This Is the Place Heritage Park
Near Salt Lake City, Utah
On July twenty-fourth, eighteen forty-seven, Brigham Young emerged from Emigration Canyon, looked out over the Salt Lake Valley, and reportedly said, this is the right place, drive on. That declaration ended one of the largest overland migrations in American history. The monument standing here at the canyon mouth was sculpted over eight years by Mahonri Young, a grandson of Brigham, and was dedicated exactly one hundred years after that moment, on July twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-seven.
Sixty feet tall and about eighty-six feet wide, it honors the Mormon pioneers alongside the Spanish explorers, fur trappers, and Native peoples who moved through this corridor before them. The heritage park behind it reconstructs pioneer-era buildings with costumed interpreters. The spot is called simply the place.
