Cake part of celebrating city's origins
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A few thousand spectators gathered on Salt Lake City's Washington Square July 23 to eat part of a giant cake - fashioned as a replica of the city.
President Gordon B. Hinckley and Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini cut the cake with a Mormon Battalion sword, as part of a program to celebrate the origins of Utah's capital city.Spectators gathered for the celebration despite on-again, off-again drizzling rain. Members of the 1997 Sesquicentennial Mormon Trail Wagon Train, marched from This Is the Place State Park to Washington Square as part of the program.
During brief comments, President Hinckley called ground on the block "ground of history."
"One hundred and fifty years ago today, this 23rd of July, Orson Pratt stood on this ground and dedicated it for all who should come here through the subsequent years," he said.
The property, where the Salt Lake City & County Building now stands, was the first place a plow turned the soil in the vast western area. It was the square where in 1856 the wagons carrying the rescued Willie and Martin handcart companies came to unload their cargo. Later it was used as a park. Then in 1891 construction began on the city and county building, which still stands. The building was dedicated in 1894.
