Echo grew gradually into a multicultural community shaped by trappers, settlers, gold seekers, and other travelers. When news reached Salt Lake City that the transcontinental railroad would pass through Echo Canyon, Brigham Young Jr. bought the entire Echo Valley from founder James Bromley for $200. As the son of the former Mormon Church president, he recognized Echo’s strategic position on the railroad and its importance for protecting access to Mormon colonies in the Salt Lake Valley and Weber Canyon. His plan for Echo City enclosed 280 by 290 blocks, and rapid early growth followed, with reports of fewer than six buildings before Christmas and fifty houses four weeks later. By 1868, Echo had become a large town, but it never developed into the all-Mormon city Young Jr. envisioned, because the railroad and the mining rush brought outside influences that defeated that goal. Even so, the railroad sustained the town’s life when many communities along the line disappeared. Young Jr. laid out fourteen eighty-foot-wide avenues running east to west, naming them after some of his father’s wives, while north-south streets were named for Union Pacific dignitaries. Not all of Brigham Young’s wives were represented in the street names, and in a period when Utah was seeking statehood, openly advertising plural marriage in an important town like Echo was unwise.