charge after that. He decided they needed to go somewhere so far away that nobody would mess with them. In 1847, Young led about 16,000 Mormons west to what’s now Utah. Back then, Mexico owned the territory. It became American shortly after they arrived.
The gamble worked. Utah turned into the Mormon homeland and stayed that way.
Idaho comes in second for percentage. About 26% of Idaho is Mormon. That’s roughly 474,000 people, mostly concentrated in eastern Idaho right against the Utah border. Wyoming ranks third at 11.5% with 67,505 Mormon residents.
People call this whole area the Mormon Corridor. Between 1850 and 1890, Mormon settlers spread through it. The corridor runs from Arizona up through Utah and Idaho, extending into Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and even Alberta in Canada.
Here’s what throws people off though. California has 729,000 Mormons. Arizona has 439,000. Texas has 378,000. Washington has 281,000.
Utah leads in percentage. But California beats everyone except Utah in total numbers.
Across the entire U.S., about 6.9 million Mormons live here. Worldwide? Over 16 million belong to the church. More members live outside the United States now than inside it. Huge Mormon populations exist in Latin America and the Philippines.
Growth in America has basically flatlined. Back in 2007, 1.8% of Americans said they were Mormon. By 2022, only 1.2% did. Utah’s Mormon membership inched up just 0.66% in 2024. That’s one of the lowest growth rates ever recorded.
Recent research suggests Utah might not even be majority Mormon anymore. One estimate puts it at 42%. The church quit releasing detailed Utah numbers in 2021. Their explanation? The data didn’t “accurately reflect membership numbers and trends.”
Remember when someone predicted 267 million Mormons by 2080 back in 1983? Yeah, that’s not happening. Growth stalled hard after 2012.
Books About Mormon History
Want more? These books dive deeper (Amazon links):
