Heber C. Kimball Prophesies Clothing Will Be Cheaper in Salt Lake City Than in New York — Fulfilled by Gold Rush Emigrants

In the summer of 1849, two months before the first wave of gold rush emigrants passed through the Salt Lake Valley, President Heber C. Kimball made a prophecy that seemed economically absurd. Aroet Lucious Hale, a young pioneer who lived through the famine that followed, recorded it in his journal: "He prophesied that clothing would be cheaper in Salt Lake City than it was in New York City."

The circumstances made the words nearly incredible. The Saints were in desperate straits — Hale's own journal preserves the texture of the famine. He came home one evening to find his sister and the little boys "without anything to eat but a little milk and segos for supper." A fine horse, saddle, and bridle could barely be traded for three pecks of corn meal. Bread was almost unobtainable, and families were digging sego lily and thistle roots to survive.

Then the gold emigrants arrived — overladen with supplies they could no longer carry over the mountains to California. Hale recorded the fulfillment: "They were loaded too heavy to continue their journey and all had something to sell or trade, horses, harnesses or wagons, clothing, provisions, cooking utensils, stoves, tents, guns and ammunition. This was considered a God send." Hale himself traded a saddle pony for a pair of gray horses, then traded those horses for "two yoke of oxen and wagons and a nice suit of clothes" — and a teamster's gift of eight or ten pounds of flour and ten pounds of bacon made what Hale called "the best supper that I ever ate." When his sister saw flour and bacon she "wept for joy."

The sudden flood of goods from California-bound emigrants, desperate to lighten their loads, drove prices so low that clothing in the desert valley became cheaper than in New York City — precisely as Kimball had said. Within weeks, the starving settlement had been transformed, and Hale wrote plainly: "We saw this prophecy come to pass."

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

I will now relate a circumstance that took place in the year 1849. We were in a state of famine, and we had to live on thistle roots and sego roots, and we were very short of clothing. I have known men to trade a good horse, saddle and bridle for three pecks of corn meal. This reminds me of a prophecy of President Heber C. Kimball two months before the gold emigration came into the valley. He prophesied that clothing would be cheaper in Salt Lake City than it was in New York City. We saw this prophecy come to pass. They were loaded too heavy to continue their journey and all had something to sell or trade, horses, harnesses or wagons, clothing, provisions, cooking utensils, stoves, tents, guns and ammunition. This was considered a God send. I traded a saddle pony for a pair of gray horses, and then I traded those horses for two yoke of oxen and wagons and a nice suit of clothes. I also got eight or ten pounds of flour and ten pounds of bacon, and that made the best supper that I ever ate. When my sister saw the flour and bacon she wept for joy.