Ranches on the Road to Denver
As important as supplying Denver was satisfying the wants and needs of emigrants. By 1860, there were primitive hotels along the entire route, so that one could journey from Leavenworth to Denver…
Development of the Trail by 1860
By the winter of 1856-57, when Little and Hanks were again briefly carrying the mail in the interval between the abrogation of the McGraw contract and the signing of the…
A Trail is Only a Set of Tracks
A trail is only a set of tracks, a road is a human institution. And it is a fact at first a little disconcerting to realize that what made the…
End of the Handcart Era
So the conclusion must be—and Mormon practise indicates that it was the conclusion of the hierarchy too—that handcarts were a perfectly feasible means of bringing the harvest to the valleys…
Mormon Handcart Casualties
Something more than two hundred of the Willie and Martin companies lay dead between Florence and the valley, sixty-two from the Willie company, and between 135 and 150 from Martin's, besides an unestimated…
Handcart Lumber
Ideally the lumber should have satisfied a wagonmaker's specifications: hickory for axles, elm for hubs, white oak for spokes and rims, ash for shafts and box, and all of it…
Impetus for Mormon Handcart Emigration
Some converts, especially those able to pay their own ship fare, had made a practise of settling temporarily in the eastern or midwestern states, wherever they could find jobs that…
European Mormon Emigrants
In all its history, the American West never saw a more unlikely band of pioneers than the four hundred-odd who were camped on the bank of the Iowa River at…
Emigration Route of European Mormons
So long as Nauvoo had been the place of gathering, New Orleans was the port at which they landed, and the Mississippi the route of their journey inland. Essentially the…
First Mormon Immigrants from England
With that energetically pushed exodus, the first phase of the Gathering was over, the Nauvoo refugees finally gathered in. And as early as September 3, 1850, as if to prefigure…
Mormon Emigration Numbers
It took three more years before all of them [Pottawatomie settlers] could be removed to Utah. In addition to the 500-600 wagons of 1849, about 700 went out in 1850,…
Abandonded Gear by the 49ers
More significant than anything that happened to the Mormon companies on the road in 1849 was the news that came back from the valley with Almon Babbitt early in September.…
Mormon Cholera in 1849
Egan, traveling the south side in the midst of the fuirst great surge of the California gold rush, met company after company hurrying as if trying to outrace the taint…
Clayton’s Emigrant’s Guide
The data William Clayton] had gathered would be published in St. Louis, in time for the emigration of the next season, as THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' EMIGRANTS' GUIDE, Being a Table…
Last 36 Miles to Salt Lake
By the testimony of every diarist, the thirty-six last miles, from the Weber to the Salt Lake Valley, were worse than anything on the whole road. It was as if…