Courthouse Steps

Long before the Utah State Capitol building stood there, the hill north of Salt Lake’s Temple Square was called Arsenal Hill. Black powder and blasting caps were warehoused in an old slaughterhouse there. In April 1876, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepared for their spring conference, the magazines accidentally detonated, raining 500 tons of rock and debris on the city. Windows were shattered up to two miles away. Falling boulders killed a pregnant woman and a three-year-old boy. The bodies of two teenagers, Charles Richardson and Frank Hill, were never found. Other boys playing baseball nearby said they saw the two young men shooting at geese near the powder magazines. We can only assume one of their shots, accidentally or not, set off the explosion. One Civil War veteran, viewing the destruction, said Salt Lake looked worse than Fredericksburg, Virginia after several days of shelling.