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 Eagle Gate - Salt Lake City, Utah
N 40° 46.174 W 111° 53.291
12T E 425042 N 4513556
The Eagle Gate located in downtown Salt Lake City Utah.
Waymark Code: WMBGV0
Location: Utah, United States
Date Posted: 05/20/2011
Views: 27
EAGLE GATE, spanning N. State Street at E. South Temple St., designates the former entrance to the private property of Brigham Young. A copper plated wood-carved eagle, its outspread wings measuring sixteen feet, is perched on a beehive, and the whole motif is held up by curved iron supports on square stone posts. The eagle was modeled on an actual specimen, killed in City Creek Canyon, and carved by Ralph Ramsay. The gate was erected to City Creek Canyon. Not everybody has liked the emblem and the gate. Sir Richard F. Burton, who visited the city the year after it was put up, describes it as “a huge vulturine eagle, perched, with wings outspread, neck bended as if snuffing the breeze of carrion from afar, and talons clinging upon a yellow bee-hive; --a most uncomfortable and unnatural position for the poor animal. The device is doubtless highly symbolical, emblematical, typical, --in fact, everything but appropriate and commonsensical.” With the arrival of electric streetcars in the 1880’s, the gate was removed, but in 1891 it was rebuilt at greater height and width to accommodate trolley cars, and the original wooden emblem was electroplated. A model of the gate was displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Though some local people object to it as a traffic hazard, the Eagle Gate is one of Utah’s most widely known and most photographed landmarks."--- Utah: A Guide to the State, 1941"
When the Eagle Gate was built in 1859 to mark the entrance to Brigham Young's farmland as well as City Creek Canyon the roadways weren't as wide as they are today, the monument has been altered four times — as State Street became a public thoroughfare and later was widened, first to accommodate electric street cars and then to handle the growing automobile traffic in downtown Salt Lake. This is a very beautiful piece of Utah history. We hope you will visit it and enjoy you it in beautiful downtown Salt Lake City Utah.
Book: Utah
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 244
Year Originally Published: 1941
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