[Utah Currency] On 20 January 1849 a total of $3,329 bills in 50 cents, $1.00, $2.00, and $3.00 denominations were issued; these carried a face value of $5,529.50, and were modeled after the handwritten bills issued on 2 January. Feramorz Y. Fox, who studied the records of these issues, which are in the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City, found that these issues of currency were secured by an 80 percent reserve of gold. Most of the gold, in California-minted coins or dust, was paid in to the church as tithing. These gold-backed church treasury notes, or perhaps more accurately, warehouse receipts for gold dust, appear to have been a generally acceptable means of exchange in the Salt Lake Valley.
[source: Utah History Encyclopedia: Utah Currency, http://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/]
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