[4] Realizing that they did not have time to follow the usual steps toward statehood[clarification needed], Young and a group of church elders formed a convention in the capital town of Salt Lake City, where they quickly drafted and adopted a state constitution on March 6, 1849.

They then sent Almon W. Babbitt with a copy of the state's formal records and constitution to meet with Bernhisel in Washington, D.C. and to petition for statehood rather than for territorial status.

The Territory of Deseret would have comprised roughly all of the lands between the mountain ranges of the Sierra Nevada in the west and the Rockies to the east, and between the initial southern border with Mexico and northward to include parts of the Oregon Territory (recently split along the 49th parallel of latitude by treaty with the British further north in western Canada), as well as the coast of northern California south of the Santa Monica Mountains (including the existing settlements, missions and pueblos of Los Angeles and San Diego).

The proposal encompassed nearly all of present-day Utah and Nevada, large portions of eastern California along with Arizona and parts of western Colorado and New Mexico, southern Wyoming and Idaho, along with southeastern Oregon.

"[10] This map was drawn by Preuss based on survey data from famous military officer and Western explorer John C. Frémont (1813–1890), and published in 1848.

[11] As the proposal encompassed lands largely considered inhospitable for cultivation, it was hoped that Deseret might avoid conflict over the issue of the expansion of slavery.

Its size would make it easier to preserve the balance of power in the Senate, by decreasing the number of free states entered into the Union.

The delegates sought to call a new statehood constitutional convention and include Deseret in the new state to settle the slavery question throughout the vast territory acquired from Mexico.

[14] On September 9, 1850, as part of the negotiated Compromise of 1850, the new Utah Territory was created by an act of Congress, encompassing a portion of the northern section of the earlier proposed state of Deseret.

From 1862 to 1870, a group of Mormon elders under Young's leadership met as a shadow government after each session of the territorial legislature to ratify the new laws under the name of the State of Deseret.

The legendary driving of the famous golden spike just 66 miles northeast from the Great Salt Lake completed the first transcontinental railroad across North America at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory in May 1869, two decades after its establishment.