Just before Joseph Smith made a brief escape from Nauvoo over the Mississippi River into Iowa, he made a strange request.

He asked his followers to take up their glue guns, their knitting needles, and their macrame rings to make a giant craft project—namely a sixteen-foot-long flag.

He wanted to carry this “flag for the nations,” covered in Mormon scriptures, wherever he went. And the loyal Saints got together and made a flag of white cloth, but Smith died before they could put any embellishments on it.

According to George A. Smith, just after Smith’s death, Brigham Young had a dream where Joseph showed him a mountain and instructed him to raise a flag atop it. “Build under the point where the colors fall and you will prosper and have peace,” Joseph said.

So, Brigham started to prepare a flag for just that occasion. But he decided it should be bigger than Joseph’s. According to an article by Ron Walker, he said, “What of a fl[ag] 16 feet by 8 feet? … I think 90 by 30 [feet] better.”

And two days after Brigham arrived in what would become known as Salt Lake Valley, he indeed raised a flag. But sadly, it was only a run-of-the-mill, store-bought American flag. Not what he was hoping for, but considering how sick he was and how low the company’s supplies were, it would have to do. The mountain it was raised on became known as Ensign Peak.

Meanwhile, Sam Brannan, who was leading a party of Saints on a boat expedition around the southern tip of South America to California, arrived in San Diego and planted his own flag, resplendent on a peak towering over the Pacific Ocean. He really thought the Saints should settle in sunny southern California.

But Brigham Young said Brannan’s flag didn’t count. So, the Saints stayed in the Great Basin where real estate prices would never quite catch up to California’s. The problem was, some people were already living there, and planting a flag did not impress them.

Listen to the story of how the Mormons spent their first year in Salt Lake Valley and their interactions with the Indigenous people in Episode 108 (Spotify, Apple, Sunstone) of the Sunstone Mormon History Podcast.