Outmigration

During the second half of the 19th century, most Latter-day Saints lived in a corridor of the North American West that stretched from Alberta, Canada, through Utah, and into Colonia Juárez, Mexico.¹ Earlier efforts to gather Latter-day Saints to this region began to reverse around 1900 as Church leaders encouraged new converts to remain in their homelands rather than relocate to the American West. At the same time, economic, educational, and governmental opportunities began to draw many Latter-day Saint individuals and families away from Utah to many locations across the United States. This “outmigration” transformed the Church in important ways. Although a dense concentration of Latter-day Saints remained in Utah and surrounding states, Church congregations started to be distributed more broadly across the country. Over time, some Latter-day Saints in large American cities came to hold influential positions in business, government, education, and other sectors of American society.²

Various factors encouraged Latter-day Saints to relocate outside of Utah at the turn of the 20th century. Since their arrival in the Intermountain West, Latter-day Saints tried to build a temporal kingdom of God in that region. For many years, Church leaders encouraged purchasing only from fellow Church members and to consecrate or lend their capital and labor to their wards, stakes, and settlements.³ On the other hand, most people in the United States were building an economy based on individual opportunity.⁴ As Latter-day Saints gradually participated in American industry and commerce, they increasingly pursued educational and professional opportunities outside of their home culture region.

Other major political and economic forces also contributed to increased outmigration. Antipolygamy legislation in the 1880s followed by a national economic depression in the 1890s weakened the ability of Latter-day Saint families and communities to support themselves, leading many to search for employment elsewhere. Beginning in 1900, federal water reclamation projects opened new lands throughout the American West to agricultural development, affording farmers in Utah opportunities to move and expand their operations, which began to vacate many smaller towns.⁵ When Reed Smoot was elected to the United States Senate in 1903, he invited several of his staff members to take positions in federal offices in Washington, D.C. Their experiences encouraged other Latter-day Saints to seek government occupations over the following decades.⁶ Greater access to higher education and professional work also attracted many young adults to leave Utah for New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.⁷

Chapel built in 1933 in Washington, D.C., where the first stake at the United States capital was organized in 1940.

Outmigration became even more common as Latter-day Saints joined military forces and worked in defense industries during the two world wars.⁸ After World War II, veterans received benefits under the G. I. Bill that included tuition subsidies. College towns boomed as Latter-day Saints joined other young Americans in pursuit of degrees, and student wards were established around university campuses.⁹ Military servicemembers also sustained branches of the Church abroad, with expatriate foreign service workers often representing the first Latter-day Saints in various countries.

By the mid-20th century, an increasing number of new members joined the Church in areas outside Utah and the United States.¹⁰ Between 1923 and 1953, stakes in California, New York, Texas, and Washington, D.C., were formed—the first in their respective states and the national capital—while increased international transportation, globalized commerce, and mission expansions in subsequent decades contributed to a dramatic increase in Church membership and the creation of thriving stakes around the world.¹¹ In 1979, the 1,000th stake was organized in Nauvoo, Illinois; fifteen years later, the 2,000th stake was organized in Mexico City; and in 2012, the 3,000th stake was organized in Sierra Leone.¹²

Church Resources

William G. Hartley, “The Church Grows in Strength,” Ensign, Sept. 1999, 32–39.

Bibliography

The following publications provide further information about this topic. By referring or linking you to these resources, we do not endorse or guarantee the content or the views of the authors.

G. Wesley Johnson and Marian Ashby Johnson, “The Mormon Outmigration, 1919–1970,” in Brandon S. Plewe, ed., Mapping Mormonism: An Atlas of Latter-day Saint History (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012), 144–47.

G. Wesley Johnson and Marian Ashby Johnson, “On the Trail of the Twentieth-Century Mormon Outmigration,” BYU Studies, vol. 46, no. 1 (2007), 41–83.

Jan Shipps, “The Scattering of the Gathered and the Gathering of the Scattered: The Mormon Diaspora in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” in Douglas D. Alder, comp., Honoring Juanita Brooks: A Compilation of 30 Annual Presentations from the Juanita Brooks Lecture Series, 1984–2014 (St. George, Utah: Dixie State University Press, 2014), 72–88.

D. W. Meinig, “The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of the American West, 1847–1964,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 55, no. 2 (June 1965), 191–220.

Related Topics: Emigration, Pioneer Settlements, Wards and Stakes, Servicemember Branches

1. See Topics: Gathering of Israel, Pioneer Settlements.

2. G. Wesley Johnson and Marian Ashby Johnson, “The Mormon Outmigration, 1919–1970,” in Brandon S. Plewe, ed., Mapping Mormonism: An Atlas of Latter-day Saint History (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012), 144–47. See also Topic: Emigration; Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930, 3rd ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2012), 305–7.

3. See Topics: Consecration and Stewardship, Cooperative Movement, United Orders.

4. See John Lauritz Larson, The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); and Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).

5. Dale Beecher, “The Post-Gathering Expansion of Zion: Mormon Settlements of the Twentieth Century,” in Thomas G. Alexander, ed., Times of Transition: Proceedings of the 2000 Symposium of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2003), 103–6. See also Topics: Antipolygamy Legislation, Cooperative Movement.

6. Johnson and Johnson, “The Mormon Outmigration,” 145. See also Topics: Reed Smoot Hearings, Political Neutrality.

7. G. Wesley Johnson and Marian Ashby Johnson, “On the Trail of the Twentieth-Century Mormon Outmigration,” BYU Studies, vol. 46, no. 1 (2007), 46–47.

8. See Topics: World War I, World War II.

9. Johnson and Johnson, “The Mormon Outmigration,” 144–45; see also Thomas W. Simpson, American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

10. See Topic: Growth of Missionary Work.

11. Johnson and Johnson, “The Mormon Outmigration,” 144–45.

12. Richard O. Cowan, “Stakes, 1910–Present,” in Plewe, Mapping Mormonism, 184; Gerry Avant, “3,000th Stake,” Church News, Dec. 9, 2012, 7.