The Mormon Trail

This week we had a chance to see the real Mormon Trail as it meandered through the Iowa countryside. My brother John, our Trail Center Director, took us to check out a few of the places we keep reading about and have wanted to see since we came to Winter Quarters. So here is our little tour.

To find the Mormon Trail one has to know the backroads of this area. I was most grateful that John knew the landmarks. This charming St. Paul’s church was one. We traveled through the beautiful Iowa countryside and I must admit to asking myself if I would have had the faith to have left this beautiful land to have gone to the desert. I am so grateful for the faith our forebearers had who chose to go to the Valley. Almost a third of those who left Nauvoo did not.

First stop was Hyde Park where Orson Hyde lived. It is one of the most important Church sites because the Lord came to the Apostles here and chose Brigham Young to be the Second President of the Church.

It is a wonderful story. When Brigham Young returned to Winter Quarters from the first trip to the Valley in the fall of 1847 to get his family, he said “the Spirit kept tapping”, and he felt impressed the time had come to reorganize the First Presidency. December 5, 1847 Brigham met here at Elder Orson Hyde’s home at Hyde Park not far from Kanesville, (modern day Council Bluffs) with nine of the Twelve (Elders Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor were in the Valley and Lyman Wight was in Texas). Their prayerful deliberations culminated in hearing the actual voice of God declaring Brigham Young as President of the Church. The neighbors came running to see if there had been an earthquake! They were told it was just “the voice of God whispering” to them. Brigham chose Elders Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards as his counselors.

This area is lush farmland as you can see. Omaha is on the horizon on the other side of the Missouri River and Council Bluffs on this side. This is where the Saints first settled in Iowa. The Grand Encampment went for about ten miles from the Council Bluffs area east. Because there were more than 12,000 Saints gathered, there with thousands of head of cattle that needed pasture lands and they needed to grow food.

Brigham Young told them to scatter about and fence and farm the land in preparation for going west and for those who would follow. In over 100 settlements along the Mid Missouri Valley thousands of acres were plowed and planted by the Saints—many would never reap what they planted, but those who came later would. That was one of the hallmarks of the Mormon migration, they didn’t just plant for themselves, they prepared for those who would follow.

This is one of the markers along the road that marks the “Mormon Trail”.

You can follow the trail through Iowa. They came into Kanesville from the southeast.

I loved Eliza Snow’s comment about the land being “truly wildly beautiful.”

Here we are in the middle of the cornfields feeling very much a part of the pioneer story. Then I turned around and what is on the other side of the “Mormon Trail?”

Will ironies never cease!!

We stopped at the School for the Deaf. Here are markers for the Grand Encampment—the first gathering of the wagons from Nauvoo in the summer of 1846 -- an area almost 10 miles square.

There was also a marker for the mustering of the Mormon Battalion. It took place near here in July of 1846, as they left their families and began their 2,000 mile march. The commanding officer, Lt. Col Philip St. George Cooke, who became a friend of the Saints, said “History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry.” The Battalion was the financial salvation of the Church at that time because the cash they got for uniforms and for pay was distributed not just to their families but to the Church to be used to prepare for the exodus west. The agreement also allowed them to settle in Winter Quarters for two years. Thomas Kane was the man who facilitated this with Pres. Polk and then came to help muster the troops. This began his long and faithful friendship with the Church.

Another site of interest on the Nebraska side is the Florence Mill, sometimes called the Mormon Mill. It is currently a museum and art gallery, purchased in 1998 by Linda Meigs who rehabilitated the property.

Brigham Young supervised the construction of this gristmill over the first winter in Winter Quarters and it was completed just before the Vanguard Party went west. The mill was sold to John Neff, a Mormon, who was a miller from Pennsylvania who paid $2600 for it. The cash was used to pay the workmen who built it. He went west and left it to his son Franklin Neff, who operated it a short time and also went to the Valley in 1848 with his wife Elizabeth, taking the millstone and the machinery which is currently in the Church History Museum.

After the church left Winter Quarters the mill fell into disuse. The museum has a handbill advertising the sale of lots in Florence when it was first established in 1854. It was then Alexander Hunter came through on his way west to get gold, and stopped and bought the old mill and rebuilt it using some of the original Mormon Mill timbers.

The Weber family then bought it and operated it for 104 years through three generations including the year it was flooded by the Missouri River which is nearby.

The Webers eventually converted it to a steam powered mill and finally electric powered. It went from a flour mill to a feed mill in 1915 when the elevator was added.

The museum has some memorabilia from the early days when the Mormons owned it including the bill of sale to John Neff in March of 1847 just after it was completed, with signatures of Brigham Young, Newel K. Whitney, Heber C. Kimball, and William Clayton.

The Florence Mill, one of the most interesting places in Florence, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

A most delightful acknowledgement of the history of the area are the occasional street signs. A couple of my favorites.

Finally, one last word on the flood. As we came over the Omaha bridge I checked out my measuring rod—the statue to labor at Lewis and Clark Landing on the Omaha side. As you can see the statue in the middle is much more visible and the parking lot near it is showing life.

Our neighbor, Elder Glen Westover took the next two from the Lewis and Clark Park that overlooks the whole Mid Missouri Valley and you can see how flooded the area is--directly in front at the bottom is the water over the road we used to take each Sunday to Kanesville. The prize is the one where the highway just drops into the river.

The last picture is across the river from us (as seen from John’s street by the Trail Center), the Missouri-- “the lake”— is down two feet according to this weeks paper and seems to be going down fairly quickly. We can finally see some of the road across from Florence (Interstate 680) which has been under water since June along with those barns and silos. Only their roofs have been visible all summer. So there is hope.