Mormon handcart pioneers set out for Salt Lake City - June 9th, 1856

On this day in 1856, nearly 500 members of the Latter-Day Saints set out for Salt Lake City, carrying everything they owned in two-wheeled handcarts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that blazes a trail through history, one day
at a time. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're looking
at one of the most grueling mass migrations in US history,

(00:21):
the time when hundreds of Mormon pioneers traveled westward on
foot in search of a better life. The day was
June nine, eighteen fifty six. Nearly five hundred members of
the Latter day Saints set out for Salt Lake City,

(00:42):
carrying all their supplies in two wheeled hand carts. Many
of these religious settlers, commonly known as Mormons, were European
members of the Church who had immigrated to the US
from England, Wales, Scotland, and Scandinavia. Although they had come
from different backgrounds and spoke different languages, they all left

(01:05):
Iowa City together with the common goal of reaching the
Church's American members in present day Utah. In the nineteenth century,
hundreds of thousands of people headed west along the Oregon
Trail and its offshoots, but few had a more difficult
journey than the so called handcart pioneers. Nine years earlier,

(01:27):
In eighteen forty seven, the first Mormon settlers made the
trek to Utah from Illinois, Missouri, New York, and Ohio.
They founded Salt Lake City as a kind of sanctuary,
a place where members of the church could find refuge
from the religious persecution they frequently faced back east. Within
a few years, most Mormons in the United States moved

(01:50):
west to Utah, at which point the church turned its
attention to welcoming converts from Europe. At the time, Iowa
City was about as far away best as you could
get by railroad. The rest of the journey, whether you
were headed for Oregon, Utah, or beyond, had to be
made with wagons and oxen. The church generally paid the

(02:11):
way for members who sought to reach Utah, but in
eighteen fifty six a string of bad harvests had all
but wiped out the travel fund. There were four hundred
and ninety seven Mormon settlers hoping to make the trek
that year, but the church couldn't afford to provide ox
drawn wagons for all of them. The solution came from

(02:32):
church leader Brigham Young, who suggested quote let them come
on foot with hand carts or wheelbarrows. Let them gird
up their loins and walk through, and nothing shall hinder
or stay them. It was sound advice financially speaking, as
the carts were much cheaper than wagons and oxen, but

(02:53):
the idea that nothing would hinder them along the way
was a bit too optimistic. None the lefts. On June nine,
eighteen fifty six, several hand cart companies left Iowa City
and began the more than one thousand mile journey to
Salt Lake City. There were about one hundred two wheeled

(03:13):
hand carts used in that year's crossing. They were three
ft wide, five ft long, and fairly shallow. They resembled
the luggage carts used in big cities at the time,
but if you've ever seen a rickshaw, that might be
a more familiar comparison. Basically, though, you would grip the
long poles at the front of the cart and pull

(03:34):
it along behind you as you faced forward. Each family
had its own cart, which was pulled by one or
two people, while other family members pushed from behind or
else just walked alongside it. The space inside the carts
wagon bed was reserved for the families provisions, supplies, and
personal belongings. Each cart could carry a maximum load of

(03:57):
four hundred to five hundred pounds, and most families used
every ounce of that capacity. There were a few ox
drawn wagons in each company as well, say one for
every twenty carts, but those were only used to carry tents,
emergency food, and anyone too young, old, or sick to
make the trip on foot. As you might imagine, hauling

(04:21):
of five hundred pound hand card across rugged plains and
over rocky mountains was an incredibly arduous task. One Mormon
pioneer even referred to the carts as quote two wheeled
torture devices. Part of the problem was how the carts
had been constructed with only meager funds provided by the Church.

(04:42):
Most of the hand card immigrants had built their rigs
themselves right there in Iowa City, and to stretch that
money as far as it would go, the craftsmen had
decided to use axles made of hickory wood instead of iron.
This worked well enough at first, but over time water
and heat caused the wooden axles to swell, splinter, and crack,

(05:05):
forcing some of the travelers to abandon their carts altogether
and move on with only what they could carry. Some
of the pioneers gave up along the way, but the
majority struggled on and eventually made it a Salt Lake City.
Their experience proved the handcart venture could work, and over
the next four years, roughly twenty hundred more Mormon converts

(05:28):
made the journey with overloaded hand carts. Lessons from the
first groups, like the need for iron axles, made the
trips somewhat easier for later pioneers. In fact, some actually
reached Salt Lake City faster than if they had traveled
by ox strawn wagons. That said, some groups had a
much harder time than others. For example, the Willie and

(05:51):
Martin handcart companies lost at least a quarter of their
one thousand members after being caught in a blizzard in
present day Wyoming. It's no surprise, then, that once the
church was back on its feet, Mormon converts returned to
using ox strawn wagons. All told, about sixty thousand Latter
day Saint emigrants travel to Utah before the completion of

(06:14):
the Union Pacific Railroad in eighteen sixty nine. Of that number,
only about five percent made the trek using hand carts. Nonetheless,
the image of a pioneer family pushing and pulling a
heavy wooden cart has become an important symbol in Mormon
culture two members. It represents the power of faithfulness and

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how it can enable believers to endure and ultimately overcome
life's challenges. But even for those outside the church, the
hand cart pioneers are still a testament to the strength
and perseverance of the human spirit. If we believe that
somewhere out there a better life is waiting for ourselves
and our families, then most of us are going to

(06:56):
take that trip, even if we have to walk over
a millions steps to get there. I'm Gabe Bluesier and
hopefully you now know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. You can learn even more about
history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at

(07:18):
p d I HC Show, and if you have any
comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way
at this Day at I heart Media dot com. Special
thanks to guest producers Joey Patt and Casey Pegrum, and
thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another Day in History Class