Scouting, Volume 62, Number 1, January-February 1974 Page: 34
96, [12] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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leader said simply, "This is the place."
However, Woodruff himself later was
to recall that Young declared, "It is
enough. This is the right place. Drive
on!"
The day was July 23, 1847, and the
next morning the Mormon leader led
his party out into the Salt Lake Valley
itself. Despite Young's declaration, ini-
tial impressions were disheartening.
Only a couple of scrawny cottonwood
trees could be seen on the valley floor.
The rest of the scene was alkali desert,
sagebrush and sunflowers.
To the pioneers, however, things
brightened when they looked at the
many streams and springs in the near-
by timbered canyons. Water was the
essential ingredient that would help
the Mormons make the desert "blos-
som as a rose."
By the time Young and his group ar-
rived, an advance party of the pioneers
had already put the water to work.
They had dammed up a creek, dug
ditches to carry water to their crops,
and planted a few acres of grain and
potatoes.
This urgent sense of industry was
typical of most western settlers. After
all, survival had to have top priority on
the frontier, whether the emigrants
were on their way to Oregon, Califor-
nia or the Southwest.
The Mormons added extra urgency
to their pioneering efforts, however,
because they were more than the reg-
ular carefree individuals or small
groups. They were actual communities
on the move — oldsters, entire fami-
lies, livestock, equipment — all head-
ed irrepressibly west.
Historians have called the Mormons
the best-organized and best-
disciplined pioneers to cross the
plains. And they had to be. No matter
where they settled, they were dogged
by trial, travail and tragedy.
Most people think of the so-called
Mormon Trail as starting on the banks
of the Mississippi River close to the
point where the states of Illinois, Iowa
and Missouri meet. In a real sense,
however, the Mormon journey west
was much longer, for it had its actual
beginning in the early 1820's when a
young man from Palmyra, N.Y., named
Joseph Smith first told about visions
from heavenly messengers. For this he
was greatly scorned and ridiculed, es-
pecially by clergymen.
When Smith translated scriptures
from golden plates he said were given
to him by an angel, harassment in-
creased. And it continued after April 6,
1830, when he organized The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At
least that was the official name of the
church. Outsiders called the church
members "Mormons," after Smith's
translation from the plates, the Book of
Mormon. (Mormons called themselves
"saints" after the church's name.)
Smith claimed the book was the story
of Israelite people who came to the
new world by sea and of Jesus Christ's
ministry with these people in the west-
ern hemisphere.
Whatever the reasons — their reli-
gious beliefs, whispers about polyg-
amy, or the prosperity that seemed to
follow their hard-working families —
the Mormons couldn't seem to get
along with their neighbors. Persecu-
tion forced the main body of the
church from Palmyra to Kirtland, Ohio,
and then across Ohio and Illinois to In-
dependence, Mo., and its surrounding
area.
Finally the church fled to Com-
merce, III., a small swampland village
on the banks of the Missisippi. Renam-
ing the town Nauvoo, the Mormons
built it into the showplace of the river
and, with 12,000 people, made it the
largest city in Illinois.
i'fife.
34
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 62, Number 1, January-February 1974, periodical, January 1974; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353642/m1/34/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.