History of Beer in Utah
by Evan Sawdey [sawdeye@gmail.com]
Issue 234 / June 2008 More from this Issue
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In 1833, Joseph Smith received a "revelation" known as the Word of Wisdom: the famed doctrine that prohibited members of the LDS faith to intake wine, hot drinks, tobacco and— strangely— the flesh of wild animals (which could only consumed in times of winter cold and famine). In Volume 12 of Brigham Young’s Journal of Discourses, Young describes how early church meetings were held at Joseph Smith’s house, the elder converts often chewing and smoking tobacco, occasionally spitting on Smith’s floor. Not pleased with the lingering "cloud of tobacco smoke" that he usually found himself in (coupled with his wife’s complaints of having to clean a tobacco-riddled floor afterwards), caused Smith to make an "inquiry" to the Lord, eventually leading to the Word of Wisdom. Today, Church members adhere to this doctrine quite strictly … but it wasn’t always that way. Back when Salt Lake City was in its infancy, the church and its members proved to be both active and vital in the movement to keep Utah soaked in booze. Economically, it was a great way to attract people to Utah’s ever-growing populace.
Photos: Courtesy of Utah Historical Society
A Mormon (one that was oft accused of killing people) started the first Utah brewery. Indeed, the infamous Orrin Porter Rockwell established the Hot Springs Brewery Hotel in 1856 (Valley Tan; November 6, 1858). Rockwell himself was a colorful character: he was the personal bodyguard to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and with his Manson-like beard and intense, thunderous eyes, he turned out to be as intimidating as he looked. During a speech given by Vice President Schuyler Colfax in 1869, Porter was noted as to have blurted out "I never killed anyone who didn’t need killing." This certainly makes sense when you take into account the fact that he was arrested for the murders and attempted murders of multiple men, including such notable Western figures as Lilburn W. Boggs (arrest reported in The Wasp; August 13, 1842), Lot Harrington (arrest reported in The Deseret News; January 22, 1862) and John Aiken (arrest reported in The Salt Lake Tribune; September 29, 1877).
Now why, pray tell, would we give this man, much less any man, the means to distribute beer to the common folk? The answer is simple: because of our railroaders and miners. It didn’t take long for people to find out that Utah had rich mineral deposits, and mining soon became the beating heart of Utah’s early economy (besides, there were still many unemployed people wandering around the West after hopping on the California Gold Rush train too late). Naturally, the prospect of new jobs immediately made numerous people perk up in excitement, and it wasn’t long before this little settlement was flooded with immigrants. Many of them (especially Germans) still had cultural drinking habits from their homelands, and the LDS Church greatly needed their labor. In fact, the first truly major brewery to be established in Utah was in 1864 by a German immigrant named Henry Wagener (Beer in the Beehive, 2006). The California Brewery grew to great prominence in a short amount of time, no doubt due to its prime location: right at the mouth of Emigration Canyon (in fact, it was only a couple hundred feet away from where the This Is the Place Monument now stands).
Yet there were problems still. Being a new territory, Utah was largely dependent on outside sources for certain goods like whiskey and cotton. According to an October 1995 History Blazer article, it was in 1861 that Brigham Young established the Cotton Mission in a little place called Toquerville, its ultimate goal being for Church members to raise enough cotton for Utah to break off its expensive importing ties. Yet the fertile fields that the Church members worked in soon provided something more: grapes. Lots of grapes. In fact, the wine that was derived from these grapes soon became hoarded by the LDS Church, largely because they were still using wine in their sacraments until the 1870s, when the teenage boys of the Aaronic Priesthood became allowed to prepare the sacraments themselves (soon replacing wine with water for their own protection, citing D&C 27:2 ["… that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the Sacrament"] as the reason for the switch). The Mormon-owned and operated Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution outlet (ZCMI for short) soon began selling wine and beer to the general populace at its downtown location, providing much joy to the hard-working residents of Salt Lake City.
Photos: Courtesy of Utah Historical Society
A Mormon (one that was oft accused of killing people) started the first Utah brewery. Indeed, the infamous Orrin Porter Rockwell established the Hot Springs Brewery Hotel in 1856 (Valley Tan; November 6, 1858). Rockwell himself was a colorful character: he was the personal bodyguard to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and with his Manson-like beard and intense, thunderous eyes, he turned out to be as intimidating as he looked. During a speech given by Vice President Schuyler Colfax in 1869, Porter was noted as to have blurted out "I never killed anyone who didn’t need killing." This certainly makes sense when you take into account the fact that he was arrested for the murders and attempted murders of multiple men, including such notable Western figures as Lilburn W. Boggs (arrest reported in The Wasp; August 13, 1842), Lot Harrington (arrest reported in The Deseret News; January 22, 1862) and John Aiken (arrest reported in The Salt Lake Tribune; September 29, 1877).
Now why, pray tell, would we give this man, much less any man, the means to distribute beer to the common folk? The answer is simple: because of our railroaders and miners. It didn’t take long for people to find out that Utah had rich mineral deposits, and mining soon became the beating heart of Utah’s early economy (besides, there were still many unemployed people wandering around the West after hopping on the California Gold Rush train too late). Naturally, the prospect of new jobs immediately made numerous people perk up in excitement, and it wasn’t long before this little settlement was flooded with immigrants. Many of them (especially Germans) still had cultural drinking habits from their homelands, and the LDS Church greatly needed their labor. In fact, the first truly major brewery to be established in Utah was in 1864 by a German immigrant named Henry Wagener (Beer in the Beehive, 2006). The California Brewery grew to great prominence in a short amount of time, no doubt due to its prime location: right at the mouth of Emigration Canyon (in fact, it was only a couple hundred feet away from where the This Is the Place Monument now stands).
Yet there were problems still. Being a new territory, Utah was largely dependent on outside sources for certain goods like whiskey and cotton. According to an October 1995 History Blazer article, it was in 1861 that Brigham Young established the Cotton Mission in a little place called Toquerville, its ultimate goal being for Church members to raise enough cotton for Utah to break off its expensive importing ties. Yet the fertile fields that the Church members worked in soon provided something more: grapes. Lots of grapes. In fact, the wine that was derived from these grapes soon became hoarded by the LDS Church, largely because they were still using wine in their sacraments until the 1870s, when the teenage boys of the Aaronic Priesthood became allowed to prepare the sacraments themselves (soon replacing wine with water for their own protection, citing D&C 27:2 ["… that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the Sacrament"] as the reason for the switch). The Mormon-owned and operated Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution outlet (ZCMI for short) soon began selling wine and beer to the general populace at its downtown location, providing much joy to the hard-working residents of Salt Lake City.
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