The Saints — The Desert Blossoming as a Rose

Richards recounts the arrival of the Latter-day Saint pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. At the time, the region was a barren, alkaline desert that many explorers deemed uninhabitable. Richards frames the subsequent agricultural success, the irrigation of the land, and the establishment of hundreds of settlements as a collective miracle and a literal fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that 'the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.' He views the survival of the Saints in this environment as evidence of divine intervention in the gathering process.