Brigham Young lead his followers west in 1846, fleeing religious persecution. Young was looking for a place that his fellow Americans would consider too inhospitable to follow -- a place that would transform believers into a new people, where they could "blossom as the rose."

But it was also clear as much as the desert would transform the church, the church would have to transform the desert. Only hours after scouts arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they built a dam and irrigated a field of potatoes. And as church settlements spread across the Great Basin, green fields and lawns followed -- practices that were also eagerly embraced by non-L.D.S settlers who followed.

Their success in making the desert bloom has come at a cost. As demands on water grow and climate change makes weather more erratic, the Great Salt Lake is retreating, exposing toxic salts and threatening the reliable snowfall that still provides much of the region's water.

We are joined by guests Kathleen Flake and Matt Lindon to discuss the growing water crisis in the Salt Lake Valley -- as well as the role that the Church of Latter Day Saints has to play in efforts to let the Great Salt Lake thrive in a warmer, drier West.