Spanish fork
| Spanish fork | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Location in Utah
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| Basic data | |||
| Foundation : | 1851 | ||
| State : | United States | ||
| State : | Utah | ||
| County : | Utah County | ||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 6 ′ N , 111 ° 38 ′ W | ||
| Time zone : | Mountain ( UTC − 7 / −6 ) | ||
| Residents : | 34,691 (as of 2010) | ||
| Population density : | 1,011.4 inhabitants per km 2 | ||
| Area : | 34.3 km 2 (approx. 13 mi 2 ) of which 34.3 km 2 (approx. 13 mi 2 ) are land |
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| Height : | 1395 m | ||
| Postal code : | 84660 | ||
| Area code : | +1 801 | ||
| FIPS : | 49-71290 | ||
| GNIS ID : | 1445945 | ||
| Website : | www.spanishfork.org | ||
Spanish Fork is a city in the Utah Valley on Utah Lake , in Utah County of the US state Utah with 34,691 inhabitants in 2010. It is located at an altitude of 1395 m in the wide bank in the southeast of the lake below the mountains of the Wasatch range and belongs to the Orem / Provo metropolitan area .
history
Like the entire valley of Utah Lake, the southeastern coastal plain also originally belonged to the strip land of the Ute Indians, who gave it its name . The first whites in the area were the members of the Dominguez Escalante Expedition , who came to what would later become Utah in 1776 when they were looking for a route from Santa Fe in Spain to California , also in Spain . They reached the valley via the canyon of the Spanish Fork River , named after them on a map by John C. Frémont in 1845 at the latest , from which the name of the city is derived.
In 1850 the first white man settled permanently, Enoch Reece founded a ranch immediately west of today's city and brought 200 cattle with him. The following winter, additional settlers arrived who had come to Utah via the Mormon Trail as part of Latter-day Saint settlement in the Utah Valley . The Mormon pioneers were predominantly farmers who used the alluvial land around the river for agriculture. By the end of 1852 there were already more than 100 families who cultivated the good soils. In 1854 they built a fortification called Fort Saint Luke around their settlement, into which 19 families from Palmyra , located further to the west, withdrew because of the alleged threat from the Indians . In 1855 Spanish Fork became independent as a city . The following year, Palmyra was abandoned and the urban area of Spanish Fork expanded accordingly.
Between 1855 and 1860, the first Icelandic immigrants from North America settled in Spanish Fork . This is commemorated by a memorial dedicated in 2005 by Gordon B. Hinckley , President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson . In 1858 around 100 families fled from the adjacent Salt Lake Valley to Spanish Fork when the US Army established a base on the Great Salt Lake and there was a risk that they would act against Mormon multiple marriages .
In 1858 the town's first commercial enterprise opened, a sawmill that processed wood from the mountains for building houses and other purposes. The owner also started the first grain mill in Spanish Fork the following year. By 1860, 1,069 people (Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh and Scandinavian descent) were living in Spanish Fork. The city's first school opened in 1862.
The industrial age in the city began in 1884 with an ironworks . There has been a drinking water supply in the city since 1909 and in the same year the construction of an electricity network began, for which a hydropower plant was built on the river in 1910. From 1915 onwards and completed in 1919, the Strawberry Valley Reclamation Project built an irrigation system for the bank, which greatly expanded the agricultural area in the city and the region. This was followed in 1925 by the Utah Packing Corporation's canning factory, which made it possible to produce vegetables such as peas, beans and tomatoes from Spanish Fork for regions far away.
Spanish Fork today
After the Second World War, the city had around 5,200 inhabitants in 1950, and in the following decades it grew to around 11,000 by 1990. Then began the structural change from the agricultural settlement to the suburbs of the economic centers of Provo and Orem . In 2000 there were already 20,246 inhabitants, in 2010 34,691. The appearance of the city is today characterized by extensive housing estates. Spanish Fork is economically well below the region's average, the median household income in 2000 was $ 48,705, while it was $ 56,752 for Utah County. The formal education level of the residents is also below average, while 21.9% of the population in Spanish Fork have a college degree, in Utah County 34.7% achieve this education.
Spanish Fork is connected by Interstate Highway 15 with Provo and Salt Lake City in the north, as well as the tourist areas of the Colorado Plateau and via Las Vegas and Los Angeles in the southwest. The bundled highways US 6 and US 89 join the canyon of the Spanish Fork River from the southeast , of which the US 6 continues to the west and Nevada, as well as the US 89 to the north parallel to the I 15. The settlement area has so far been largely concentrated in the region below the mountains and south-east of the I 15, the actual bank level is still predominantly used for agriculture and is available in the long term as a reserve area for an expansion of the city or the settlement of industry.
The metropolitan area is bordered by Springville to the northeast, Mapleton to the east, and Salem to the southwest.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spanish Fork City: Facts ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Spanish Fork in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
- ↑ The history of the place is based on: Spanish Fork City: History ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Utah History Encyclopedia: Spanish Fork ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b US Census Bureau: Spanish Fork ( Memento from January 15, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 40 kB), as of 2000
- ↑ US Census Bureau: Utah County - Income , as of 2000
- ↑ US Census Bureau: Utah County - Education , as of 2000
