90 Fun Facts About Mormon Pioneer

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

Advance parties left in March 1846; the organized wagon trains began in earnest in April 1847.

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

The valley only became US territory with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

The Mormon Exodus is conventionally said to have ended with what 1869 event?

Those who came by rail afterwards are not usually counted as pioneers.

From which Illinois city did the Saints depart in 1846?

Mobs burned the city's temple in 1848, two years after the exodus began.

Where were Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon imprisoned after the 1838 Missouri conflict?

Rigdon got out on habeas corpus and rejoined the refugees in Illinois in 1839.

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

Their deaths made it clear the church could not stay in Illinois.

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

The so-called extermination order was not formally rescinded until 1976.

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

He personally reviewed every report on the Great Basin before choosing the valley.

Which non-Mormon Philadelphian won permission for the Saints to winter on Indian land?

The site was first named Kanesville in his honor; Young trusted him for life.

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

Young wanted a place no other colonizers wanted, and decided the valley qualified.

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

Leaders wanted to dodge conflicts over grazing, water and campsites.

How many men were in the 1847 vanguard company?

Three women and two children also made the trip, along with 73 wagons and one cannon.

How many wagons did the vanguard company take west?

They carried enough supplies to provision the group for a full year.

On what date did the vanguard company roll west from Winter Quarters?

They started at 2 p.m. and made just three miles the first day.

What time did a bugle wake the vanguard camp each morning?

Travel ended at 8:30 p.m. and everyone was in bed by nine, with Sundays kept as a Sabbath rest.

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

His The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide gave later travelers his distances and notes.

What device did Clayton and two companions build to measure distance?

The "roadometer" showed the company averaged fourteen to twenty miles a day.

Which apostle served as the vanguard company's scientific observer?

He logged geology, minerals, plants and animals, and later entered the valley first as a scout.

How many women were in the original vanguard company?

Harriet Page Young was chosen first because her husband feared leaving her behind in ill health.

Which trading post did the company reach on June 1, 1847, after six weeks on the trail?

There they were joined by sick members of the Mormon Battalion who had wintered in Pueblo.

How much did the Saints charge other travelers to use their Platte River ferry?

Nine men under Thomas Grover stayed behind to run it and raise cash for the migration.

Which mountain man met Young on June 28, 1847, to discuss routes into the valley?

Bridger favored Utah Lake for its fish, fruit and grazing but warned of frost.

Whose trail from the previous year did Young follow through the mountains?

The ill-fated California-bound group had cut the route through the Wasatch in 1846.

Which tick-borne illness struck Young and others after they crossed the Green River?

The sick detachment lagged behind while scouts pushed ahead into the valley.

Which two scouts were the first of the company to enter the Salt Lake Valley, on July 21?

Pratt wrote that they could not hold back "a shout of joy" at the view.

What were the first crops planted in the valley on July 23, 1847?

Irrigation ditches were dug the same day the land was dedicated in prayer.

Who was driving the wagon from which Young first saw the valley?

Woodruff recorded the words "This is the right place, drive on."

Which summit did Young say he had seen in a vision before arriving?

A monument now marks the spot where he declared the valley the right place.

How soon after arriving did Young pick the site for the Salt Lake Temple?

He chose the spot on July 28 and presented a city plan for approval.

Roughly how many pioneers wintered in the valley in 1847?

More than half were under nineteen, so the adult labor force was small.

Which family buried a piano in buffalo skins east of the Rockies in 1847?

An ox team dug it up the next spring and hauled it to the valley.

How much flour did the church newspaper suggest each family wagon carry in 1845?

The 1845 list also called for two or three yoke of oxen, two milk cows and 15 pounds of iron.

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

He later met Young near Green River and tried to talk him into continuing to California.

How many passengers sailed on the Brooklyn from New York in February 1846?

The fare was $75 for adults and half that for children.

Around which southern tip did the Brooklyn sail on its way to California?

The voyage took five months and twenty-seven days, with a stop in Hawaii.

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

The US Navy had raised the flag there just three weeks before the Saints arrived.

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

Danish immigration took off after Denmark wrote religious freedom into its constitution.

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

The capital moved to Salt Lake City within a few years.

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

Goodyear ran a trading post at the mouth of the Weber River.

On what date is Pioneer Day celebrated in Utah?

It marks Brigham Young's 1847 entry into the Salt Lake Valley.

In what year was the first Pioneer Day-style celebration held?

A brass band led it; the name Pioneer Day only caught on in the 1870s.

News of which approaching force interrupted the 1857 celebration?

It heralded the start of the Utah War and years of subdued celebrations.

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

Say it fast and it sounds like the original.

During which years did the handcart migration take place?

About 3,000 emigrants in ten companies pulled their belongings across the plains.

What share of the 1846–1868 emigrants traveled by handcart?

Despite the small share, the handcart has become the defining symbol of the pioneer era.

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

More than 210 of their 980 members died despite a dramatic rescue effort.

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

Handcarts were adopted in 1856 after contributions fell following a poor harvest.

Where were handcart emigrants outfitted from 1855 to 1857?

It was the western end of the rail line; later companies outfitted at Florence, Nebraska.

How many people were assigned to each handcart?

Each person was limited to 17 pounds of clothing and bedding.

Which returning missionary urged the Willie Company to winter in Nebraska?

He was overruled but went with them anyway.

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.