The Utah War of 1857-1858 was the nation’s most extensive and expensive military involvement during the period between the Mexican and Civil wars, an armed confrontation between the civil-religious leadership of Utah and the Buchanan administration over power and authority in the territory. Ultimately it pitted nearly one-third of the U.S. Army against Utah’s Nauvoo Legion, arguably the country’s largest, most experienced militia. The historiography and folklore of this conflict is loaded with myths and misunderstandings, not the least of them being the notion that the war ended 150 years ago today – on June 26, 1858 – when Brevet Brig. Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston’s Utah Expedition marched into and through a Salt Lake City deserted and ready for the torch.