Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail

Elijah Abel

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Flake

Green Flake

Hark Lay

Joseph Fielding Smith

Rebecca Winters

Zina Huntington Young

Fearing an invasion by the approaching US Army in 1857, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Brigham Young evacuated Salt Lake City and ordered the Mormon Militia to prevent the soldiers from entering the valley. The federal troops would come through Fort Bridger, a trading post in in present-day southeastern Wyoming, and pass through Echo Canyon, about 50 miles northeast of Salt Lake City, before following the California-Mormon Trail up Big Mountain.

A Boy's Walk to Zion: Brigham Henry Roberts

As American settlers surged westward across the eastern woodlands and prairies in the early 19th century, they pushed American Indians out of their ancestral homes. The U.S. government resettled many of those displaced Eastern tribes —the Kickapoo, Delaware, Potawatomi, and others— in congressionally designated Indian Territory west of the Missouri River and south of the Platte. The resettled Eastern tribes were among the first Indians encountered by emigrants through Kansas.

Download one of these booklets and begin your state by state trail adventure! The Auto Tour Route (ATR) guides provide an overview of local trail history while giving driving directions to suggested points of interest along the trail. There are auto tour route guides available for the trail across IA, NE, CO, WY and UT.

Learn about the National Historic Trails and earn junior ranger badges! These activities can be completed virtually or after visiting a site along the National Historic Trails. Booklets can be submitted either electronically or by mail. Take a look and start exploring the trails today!

Interested in the Mormon Pioneer Trail at Bonaparte Riverfront Park? Take a look at these interpretive exhibits and listen to their audio descriptions.

In 1849, many companies of gold seekers decided to follow the Applegate Trail to a new cutoff, said to be a quicker way to the goldfields. Lassen’s Cutoff turned out to be 200 miles longer than the established routes, extending the trip by weeks. Long before reaching the mines, most companies ran out of food. Starving men desperately filled their empty bellies with anything they could chew- rotting livestock lying trailside, boiled bits of leather, and plants, some poisonous.

Laudanum is a tincture made from powdered opium, morphine, and codeine. Today it is available in the US only by prescription, but in the 19th century it was an inexpensive patent medicine used to quiet agitated minds, ease fever and pain, and relieve diarrhea. An overdose causes the victim to stop breathing, lapse into coma, and die. That’s what happened to six-year-old Salida Jane Henderson, called “Lettie,” while she camped with her family in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.