88 Fun Facts About Mormon Pioneer

Roughly how many people made the pioneer journey to the Salt Lake Valley?

About 70,000 Latter-day Saints made the trek over two decades, and the first companies broke and planted prairie at way stations in Iowa so those following could harvest the crops.

Which country governed the Salt Lake Valley when the exodus was planned in 1846?

Mexico still claimed the Great Basin, so the Saints were leaving the United States behind, only for the valley to become American soil in 1848, months after they arrived.

Historians usually say the Mormon pioneer era ended with the arrival of what?

The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, cut a wagon journey of several months to a few days, so converts who came by rail aren't usually counted as pioneers.

From which Illinois city did the Saints depart in 1846?

Nauvoo's exodus began in February 1846, months earlier than planned, after church leaders agreed to leave before spring to hold off mob violence.

In which Missouri town's jail was Joseph Smith held through the winter of 1838–39?

Liberty Jail held Smith for more than four months, until guards taking him to another county for trial that April let him and his companions escape to Illinois.

In which Illinois town were Joseph and Hyrum Smith killed by a mob in 1844?

Carthage Jail was holding the brothers on charges that followed the wrecking of an opposition newspaper's press when the mob stormed it on June 27, 1844.

Which Missouri governor issued the order expelling Mormons from the state in 1838?

Lilburn Boggs's 'extermination order' stayed on Missouri's books until 1976, when Governor Kit Bond rescinded it and expressed the state's deep regret.

Brigham Young is sometimes called the American what, for leading the migration?

Moses was the model the Saints chose themselves: they travelled as the 'Camp of Israel', organised like the biblical Israelites into companies of hundreds, fifties and tens.

Which non-Mormon Philadelphian won federal permission for the exiled Saints to camp on Indian land in 1846?

Thomas L. Kane stayed a lifelong ally: in 1858 he travelled to Utah by way of Panama, at his own expense, to negotiate an end to the Utah War.

Which Jesuit missionary familiar with the Great Basin did Brigham Young consult in 1846?

Pierre-Jean De Smet stopped at the Saints' camp in late 1846 on his way home to St. Louis after years of mission work in the Rockies, and church leaders questioned him closely.

How did the vanguard company's Platte River route avoid Oregon Trail traffic?

It kept to the north bank in hope of better grazing and fewer run-ins, until bluffs in Wyoming forced the company across the river to share the Oregon Trail after all.

Which hymn, written on the trail across Iowa in 1846, became the anthem of the Mormon pioneers?

Come, Come, Ye Saints was first called 'All Is Well': its author wrote it on learning that his wife, left behind in Illinois, had given birth to a healthy boy.

What name did the pioneers give the vast state they proposed in 1849?

Deseret, a Book of Mormon word for honeybee, stretched from Oregon to San Diego on paper, but Congress created a smaller Utah Territory in 1850 and dropped the name.

From which settlement on the Missouri River did the 1847 vanguard company set out for the Rockies?

Winter Quarters, in present-day Omaha, stood on tribal land the Saints had promised to leave within two years, so it was abandoned in 1848 as families moved west or back across the river.

What sound woke the 1847 vanguard camp at five each morning?

A bugle called every man to prayers at five and sounded again at 8:30 p.m., when all were to pray in their wagons and be in bed by nine.

Who served as the vanguard company's scribe and later wrote an emigrants' guide?

William Clayton logged the distance between landmarks and campsites day by day, then published the figures the next year as a guide for the companies that followed.

What device did the 1847 vanguard company's scribe and two companions build to measure distance?

A wagon-wheel odometer of wooden cogs replaced the scribe's first method, which was to walk beside a wagon and count every turn of its wheel.

Why did Brigham Young urge 500 men to join the US Army's Mormon Battalion in 1846?

To fund the exodus: the men handed over wages and clothing allowances, then marched nearly 2,000 miles to San Diego without fighting a battle.

Which birds are credited with saving the pioneers' 1848 crops by gorging on swarms of crickets?

Seagulls from the Great Salt Lake fed on the crickets for weeks, though early accounts worried just as much about late frosts; the gull is now Utah's state bird.

Which trading post did the 1847 vanguard company reach after six weeks on the trail?

Laramie, a fur-trade fort in today's Wyoming, was where a party of Mississippi converts who had wintered at Pueblo had been waiting two weeks to join the company.

What did nine men of the 1847 vanguard company stay behind to run on the Platte River in Wyoming?

A ferry: Oregon-bound travellers were paying $1.50 a wagon to be carried across, so Young left the nine behind to keep it earning for the migration.

Which mountain man met Brigham Young on June 28, 1847, to discuss routes into the Salt Lake Valley?

Jim Bridger, heading east from his own fort, camped overnight with the company and praised the corn and pumpkins raised by tribes near Utah Lake, though he feared cold nights would stunt crops.

Whose year-old trail did Brigham Young's 1847 vanguard company follow through the Wasatch Mountains?

The Donner–Reed party had hacked that road through the Wasatch a year earlier, a struggle that cost it more than two weeks and helped strand it in the Sierra snows.

Which illness struck Brigham Young and others after they crossed the Green River in 1847?

Mountain fever, probably the tick-borne Colorado tick fever, left Young so ill that he fell behind the main company and reached the valley days after his own scouts.

Which two scouts of the 1847 vanguard company were first to enter the Salt Lake Valley?

Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt made a twelve-mile circuit of the valley before reporting back, and Pratt wrote that they could not hold back 'a shout of joy' at the view.

What were the first crops the 1847 pioneers set out to plant in the Salt Lake Valley?

Potatoes and turnips came first, to save the seed: within hours of making camp the men had rigged three ploughs and begun damming a creek to flood the ground for planting.

Who was driving the wagon from which Brigham Young first saw the Salt Lake Valley?

Wilford Woodruff later recalled turning the carriage so the ailing Young could take in the view, and hearing him say: 'This is the right place. Drive on.'

Which summit was Brigham Young said to have seen in a vision before reaching the valley?

Ensign Peak got its name two days after Young arrived, when he and other leaders climbed it and judged it a good place to raise an ensign, a banner to the nations.

Four days after reaching the valley in 1847, Brigham Young marked the site for which building?

The Salt Lake Temple was a long time coming: its cornerstone was laid in 1853 and it was dedicated in 1893, forty years later to the day.

Through which broad Wyoming gap did the Mormon, Oregon and California trails all cross the Continental Divide?

South Pass is a sagebrush saddle so broad and gentle that one forty-niner could hardly believe he stood on the dividing ridge: it seemed more like rolling prairie.

Mormon Battalion veterans were at work at which California site when gold was discovered there in January 1848?

Sutter's Mill was being built by discharged battalion men whom Young had told to stay and work in California because food was short in the valley; one of them kept the diary that dates the find.

Which newspaperman chartered the ship Brooklyn to carry Saints to California?

Samuel Brannan rode east in 1847 to urge Young on to California, was turned down, and went back to become the first millionaire of the gold rush.

Two babies born aboard the emigrant ship Brooklyn in 1846 were named for what?

Oceans: the boy was named John Atlantic Burr and the girl took Pacific as her middle name, each for the ocean of their birth, on a voyage whose storms saw women and children lashed to their berths.

The ship Brooklyn carried its Saints from New York to California in 1846 by way of what?

Cape Horn was only part of it: the ship then put in at Juan Fernández, Robinson Crusoe's island, and at Hawaii before reaching California after nearly six months at sea.

The Brooklyn docked at Yerba Buena, which is now known as what city?

San Francisco had been under the American flag for just three weeks, so emigrants who had sailed to leave the United States were told by a naval officer that they were back in it.

Where in Utah did the largest number of Danish pioneers settle?

Sanpete County's valley took in so many Danish converts from the 1850s on that it became known as the 'Little Denmark' of the settlements.

Which town, founded in 1851, was intended to be the capital of Utah Territory?

Fillmore honoured the president who had made Young governor, but only one wing of its statehouse was ever built and lawmakers soon moved the capital to Salt Lake City.

From which trapper did the pioneers buy the land that became Ogden?

Miles Goodyear sold his fort on the Weber River for $1,950 in 1847, yet the town that grew there took the name of another trapper, Peter Skene Ogden.

On what date is Pioneer Day celebrated in Utah?

July 24 marks the day in 1847 that Brigham Young himself reached the valley, though his scouts had entered three days earlier and ploughing had already begun.

In October 1856, Brigham Young turned which church gathering into a call to rescue handcart emigrants stranded on the plains?

General conference heard Young say his text was 'to get them here'; sixteen wagonloads of supplies left two days later, and about 250 teams were on the road by the end of the month.

News of which approaching force interrupted Utah's Pioneer Day celebration in 1857?

Johnston's Army is what Utahns still call the federal expedition sent to replace Young as governor; he announced its approach to a crowd picnicking in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

What tongue-in-cheek alternative do some non-Mormon Utahns mark instead of Pioneer Day?

Pie and Beer Day is a pun on the holiday's name: said quickly, 'pie and beer' sounds like 'pioneer'.

What share of the Latter-day Saint emigrants of 1846–1868 travelled by handcart?

About 5 percent: only ten of some 350 emigrant companies pulled handcarts, yet the cart became the lasting symbol of the whole migration.

Which two 1856 handcart groups were caught by Wyoming snow with tragic results?

Willie and Martin set out weeks late, held up while carts were built and repaired, and roughly 200 of their people died before rescue wagons from Utah could bring the rest in.

Which church program lent poor European converts money for the journey west?

The Perpetual Emigrating Fund was meant to keep refilling itself: converts were to repay their loans once settled, in cash, goods or labour, so that others could follow.

At which railhead were the 1856 and 1857 handcart companies fitted out?

Iowa City was as far west as the rails ran, so emigrants stepped off the train and waited there for weeks while carts were built, some from wood too green to last.

At which Sweetwater River landmark in Wyoming did stranded handcart emigrants shelter at an abandoned trading post in 1856?

Devil's Gate had a trading post abandoned only that summer: the freezing emigrants burned part of it for warmth, and rescuers stored baggage there so the weakest could ride in the wagons.

Which returning missionary urged a late-starting 1856 handcart company to wait in Nebraska until spring?

Levi Savage was voted down, then told the company that since they were going forward he would go with them, help all he could and, in his words, 'if necessary I will die with you'.

Which birds does Mormon pioneer tradition credit with eating the insects that attacked the 1848 crops?

Seagulls from the Great Salt Lake are said to have gorged on the swarming crickets for two weeks, which is why Utah made the California gull its state bird.

Mormon missionaries who arrived in June 1855 built the first permanent structure in which future desert city?

Las Vegas grew up around the adobe-walled fort those missionaries raised near the valley's springs, though they abandoned it when the Utah War began.

Mormon Battalion veterans were working at which California sawmill when gold was found there in January 1848?

Sutter's Mill employed discharged Battalion men, and one of them, Henry Bigler, recorded the day of the gold strike in his diary.

The Mormon pioneers named their proposed state Deseret, a Book of Mormon word meaning what?

Honeybee is the meaning the Book of Mormon gives the word, but the U.S. government never recognized Deseret, and Congress created a smaller Utah Territory in 1850.

Mormon handcarts, built to Brigham Young's own design, were said to look like a large version of what?

A wheelbarrow on two wheels was the model, letting nearly 3,000 pioneers who could not afford wagon teams walk their belongings to Utah.

Which hymn, written in a wagon camp on the trail west in spring 1846, became the anthem of the Mormon pioneers?

Come, Come, Ye Saints was written by a pioneer who had just heard that his wife had given birth to a healthy boy back in Illinois, and it was set to an English folk tune.

Which future Utah state flower did the Shoshone teach hungry Mormon pioneers to dig up for its edible bulb?

Sego lily bulbs gave the pioneers badly needed food in their first lean seasons, which is why Utah formally made the plant its state flower in 1911.

Mormon pioneers founded the town of Franklin believing it lay in Utah, but which future state was it really in?

Idaho counts Franklin as its first permanent European settlement, and the townspeople only learned which side of the line they were on after an 1872 survey.

Which Salt Lake City monument marks the spot where Brigham Young first looked over the valley in 1847?

This Is the Place echoes what Young reportedly said on seeing the valley; his grandson Mahonri Young sculpted the monument, dedicated on the arrival's 100th anniversary.

The 1845 church supply list told each Mormon pioneer family to bring two or three pairs of which draft animals?

Oxen commonly hauled the early family wagons, and as the teams weakened under the strain, pioneers lightened their loads by leaving books, china and furniture beside the trail.

On which day of the week did Brigham Young's 1847 pioneer company generally stay in camp instead of traveling?

Sunday was kept as the Sabbath, so the company rolled six days a week and rested on the seventh, and Young scolded the men when their Sabbath recreation turned rowdy.

Which river did the first Mormon pioneer wagons ferry across in February 1846 as they fled Illinois?

Mississippi ferries carried the first wagons months before many families were ready, and when the river froze a few weeks later more refugees took advantage of the ice.

Winter Quarters, where Mormon pioneers built hundreds of cabins in 1846, lies in which present-day city?

Omaha absorbed the old campsite, later renamed Florence, where the pioneers put up more than 800 cabins and a water-powered gristmill.

Besides leading the church, which government office did Brigham Young hold in Utah from 1851 until 1858?

Governor of Utah Territory was his post until 1858, when he agreed to step down and let federal troops enter in exchange for a presidential pardon for the settlers.

Which biblical name did Mormon pioneers give the river that carries Utah Lake's water into the Great Salt Lake?

Jordan fit because the stream drains a freshwater lake into a salty one, much as its Holy Land namesake links the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.

Which nautical nickname was given to canvas-topped covered wagons like those the Mormon pioneers drove west?

Prairie schooners got the name because their white canvas covers looked like the sails of a ship crossing a sea of grass; the heavier Conestoga rarely went that far west.

Before Missouri and Illinois, the Latter-day Saints built their first temple at Kirtland in which state?

Ohio became the gathering place in 1831, after Joseph Smith reported a revelation telling members to assemble there, and the Kirtland Temple was dedicated in 1836.

Brigham Young was born in 1801 in the town of Whitingham, in which New England state?

Vermont was only his birthplace: Young was raised in upstate New York, and he gave up his trade to become a full-time church leader in 1835.

Before leading the Mormon pioneers west, Brigham Young worked as a painter, glazier and which other trade?

Carpenter was the trade, and the habit of building things stuck: the handcarts later pulled across the plains were made to Young's own design.

Which domed Temple Square building, finished by Mormon pioneers in 1867, has a roof held together by wooden pegs?

The Tabernacle has no interior pillars because Brigham Young wanted nothing blocking the audience's view, and skeptics expected the roof to collapse when the scaffolding came out.

Brigham Young sent some 300 pioneer families to southern Utah's Dixie in 1861 to raise which crop?

Cotton was the goal because the Civil War threatened the supply from the South, and the experiment left St. George and its region with the lasting nickname Dixie.

Which biblical name did Mormon pioneers use for the gathering place they hoped to build in the Salt Lake Valley?

Zion had already been applied to earlier gathering places in Missouri and Illinois before the pioneers carried the name west with them.

Which word did Salt Lake City drop in 1868 from the longer name its Mormon pioneer founders had given it?

Great was dropped from Great Salt Lake City in 1868; the pioneers had named their settlement for its closeness to the huge salt lake nearby.

Through which canyon on the east side of Salt Lake City did the Mormon pioneers enter the valley in 1847?

Emigration Canyon was the final obstacle before the valley, and a California-bound wagon party had carved the first rough road through it only a year earlier.

The Mormon Battalion's march of nearly 2,000 miles during the war of 1846 ended at which Pacific coast town?

San Diego was the finish for a force of about 500 volunteers, and the wages they signed over were collected to help the main body of pioneers.

From which English port did most European converts sail to join the Mormon pioneers in America?

Liverpool was the usual departure point for converts from England, Wales, Scotland and Scandinavia; in the handcart years they landed at New York or Boston and continued west by rail.

On which Wyoming granite landmark, nicknamed the Register of the Desert, did passing pioneers carve their names?

Independence Rock was a deadline as well as a guest book: wagon trains hoped to reach it by Independence Day, early enough to finish the journey before the first snowfalls.

Which broad Wyoming gap carried the Mormon, Oregon and California trails over the Continental Divide?

South Pass is the lowest point on the Divide between the Central and Southern Rockies, yet Lewis and Clark, hunting for a water route, never learned of it.

Which city across the Missouri River from Winter Quarters grew from a major Mormon pioneer outfitting town?

Council Bluffs began as Miller's Hollow, and the church went on outfitting emigrant companies there, mostly converts from Britain and Europe, until the mid-1860s.

Which vitamin-deficiency disease, nicknamed blackleg, struck the Mormon pioneers at Winter Quarters in 1846–47?

Scurvy became a major problem in the cabin-and-sod town, which the pioneers built for one hard winter and had emptied by 1848.

The 1879 Hole-in-the-Rock expedition of Mormon pioneers lowered wagons through a cliff crevice to which river?

Colorado River cliffs forced the settlers to enlarge a natural crevice into a wagon chute, and beyond the crossing they had to build yet another road up San Juan Hill.

Salt Lake City's big Pioneer Day parade, an annual event since 1931, has gone by which name since the 1940s?

Days of '47 points back to 1847, the year the first company arrived; when the parade became an annual event in 1931 it was called Covered Wagon Days.

Which U.S. president asked the Mormon pioneers for 500 volunteers, creating the Mormon Battalion in 1846?

James K. Polk wrote in his diary that enlisting the Mormons would conciliate them and keep them from siding against the United States.

Which long-haired bodyguard of Joseph Smith, nicknamed the Destroying Angel, went west with Brigham Young?

Porter Rockwell wore his hair long because of a promise that no bullet or blade would harm him if he never cut it, yet he once sheared it to make a wig for a sick widow.

Which pioneer widow, called a burden by her wagon captain, reportedly beat him to the Salt Lake Valley by a day?

Mary Fielding Smith was the widow of Joseph Smith's murdered brother Hyrum, and the son she brought west, Joseph F. Smith, grew up to be president of the church.

Which stream did the first Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley divert to soften the soil for planting?

City Creek got its name from Brigham Young a month later, because it ran through the heart of the city the pioneers planned to build.

Big Mountain, the highest point on the entire Mormon Trail, belongs to which Utah mountain range?

Wasatch peaks dwarf Big Mountain, but once over its summit the trail-weary pioneers had only one smaller ridge and a final canyon between them and the Salt Lake Valley.

Mormon pioneers led by Charles Ora Card founded the town of Cardston in 1887 in which Canadian province?

Alberta received them at the end of one of the century's last wagon migrations, a trek north from Utah along the Macleod-Benton Trail.

Mormon pioneers bought a rancho and founded which Southern California city in 1851, though most left by 1857?

San Bernardino was laid out on the grid plan the church used for its towns, and its colonists supplied farm produce and lumber across Southern California.

A map based on which explorer's recent western expedition was carried to Brigham Young before the 1847 trek?

John C. Frémont's map reached Winter Quarters with apostles returning from Britain, who also brought instruments for measuring latitude, elevation and air pressure.