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The Story of the Mormon Trail
Beginning in 1846 and 1847 they came by the hundreds and then by the thousands. Some walked beside covered wagons, a few rode, and nearly 3,000 pulled handcarts. They were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose footsteps and wagon wheels marked the Mormon Trail from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Great Salt Lake Valley. They represented one of the great waves of 19-century Western pioneering. Drawn by religious faith, nearly 70,000 people traveled to the Great Basin before 1869. From the hub in Utah, they established settlements in the future states of California, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Suffering religious persecution, Latter-day Saints in the 1830s were driven from their homes, first in New York and then in Ohio and Missouri, from where they went to Illinois. In less than seven years in Illinois they built Nauvoo, one of the state's largest and most beautiful cities. But organized mobs forced them to leave their prosperous homes and farms. The westward trek began in 1846 with the exodus from Nouvoo, halted for a few months at the Missouri River in Iowa and Nebraska, and continued in earnest in 1847, 150 years ago. |