Handcart Pioneers as Depicted in the Kearney Archway

 The Mormon Handcart Expeditions

"Let them come on foot with handcarts or wheelbarrows; let them gird up their loins and walk through and nothing shall hinder them." Brigham Youmg, Mormon leader

Of all the group heading across the Great Platte River Road, none was as well organized as the Mormons.

But in 1856, two companies of European Mormon immigrants ran into trouble when they decided--against experienced advice--to leave Iowa CIty for Utah in the late summer.  Unable to afford covered wagons, they piled their meager possessions into handcarts and began walking the 1,400 miles to Salt Lake CIty.  Deadly fall blizzards soon trapped them in Wyoming's Sweetwater Valley.

In Salt Lake CIty, Brigham Young dispatched volunteers who rescued over 800 of the 1,076 immigrants who had left Iowa.