Six generations of faithful Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) came before me and thirty-one of my ancestors walked across the plains to settle the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Where the Copper Hills Meet the Salt Water is an investigation into the systems at play in my suburban Mountain West upbringing, two of which include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine (AKA Kennecott). The below works draw on personal experience, family archives, ephemera, materials local to the Salt Lake Valley, and research on the American Frontier and its role in catapulting early settlement claims into systems of unbridled wealth and power with wide-reaching societal, cultural, familial, and individual implications.