A century and a half ago, a news report claimed that the Latter-day Saints planned to convert New Mexico into a religious empire, leading to a frenzy in Salt Lake. Despite this, the story was not true. The Salt Lake Herald defended the story by suggesting that Satan had instructed the church to build 50,000 hot air balloons to fly to the North Pole, where they would find the lost tribes of Israel. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Young had chosen New Mexico as the saints' new Zion due to a prediction that the Great Salt Lake would soon flood.