The Nebraska Mormon Trail Association is eyeing a historical trail site near Alda as a possible spot for a special marker. Step one involved research on the location of the Trail, associated sites and the historic land use near the Trail between 1846 and 1868. Handcart companies provided determined Saints with an alternative, economical way to reach Zion. The Mormon trail was almost 1,300 miles long and crossed great plains, rugged lands, and the Rocky Mountains. The first portion of the overland trail led to Utah as well as Oregon and Montana. This part of the trail was used extensively from 1847 until completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. This part of the trail was used relatively little: mainly by Latter-day Saints fleeing Illinois in 1846, by some immigrants "jumping off" from Keokuk, Iowa, in 1853, and in 1856-1857 by seven handcart companies from Iowa City who entered the Mormon Trail at present-day Lewis, Cass County, Iowa. At the Snake River, Wyeth built a post, Fort Hall, in Idaho (near present-day Pocatello), which was later bought by … The Mormons followed existing trails and used maps and accounts from previous explorers to plan their route west. Their service helped provide funds that enabled many of their fellow Saints to gather to Zion. Wagons Various wagons were used but the predominant wagon for Mormons was the "Chicago" type, which was smaller, cheaper, and travelled better over rough terrain. 2. In 1827, 21-year-old Joseph Smith announced that he had unearthed a set of golden plates, inscribed with the tenants of God’s true church. Topographically, the trail led across the central lowlands and high plains of eastern and central Nebraska, then the upland trough of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming, through the Wyoming basin and the middle Rocky Mountains, and into the desert valleys of the Great Basin. Mobs forced them out of the city in September 1846. Many of Nebraska’s highways today, including Interstate 80, are on or near routes used over one hundred years ago by explorers, fur traders, covered wagon pioneers, and many others. The first leg of the journey was from Nauvoo, Illinois, another 265 miles. The Mormon Trail is 1,032 miles from Winter Quarters (near Florence Nebraska) to Salt Lake City, Utah. Between 1856 and 1860, ten companies comprising 2,962 Mormons used this successful mode of transportation. As in Iowa, variants evolved, but all LDS immigrants used all or parts of this trans-Missouri trail. This was the last alteration for starting for the Mormon Trail head to the west. As they traveled east, they passed westbound wagons that had left Winter Quarters in June. As a result of improved organization and funding, the 1850s included the busiest years for the Mormon Trail. These 2,500 Latter-day Saints journeyed 300 miles across Iowa Territory. Cooks are using conventional ovens rather than Dutch ovens, are cooking indoors rather than exposed to the elements and are using modern-day refrigeration rather than cellars. The Iowa Mormon Trail: Legacy of faith and courage Paperback – January 1, 1997 by William G. Black, Susan Easton;Hartley (Author) 4.8 out of 5 stars 6 ratings After 1860, Church-sponsored down-and-back wagon trains replaced handcarts as an inexpensive way for impoverished Saints to reach Zion. This was one thing that slowed the Donners down and led to their, um, unpleasantness in California’s snowy Sierra Nevadas. By the end of this September, the first 12 of an eventual 24 National Park Service monuments will mark important trail sites in Iowa. Besides practical advice about organizing wagon companies for traveling, the Lord also urged His Apostles to rely on Him along their way. When they encountered the Imperial Sand Dunes, the men marched south into Mexico, then back north and west, crossing desert and the mountains in Anzo-Borrego Desert State Park. 1. The Trail in California. About 2,100 pioneers in 13 wagon companies journeyed to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. (nps brochure of the Mormon Trail) The jumping off point for heading to the valley of the Great Salt Lake moved from Winter Quarter's (Florence) to Wyoming, Nebraska from 1864 to 1867. In Nebraska, as in Iowa, there is little left today of the Mormon Trail, but modern roads do parallel the old trail closely. Mormons continued to use the Oregon Trail from Independence through the 1850s and ’60s. Like the other westward-bound emigrants, the Mormons settlers were hoping for a better life, and more importantly to them, religious freedom. The story of the Mormon Trail is rooted in the beginnings of a unique American religion. The completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 ended extensive use of the trail as the railroad tracks followed essentially this same route. An exhibit in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, highlights their efforts of faith and commitment through objects they brought with them between 1846 and 1890. The Brooklyn carried 239 Latter-day Saints and supplies for anticipated Mormon settlements in the West. Hundreds of Mormon pioneers were buried along the trail, most in unmarked graves. Learn about the Mormon Trail at the California Trail Interpretive Center. Thousands of other Latter-day Saints crossed Iowa on variants of the 1846 route or on other trails, but all these intersected the trail of 1846 somewhere in western Iowa. The Mormon Trail was a 1,300 mile path from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City Utah, used between 1846 and 1857 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Many years have passed since the advent of the Mormon Trail. Beginning in 1846, tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints left homes, friends, and families and endured the rigors of travel by ship, wagon, handcart, and train to gather with fellow Saints in the Rocky Mountains of North America. Today the Mormon Trail is a part of the U.S. National Trails System, called the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the first group of Mormons set out from Nauvoo, to an undetermined destination somewhere in the Great Basin. Winter Quarters was the principal settlement for Latter-day Saints who gathered along the Missouri River in 1846. They largely followed the Platte River. Oregon Trail - Oregon Trail - Missionaries, Mormons, and others: The first missionary group to the West left Independence in 1834. Trail Preservation and Marking In 1930, the historic value of the trail was officially recognized. They established a gathering camp across the river called the Winter Quarters. After just two weeks in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and other members of the Quorum of the Twelve returned to the camps along the Missouri River to prepare their families for the journey west. In 1856, however, the Martin and Willie Companies left too late in the year and were trapped by the Wyoming winter. In 1852, agents in Copenhagen, Denmark, began making similar arrangements for Danish and other Scandinavian converts—later joined by German, Swiss, Italian, and French converts. From the Missouri River, Mormon companies followed the broad, flat valleys of the Loupe and Platte rivers for some six hundred miles to present-day Casper, Wyoming, then the Sweetwater River for about ninety-three miles to South Pass, thence along branches of the Sandy River and Blacks Fork to Fort Bridger, finally zigzagging through a series of canyons into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The Mormon Trail or the Mormon Pioneer Trail is the 1,300 mile route that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints traveled from 1846 to 1868. Mormons on their trek from Illinois to … That infamous Donner Party actually blazed much of the Mormon Trail’s Utah portion a year before the first Mormons came through. This online version supplements the museum’s exhibit with additional artifacts and monuments on display at Church historic sites from Nauvoo, Illinois, to San Diego, California. The approximately 1,300-mile-long trail from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City, Utah, was certified by the National Trails Act of 1986 as a National Historic Trail-officially The Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. Even as Mormon pioneers traveled both west and east, they were far from the only travelers on a very busy trail. This part of the trail was used extensively from 1847 until completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Today, the Lincoln Highway (Highway 30) follows this great roadway to the west. “Casper was a significant point on the Mormon Trail for two reasons …” 1. An exhibit in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, highlights their efforts of faith and commitment through objects they brought with them between 1846 … Although the trail was not blazed by the Latter-day Saints, and parts of it have at times been known as the Council Bluffs Road, the Omaha Road, the Great Platte River Road, or even the North Branch of the Oregon Trail, the entire route is today almost universally known as "The Mormon Trail" because the Latter-day Saints used it for twenty-three years in such large numbers (at least seventy thousand; no one knows just how many), because of the high drama of their "Exodus," and because they developed separate strands or trails and wove them into their great road (see Immigration and Emigration). In Utah, although modern roads follow the trail closely, very few of the original ruts remain. The next step involved defining roads to be inventoried and the actual field survey. The famous Oregon, Mormon, and California trails all passed through the Platte River Valley. When available, this information was used to get a full name, sex, age, death date, place of death, sources of the information in the Ancestral File, and additional notes. These involved research, field data collection and evaluation of the project corridors. Brigham Young led the Camp of Israel out of Illinois in the snows of February 1846. Most pioneers during the 1860s came to Zion in companies using this economical method of gathering until the Transcontinental Railroad arrived in Utah in 1869. About 500 men and several women and children volunteered to march from Iowa to the Pacific Ocean in what became known as the Mormon Battalion. Trails are compared with nearby trails in the same city region with a possible 25 colour shades. Rescue teams returned east to help them rejoin the Saints at Garden Grove, Mount Pisgah, and other settlements across Iowa. The trail divides into two unequal sections: General Albert Sidney Johnston also used this trail during 1857-58 for dispatching various detachments and the supplies for over 5,000 soldiers with which he had been ordered to subjugate the Mormons, who had defied the authority of the National Government. Each name identified with a death on the trail was then researched in the LDS Church’s Ancestral File for additional information. That summer, the United States declared war on Mexico in hopes of adding California to its territory. The Mormon Trail was used for twenty-three years, from 1846 to 1869. Roughly 80,000 headed to Oregon; approximately 80,000 came to the Salt Lake Valley and 350,000 went to California. Most arrived in September or early October. More than 200 perished before a rescue party arrived. The route was designated a national historic trail by the U.S. National Park Service. Directions to mormon-trail-east trailhead (40.828100, -111.653630) update trails status or condition Mormon Trail (East) Trail Reports. Pioneers were not alone on the trail. In many ways the Mormons were very much like their contemporary Oregonians and Californians. The Mormon Trail broke south just to the west of the Continental Divide, and it terminated to the southeast of the Great Salt Lake, in what is today Salt Lake City. After 1847, Kanesville (present-day Council Bluffs) became the local headquarters for almost 90 Mormon settlements in the area. The Oregon Trail was the Interstate of the 1800s. Deep mud and swollen streams slowed their progress. The “Last Crossing” of the North Platte took place near Casper. Trailforks scans ridelogs to determine which trails are ridden the most in the last 9 months. The Mormon … When that happened, they made their way across Iowa to a place near present day Council Bluffs. Into the Wilderness, 1846. After that, the combined steam power of ocean liners and rail locomotives made it possible for European Saints to travel from their homelands to the Rocky Mountains in just over three weeks and for a fraction of the cost. The Mormon migration was a movement of a community. Chad M. Orton “‘This Shall Be Our Covenant’: D&C 136,” Revelations in Context series, Feb. 25, 2015, history.lds.org, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. Furthermore, with the Union Pacific Railroad moving west from Omaha beginning in 1865, during 1867-1868 Latter-day Saints took trains from Omaha to four different railheads (North Platte, Nebraska; Julesburg, Colorado; and Laramie and Benton, Wyoming), from which they eventually picked up the Mormon Trail. 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