I grew up in Utah. Not LDS myself, but I have plenty of family and friends that are. One story we heard growing up was that when the Mormons went west they intended to reach the Pacific coast to settle. Brigham Young, who was sick, was a few days ride behind the lead scouting parties and they returned back to him with word of a large body of salt water. Brigham, thinking they had reach the Pacific coast, deemed that "this is the place" and they began to settle what turned out to be the Salt lake valley. They missed the Pacific ocean by almost 1,000 miles.
My question; is there any validity to this story? If not, what made the Mormons settle the arid and hot Salt Lake valley?
I taught Utah history and the Mormons were well acquainted with Utah as the location where they were headed. Several journals and accounts of the area had been published detailing the lack of white settlement, which appealed to the Mormon leadership. In fact, one of the previous wagon train parties traveling through Utah heading to California wrote that they would have stayed in Utah as it was a nice place to live but there weren't any white people so they didn't want to be the first group to stay.
Dean May's Utah: A People's History is a good place to start learning more about early Utah history. I had some good historical journal articles written about this topic unfortunately they are in packed boxes.