Mormon History, 1847

[Utah Immigration] Spanish explorers and French-Canadian, British, and Canadian fur traders had briefly sojourned in Utah before ; but it was in that year that Mormon immigrants from Britain, Canada, Denmark, and Norway, who were among the vanguard of the Mormon exodus from Illinois, became the first non-Native American immigrants to Utah. After securing a precarious foothold in Salt Lake Valley and helping move their Nauvoo refugees to Utah, Brigham Young and the Mormons turned much of their attention to proselytizing abroad and gathering converts to their new Zion. The vast majority of the convert immigrants settled in present-day Utah, although several thousand also moved on to help establish communities in present-day Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Recruits from abroad were a major component of the Saints' attempt to establish temporal control over the area which sociologists would later dub the Mormon Culture Region. 1847

[source: Utah History Encyclopedia: Utah Immigration, http://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/i/IMMIGRATION.html]