Jul 10, 2025 This is the Place: A Utah Pioneer Reading List

“This is the right place, drive on.”
— Brigham Young (July 24, 1847)

On the morning of July 24,1847 Brigham Young and his company of one hundred and forty eight pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley through Emigration Canyon before determining it would be the place that the growing Latter-day Saint community would settle. Young’s followers continued to emigrate to the territory via foot and carriage until the US Transcontinental Railroad was completed more than two decades later, in 1869.

One hundred and seventy eight years later the state of Utah largely recognizes the 24th of July as a day of celebration. Some eat pie and drink beer while others honor their ancestors who crossed the plains with parades and picnics. Regardless of how you might celebrate, the day is a welcome excuse for relaxation and jubilee across the state.

But before we recline our camping chairs and pull out the cooler, it’s important to remember that the story of the Mormon Pioneers and their arrival in the Utah Valley was a turbulent one, where persecution and pain permeated. As the Latter-day Saints sought religious freedom in the Rocky Mountain west, they displaced the land’s indigenous inhabitants including the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, and Shoshone Nations — the territory’s native stewards and protectors.

Needless to say, the path to creating a diverse, inclusive, and integrated Utah has not been smooth nor straight. Rather, our route has much more in common with the mountainous trails that have been cleared throughout the Wasatch range: rocky, steep, and in constant need of care. The materials highlighted below come from the University of Utah’s Rare Book Collection and aim to reflect that rugged and continuing trail.

A Circular from a Council of the Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, September 24, 1845
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Nauvoo, IL: 1845
BX8607 A33 1845

Written on September 24, 1845, this untitled circular is the first piece of printed evidence within the collection that notes the Latter-day Saint community’s decision to leave Nauvoo and emigrate west. Many places were proposed, such as California and Oregon, as well as the valley of the Great Salt Lake. At this point, nothing was confirmed, but the Salt Lake Valley was noted for its isolation and large area for growth. The document explicitly brings attention to the discrimination and prejudice the LDS community faced in the months and years leading up to their pilgrimage. It is important not only because it might very well be the first piece of printed material detailing the Pioneers’ intent to move west, but also because it very clearly depicts the general tone and attitude of the Latter-day Saints upon their emigration to the West. The language of the document unequivocally implies that the Saints, at the time of the writing, assumed the position of the victim in their quest for religious freedom.

A Circular, of the High Council, January 20, 1846
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Nauvoo, IL: 1846
BX8607 A33 1846

Similar to the document above, but released nearly four months later, this broadside follows up the one above with its announcement that the move would be to somewhere in the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains. Up until this point, many members planning on leaving were not clear on where the location would be.

The Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide
William Clayton (1814-1879)
St. Louis, MO: Republican Steam Power Press–Chambers & Knapp, 1848
F593 C612 1848

Written by William Clayton, one of the original pioneer company members of 1847, The Latter-day Saints Emigrants Guide was published in St. Louis, Missouri in 1848. After staying in the Salt Lake Valley for the summer of 1847 he returned to Winter Quarters in the fall and compiled this “Emigrants’ guide” from entries made in his detailed diary. The guide is the best of its time for the Mormon route and includes numerous pieces of valuable information to emigrants. It lists the names and occasional locations (latitudes in degrees, minutes, and seconds, provided by Orson Pratt) of prominent points, the distances in miles between the points listed, the distance from Winter Quarters, and the distances from Great Salt Lake City. So the emigrant reading this guide always knew how far he had come, how far to the next campsite, and how far it was to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The distances were calculated with an odometer, sometimes called a roadometer, which was designed by Orson Pratt and constructed by Appleton Harmon during the journey. Periodically, Clayton gives altitude figures also provided by Pratt. The little booklet was originally issued in a blank salmon colored paper cover, few of which have survived because of the constant use they surely received on the trail.

Map of a Reconnaissance between Fort Leavenworth… and the Great Salt Lake in the Territory Of Utah, made in 1849 and 1850
United States. Army. Corps of Topographical Engineer
G4050 1850 U5

This map was created by Howard Stansbury during his famous Stansbury Expedition. He left Fort Leavenworth and went to Fort Kearny, where he met up with the Mormon Trail. This map closely follows the Mormon Trail out of Nauvoo, which begins at Bellevue and follows the North Platte River. It is one of the earliest complete maps of this trail, and was likely used by many to arrive to Salt Lake City. Stansbury also remarks a “favourable impression” of the Mormons.

Scrapbooks of Clippings from New York Daily Tribune covering the Expedition in 1857-1858
Albert G. Browne Jr.
F826 N49

With the rise of industrial printing, a new attitude surrounding the printed word began to take shape. No longer was printed material rare, expensive, and scarce, but rather ubiquitous, cheap, and everywhere you looked. This dramatic shift was overwhelming and forced people to find a way to make seemingly fleeting information permanent. Hence, the scrapbook. Unlike our modern conception of a scrapbook as a place to store family photos, memories, and other ephemera, the nineteenth-century scrapbook was used as a place to store printed material that stirred a personal interest for a particular individual. People spent time cutting out newspaper and magazine articles before pasting them in blank notebooks. The result was a curated collection of information that readers could turn back to time and time again — much like how we “save” or “pin” media we come across in our social media feeds today.

One such example in the Rare Books Collection is a scrapbook curated and compiled by Albert Gallatin Brown Jr., a war correspondent who covered the Utah War for The New York Daily Tribune. When Brown was twenty-five, he travelled west to Utah along with one third of the nation’s Army. The deployment was issued by President James Buchanan who was trying to assert governmental authority over the Latter-day Saints who were trying to declare independence from the nation. Each page of Brown’s scrapbook is filled with newspaper articles about the Utah Expedition. The first half of the book mainly consists of articles from the New York Daily Tribune, while the second half consists of letters written to the New York Daily Tribune from Camp Scott, a temporary military camp that served as the US Army’s winter quarters throughout the Utah War. Brown’s scrapbook offers incredible historical insight into the dynamic between the pioneers’ and the US government, offering modern readers another perspective surrounding the national impact of the Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

Report on the Subject of the massacre at the Mountain Meadows
James Carleton
Little Rock : True Democrat Steam press, 1860
F826 C3 1860

In the Fall after the Utah Expedition began in 1857, ten years after the pioneers arrived, the tragic Mountain Meadows Massacre took place. This special report was written by military officer James H. Carleton three years after the event took place. Carleton arrived in Utah in response to an order from the US army in 1859 to bury those killed at Mountain Meadows. Before leaving the Utah territory, Carleton buried the bones of thirty-four victims in a mass grave. He engraved the cemetery marker, a cross with the following words: “VENGEANCE IS MINE: I WILL REPAY SAITH THE LORD.” But Carleton’s involvement with Mountain Meadows did not end there. Instead, he spent time investigating the chilling event and collecting testimonies from witnesses and other sources before coming to the conclusion that the Mormon people played an active role in the massacre, with some even dressing up as members of the Paiute Nation in an effort to hide their involvement. Carleton’s report and investigation was paramount to the eventual discovery of this dark, painful, and cruel episode of Utah Pioneer history.

Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 1913
Frank Ellwood Esshom
Salt Lake City, Utah : Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company, 1913
F825 E78 1913

Published in 1913, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah is a rather comprehensive report of the LDS men who journeyed to Utah by foot, handcart, or wagon and settled in the valley between the years of 1847 and 1868. Compiled by Frank Ellwood Esshom, a Salt Lake City journalist at the turn of the century, the book contains the names, photographs, and brief biographies of nearly 6,000 individuals. Esshom and his team traveled from Oregon to Yellowstone National Park to Southern Utah, visiting every LDS congregation along the way. Esshom asked each bishop he met for the biographical information of every LDS pioneer (living or dead) who had been a member of that particular ward. The project was funded by the subscriptions of Utah Pioneer descendants who had paid for their family members to be included in the publication. Needless to say, this text offers a narrow and subjective overview of the people who developed, established, and cared for the state as the people who appear in this book are white, male members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within a very specific time period. That said, it does provide its readers with rich genealogical information and holds great historical value as a result.

“Fifty years ago today” : Salt Lake Tribune’s Jubilee Souvenir
Salt Lake City, UT: Salt Lake Tribune, 1897
F826.6 F55 1897

Written fifty years after the first group of Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, “Fifty Years Ago Today” was published by The Salt Lake Tribune between April 5, 1897 and July 24, 1897, relating the events that happened on those same days, fifty years earlier. Though it was composed over 15 years before the publication of Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (discussed above), The Salt Lake Tribune’s special issue is much more holistic and includes pioneer accounts from women and people of color who traveled alongside the more well-known men of the time period.

The tumultuous journey of the Mormon Pioneers is paramount to understanding the history of our state, but it is not the only one. Rather, as these texts have hopefully illustrated, Utah’s history is nuanced and complex. Let’s celebrate this year’s Pioneer day by looking towards the past to honor not just the Pioneers but also the histories of Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, and all the other voices who have contributed to Utah’s rich and diverse cultural history.

Though the Rare Books Collection at the University of Utah is not a traditional circulating library, we encourage students, researchers, and community patrons to visit us in Special Collections in order to engage with the materials mentioned in this post, or with others that might be of interest. To do so, please make an appointment here.

Contributed by Theadora Soter, Rare Books Assistant Curator
and Alexander Jolley, Rare Books Assistant

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