1604 5th South
Salt Lake City, UT, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Wilford Woodruff Farm House

Statement of Significant:

The Wilford Woodruff farmhouse, built in 1859-60, is significant as the earliest holding on the farm of Wilford Woodruff, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1887-98. Under President Woodruff the Manifesto of 1890 was issued which ended polygamy among the Mormons and initiated the process of their integration into the mainstream of American life. The house also derives significance as one of the earliest dwellings built in the southern end of Salt Lake City. This farmhouse represents the initial phase of Mormon pioneer agricultural settlement and the role of the Wilford Woodruff family in that process.

According to the best estimates, the Wilford Woodruff farmhouse was built between 21 May 1859 and 26 July 1860. In his journal entry for 20 May 1859, Wilford Woodruff recorded that he, Wilford (his son), and Robert (Robert Scholles, his son-in-law) had just finished cutting approximately three hundred logs "to build a House down on the farm." It was, incidentally, hard work in considerable snow. They cut approximately one hundred logs averaging thirty-five feet long each day and slid them down the mountain. "It was the first time in my life I had labored in 3 feet of snow on the 20 days of May. On 26 July 1860, he wrote in his journal, "I went down into the Field I moved Susan Cornelia [his daughter, the wife of Robert Scholles] down to the farmhouse."
Apart from its age, the Wilford Woodruff farmhouse carries historical significance for several other reasons. It is located on what appears to have been Wilford Woodruff's earliest holding on his farm. A map of the Five-Acre,

Plat A, of the Big Field Survey of Salt Lake City drawn in 1857 shows Wilford Woodruff owning two five-acre lots (#1 and #20) in Block 13.2 The farmhouse is on Lot 20. In addition to these two lots, Wilford Woodruff's farm eventually included Lots 2, 3, 10, and 11.

On his farm, Wilford Woodruff planted corn; wheat; oats; potatoes; fruit trees and bushes including peaches, plums, apples, apricots, currants, and almonds; sugar cane; and Hungarian grass for hay. He built a mill to crush the sugar cane he and his neighbors grew in order to make molasses. In addition, he served as president of both the Utah Horticultural Society and the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society. He campaigned for a state-wide membership in the latter society and for sponsoring county fairs and a state fair for farmers to display their production and compete for honors."
The farmhouse is significant as well in regards to the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. It was among the early houses built south of Ninth South but still part of the city. Although several other communities existed by the time Wilford Woodruff built the farmhouse, those communities possessed their own identity; on the other hand, the farmhouses in the five-acre plats of the Big Field represented Salt Lake City's expansion, illustrating the city's evolving away from the original plan of a city of limited size and population to a growing metropolis. Wilford Woodruff's farmhouse, while certainly not the first house in the Big Field, is among the oldest still surviving.
A final historical significance of the farmhouse lies in its being Wilford Woodruff's main home from 1886 to 1892. Much of this time he lived in "underground" to escape prosecution under anti-polygamy laws; nevertheless, his journal contains several entries scattered over these years indicating he stayed at the farm, sometimes for several days in succession. During the se years, Wilford Woodruff functioned as the church historian, as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and then as president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1890, while the farmhouse functioned as his primary residence, Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto ending the practice of polygamy among Mormons and initiating the process of integration of Mormons into the mainstream of American life.

Although Wilford Woodruff moved one of his married daughters into the house in 1860, one of his wives, Emma Smith Woodruff, lived there from fairly early. In 1875 Wilford Woodruff finished another house on the farm and moved his last wife, Sarah Delight Stocking Woodruff, into it; later city directories indicate that she and her sons lived on Third East Street near Harrison Ave. This is part of Lots 10 and 11 of Block 13 and was part of Wilford Woodruff's farm. If Sarah Delight and her children had lived in the farmhouse before moving to the other part of the farm, the alterations changing it to a single-family dwelling could have occurred as early as 1875.

In 1892 Wilford Woodruff finished a new house to the south of the farmhouse and moved into it with Emma and her children. The city directories of the time do not clarify who lived in the farmhouse until 1898 when Abraham Owen Woodruff, a son of Wilford and Emma, moved into the house.