Church historic sites - particularly the Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters now being completed near Omaha, Neb. - "are our witness to God and to each other as Church members and to non-members that we remember" and are motivations toward righteousness, Marjorie Conder said at the Sons of Utah Pioneers symposium Nov. 16.
Sister Conder, a curator at the Museum of Church History and Artin Salt Lake City, heads a committee establishing exhibits at the new Winter Quarters center. The new Church visitors facility will open shortly and will be dedicated April 16.
She detailed for symposium-goers the exhibit at the Winter Quarters site, which she said is unique because it commemorates not just one event, but an entire epoch.
"At this site, we are celebrating the entire 19th Century gathering experience. And in the 19th Century, gathering was a test of your faith and fellowship," she noted.
The exhibit is bracketed time-wise by the years 1846 and 1890, "which was the period of formal gathering," she said. Location-wise, it is bracketed by Nauvoo and Salt Lake City.
"The title [of the exhibit] is `Zion in the Wilderness,' and the wilderness in this context is not a place without other people," she explained. "For Latter-day Saints, it is a wilderness if there is not a temple and the opportunity to make covenants with God. . . . In a broader sense, I think that our whole lives are journeys in the wilderness. I think we enter a wilderness the day we are born, and we hope someday to return to our heavenly home. Meanwhile, we have stories inside of stories. Even at the Mormon Trail Center, we have stories inside of stories of this Zion in the wilderness. There is a leaving, there is a wilderness, there is a return, and that is the basic story that we are celebrating in this exhibit."
As one enters the Mormon Trail Center, "dead ahead of you is a 15-foot model of the Nauvoo Temple. It's about an 18-inch-deep facade,"she said. The Nauvoo chapter in Church history is told briefly, as is the Iowa crossing. A 12-foot map of a portion of Iowa shows the Mormon Trail with its variants.
A Mormon Battalion soldier is represented by a mannequin dressed as a battalion member might have been - not in a uniform. Sister Conder said research shows only one man wore a full-regalia uniform and he was regarded by the others as rather arrogant.
William Clayton's writing of "Come, Come, Ye Saints" is celebrated with a display of recorded audio in which Clayton is depicted, with a British accent, telling the story of the writing of the hymn and then singing the first verse.
The second major portion of the exhibit, "At the Bluffs," depicts the more than 90 communities identified around Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Winter Quarters, Neb., that were originally settled by Latter-day Saints. "Many of them have been abandoned; some are still ongoing communities today," Sister Conder said. "You can push a button and see them all light up on a map."
The reorganization of the First Presidency at Kanesville, Iowa, is depicted, and the Frontier Guardian, the area's first newspaper, published by Elder Orson Hyde, is shown with an advertisement proclaiming, "Pottawattamie County for Sale - the Mormons are Leaving," Sister Conder said.
Up to that point the exhibit is chronological, but then the next section discusses "The Gathering," and depicts a wagon, handcart, and various modes of transportation that Church members used to get to Zion in the Rocky Mountains, including steamboat and railroad.
Sister Conder said working on the exhibit gave her "one of those epiphany moments" when one realizes that one's focus has been misdirected. Perhaps by remembering the suffering and death that occurred among the Saints in their gathering, it is easy to miss the remarkable fact that most survived, more than might reasonably be expected given the conditions, she explained.
"They came through in relative safety and relative peace. I think we have downplayed some of that, because there isn't a lot of drama in just being obedient and you make it. . . . In following the prophet, in cooperating, in learning and serving each other there was safety and there was peace, and I think it's high time that we told that story."
