“The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long.
Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a child’s toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinese wall.”
This plaque on the ground, south of the Salt Lake Tribune Building (Ezra Thompson Building) at 143 South Main Street in Salt Lake City, has the above quote from Mark Twain in chapter 13 of his book Roughing It.