CASUAL glance at a map of Utah will disclose that its boundaries, all of them straight lines, are not directly related to such natural features as rivers and mountains. In spite of their artificial appearance, however, the boundaries of Utah are definitely not without geographic significance, and their present position, although to a certain degree fortuitous, reflects a number of facts of economic geography. The importance of economic geography in the evolution of Utah's boundaries has been largely a result of the unique character of the peoplement of the area. As is well known, the area which was to become Utah was first settled by members of a single religious group, the Mormons. The history of their successive migrations from New York to Missouri, to Illinois, and finally, in 1847, to Great Salt Lake, is common knowledge. (A very full account is given in H. H. Bancroft: History of Utah, 1850-1886, San Francisco, 1889.) The Mormons hoped to find in the Great Basin an area which could be made predominantly Mormon, an area where they no longer would be a persecuted minority group. They wished to remain in the United States, however, and they could not hope to maintain by force their control of the area in which they settled. The isolation for which they may have hoped was banished by the stream of gold-seekers bound for California, which began to pass through the Mormon settlements less than two years after their foundation. The Mormon settlers' only hope of maintaining identity was by means of economic control of the area, and consequently the economic geography became of critical importance in the struggle to achieve a Mormon state.