After learning that troops, cannon, cattle and mules and supplies of all kinds were headed to Utah to put the Latter-day Saints under the Federal boot, Brigham Young and the Saints had had enough. It was either fight or flee, or maybe even a bit of both. One thing was certain, if they did have to leave, they wouldn’t let their enemies enjoy the fruits of their labors. In regards to that, Brigham Young made the following statement:
“The people are free; they are not in bondage to any government on God’s footstool…we have transgressed no law, neither do we intend to do so,” but, Brigham explained, “I am not going to permit troops here for the protection or the priests and their rabble in their efforts to drive us from the land that we possess…they say that the coming of their Army is legal — it is not, and they who say it are morally rotten. I will not suffer again as I have in times gone by that there shall not be one building, nor one foot of lumber, nor a tree, nor a particle of grass or hay that has not been burned nor left in reach of our enemies.”
And one of their first acts to guarantee that and to send a message to their invaders, President, or rather “Governor” Young ordered that Fort Bridger be burned. The Mormons owned the whole place — they had bought it from Jim Bridger. They weren’t going to make it easy for Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston to allow them to have a convenient place to marshal their forces as they planned to march into Salt Lake City and put them under martial law, and according to rumors, hang their leaders from trees.
Apostle George A. Smith later lamented that the destruction of the fort cost the Latter-day Saints some $300,000 — a lot of money in 1858 dollars!