During the last three years of the Civil War (1862-1865) battles raged all round Richmond, and remains of the fortified lines constructed to protect the city are visible in various parts of the environs.
The leading industry is the manufacture of tobacco. Other important products are lumber and planing-mill supplies, foundry and machine-shop products (including locomotives), fancy and paper boxes, packing boxes, saddlery and harness, carriages and wagons, confectionery, flavoring extracts, patent medicines and compounds, etc. There are also large railroad repair shops, establishments for grinding and roasting coffee, etc. Richmond was formerly noted as a center of the flour-milling industry.
Richmond was settled in 1733 and incorporated in 1742. Captain John Smith’s settlement of “None Such” in 1609 and Fort Charles, erected in 1645, were both near the site of the present city. In 1779 it became the capital of the state. During the American Revolution the place was taken by a British force under Benedict Arnold, January 5, 1781, and the warehouses and public buildings were burned. The following year the city was chartered. Richmond, as the capital of the Confederacy, was the main objective of Federal [617] operations during the Civil War. It was evacuated April 2, 1865. The warehouses and a considerable part of the business section of the city were burned by the Confederates.
Salt Lake City, Utah. [The “City of the Saints;” named for the famous lake of that state.]
It is the chief town and ecclesiastical capital of the State of Utah, and is situated on the river Jordan, eleven miles from Great Salt Lake. It is built at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, four thousand three hundred and thirty-four feet above sea-level. The valley is world-famed for its beauty, resources, climate, and health-giving properties. By rail it is thirty-six miles south of Ogden, on the Union Pacific Railroad; eight hundred and thirty-three miles from San Francisco, and one thousand and thirty-one miles from Omaha.
The city is regularly laid out and the streets are wide and shaded with trees. Each house in the residence quarters stands in its own garden.
Temple Block, “the sacred square of the Mormons,” covering ten acres, is the center of the city. Here are the Great Temple, and the Tabernacle, the latter one hundred and fifty by two hundred and fifty feet, with a self-supporting roof shaped like a tortoise shell, supported by forty-four sandstone pillars, and having a seating capacity of eight thousand, accommodations for twelve thousand, and one of the finest pipe organs in America.
A little to the east of the Tabernacle is the Temple, a large and handsome building of granite, erected at a cost of over four million dollars. At each end are three pointed towers, the loftiest of which, in the center of the east or principal facade, is two hundred and ten feet high and is surmounted by a colossal gilded figure (twelve and one-half feet high) of the Angel Moroni, by C. E. Dallin. The interior is elaborately fitted up and artistically adorned.
The Assembly Hall, to the south of the Tabernacle, is a granite building with accommodation for three thousand people, intended for divine service.
At the corner of North Temple and Main Streets stands the Latter-Day Saints University. At the southeast corner of Temple Square is the Pioneer Monument, surmounted by a copper statue of Brigham Young, which was unveiled in 1897.