A new visitors center in Omaha, Neb., that will tell the story of the Latter-day Saint exodus from Navuoo, Ill., the founding of temporary settlements in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska and the overland journey to Utah, has been announced by the First Presidency.
The Mormon Trail Center will be constructed across the street from the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery in the area known historically as Winter Quarters.The center "will offer visitors a glimpse of the faith and courage of early Latter-day Saints who left their comfortable homes and sacred temple in Nauvoo," said Elder Stephen D. Nadauld of the Seventy. "In the face of great obstacles, they journeyed to a place of refuge in Utah, where they built homes and a new temple to worship God."
Elder Nadauld, executive director of the Church Historical Department and chairman of the Sites Committee, added, "The site for the new center is particularly appropriate since the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery is nearly all that remains of the Latter-day Saint settlements in the area that served as way stations for these pioneers."
Planned for completion by spring of 1997 in time for the Church's Pioneer Sesquicentennial, the center will have 7,000 square feet of exhibit space. It will be a contrast to the current visitors center which is in a remodeled house. That facility will be closed Aug. 1, and a trailer will be located there to accommodate visitors during construction of the new building.
Research and planning for exhibits, under the general direction of the Church Historic Sites Committee, will be carried on as the building is under construction.
Exhibit curator Marjorie Conder said that in addition to Winter Quarters, more than 80 other Latter-day Saint settlements were established along the Missouri River between 1846 and 1852.
"Thousands of Latter-day Saints briefly stopped in these settlements on their journey to Zion, yet we have found very few artifacts clearly connected to these settlements," she noted. "There must be hundreds of such objects tucked away in basements or garages that would help bring the story alive for visitors to the Mormon Trail Center."
She said two photographers advertised in Kanesville while the Latter-day Saints were there, "but we have not been able to find any historic images taken in Kanesville during that period, and we'd love to find a few examples."
The exhibit team is appealing to interested parties to provide artifacts of all kinds, including historic documents and photographs. The planners are also interested in artifacts carried to Utah by LDS emigrants between 1847 and 1890.
They may contact her by calling (801)240-4649 or by writing to the Museum of Church History and Art, 45 N. West Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.
Sister Conder said a working title for the exhibit is "Zion in the Wilderness: from a Temple City to a Temple City." The curator explained that the wilderness for Latter-day Saint emigrants did not necessarily mean an uninhabited place or a place without civilization, "Rather it was a spiritual wilderness, because there was no temple with its blessings and covenants."
The epic story told by the exhibit, she said, will span over 40 years, starting with the Saints who left their temple city of Nauvoo, Ill., and journeyed through the wilderness to the valleys of the Great Basin.
A section, planned to be called "Preview to an American Exodus" will give a sense of who the Latter-day Saints were in Nauvoo and why they left.
Another section will tell of the trek across Iowa and recount stories of Indian relations, the Mormon Battalion, the writing of "Come, Come Ye Saints," and the way stations at Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah.
"We did have a mandate to deal with issues of death and dying," Sister Conder said, "because we are located, after all, across the street from a cemetery. We will discuss why so many were sick, what they actually died of, the concepts of bearing each others' burdens and a belief in the resurrection."
She said the exhibit will include a full-size reconstruction of a log cabin and a settlement map of the entire area. Plans also call for a detailed map of Winter Quarters.
"We plan to deal with the Camp of Israel of the 1847 trek and the reorganization of the First Presidency," she said.
"We found an interesting news article from Council Bluffs, with the headline: `Pottawattamie County for Sale; the Mormons are Leaving.' "
Next, she said, the exhibit will talk about the gathering to the Rocky Mountains.
"What many don't realize," she noted, "is that more emigrants made at least some part of their journey by train than any other single method of transportation, including wagons. Except for those very first people right out of Nauvoo, virtually everybody else made some part of the journey by rail car."
It stands to reason, she said, because it would have been common sense to ride the train to the "jumping off point" where the railroad ended, before continuing the journey by wagon or on foot. Thus part of the exhibit will show various modes of transportation, including a loaded handcart and a suggestion of a rail car.
A section, she said, will discuss motivations for the gathering, that they were spiritual rather than economic: The people desired to establish Zion, not necessarily gain land or grow rich.
"We will have a little theater," Sister Conder explained, "where we tell people-oriented stories about the immigration."
The exhibit ends with a floor-to-ceiling representation of the Salt Lake Temple, supporting the theme and echoing the title panel, which will be a 14-foot representation of Nauvoo.
"These images make absolutely explicit that this was a journey not just in time and space, but a journey of hearts and minds from a temple city to a temple city," Sister Conder said. "For Latter-day Saints, it was only in establishing communities based upon Christ-centered covenants that the wilderness could be left behind. Temple blessings as covenants bind heaven and earth together and are at the core of LDS beliefs of the Restoration."
