Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197. Salt Lake City is further situated in a larger urban area known as the Wasatch Front, which has an estimated population of 2,298,915. The city was founded in 1847 as Great Salt Lake City by Brigham Young and his Mormon followers, who extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley, and continued to face legal prosecution from the U.S. government for their practice of polygamy, which was officially discontinued in 1890 in order to gain statehood. Although Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, less than half the population of Salt Lake City proper is Mormon today.
