Nevada was once part of the Diocese of Salt Lake

From the Diocese of

Salt Lake City Directory

SALT LAKE CITY — The Diocese of Salt Lake City, embracing the entire State of Utah, originally included counties of Eureka, Lander, Lincoln, White Pine, Nye, Elko, and Clark in Nevada, making it, in geographic size, the largest diocese in the United States at the time of its establishment in 1891.

To form an idea of this immense territory under the direction of one bishop is best realized by comparison. In the State of New York there were seven dioceses, namely New York Brooklyn, Albany, Ogdensburg, Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo. Each of these dioceses was presided over by a bishop and the entire area of these seven spiritual leaders embraced 47,246 square miles, only about one-third the size of the territory administered by the Bishop of Salt Lake City.

When the Archdiocese of San Francisco was established in 1853, Utah Territory was included in its jurisdiction and remained so until 1866. That year, Utah’s spiritual guidance was entrusted to the Right Reverend Eugene O’Connel, Bishop of Marysville, Calif., now the Diocese of Sacramento. By a papal brief of Feb. 5, 1868, Utah was annexed to Colorado as a Vicariate Apostolic under the direction of Bishop Joseph P. Machebeuf. He asked the Holy See, in 1870, to relieve him of that part of his territory which embraced Utah. Thus, Utah was returned to the Archdiocese of San Francisco and remained subject to the spiritual ruler of that see until 1886, when Utah and the seven counties in Nevada were erected into a Vicariate Apostolic with Bishop Lawrence Scanlan as vicar bishop.

The Vicariate Apostolic of Utah and Nevada became, by papal decree, the Diocese of Salt Lake, and Bishop Scanlan was appointed bishop of the new diocese Jan. 27, 1891. He made Salt Lake City the seat of his authority. On March 27, 1931, the Nevada counties were removed from this jurisdiction and incorporated into the newly created Diocese of Reno. Thus the boundaries of the Diocese of Salt Lake became contiguous with those of the State of Utah. A papal decree in 1951 added the word "City" to the name of the Utah diocese, which since then has been officially known as the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

The alignment of Utah Territory within the Archdiocese of San Francisco occurred between the years 1853 and 1861.

In an effort to establish jurisdiction over the growing population in the western United States, The Holy See cut California away from Old Mexico in 1849, and erected the Diocese of Monterey. In 1853, Monterey was divided by an east-west line approximately at the 37th parallel drawn to the Colorado River.

South of the line was the new Diocese of Monterey extending south to the Mexican border, and the Diocese of Santa Fe. North of the line was the newly created Archdiocese of San Francisco, bound on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Oregon Territory at the 42nd parallel, and on the east by the Colorado River. Utah Territory, as it existed between the years of 1850 to 1861, was included within the boundaries of the new Archdiocese.

The Province of San Francisco consists of the Archdiocese of San Francisco as the Metropolitan See and nine suffragan dioceses including Honolulu, Oakland, Reno, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Jose, Santa Rosa, and Stockton.

Territorially, the San Francisco Province includes the northern section of the State of California (i.e., all counties north of the counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito, Merced, Mariposa, and Inyo) and the states of Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii, the Equatorial Islands of Christmas, Washington, Palmyra, and Fanning.