Mormon Trail

Route taken by Mormon migrants in the mid-1840s from Illinois to Utah. Moving from their original settlement at Nauvoo after a schism in the church sparked hostility and violence, Mormons under Brigham Young journeyed west to the Great Salt Lake, where they established Salt Lake City in July 1847.

The Mormon Trail led first across southern Iowa to Council Bluffs; nearby, at Florence (now a northern suburb of Omaha, Nebraska, the refugees set up winter quarters in the first year of migration (1846). The trail then ran west along the northern bank of the Platte River (parallel to the Oregon Trail on the southern bank). Continuing up the North Platte River into Wyoming, it ran with the Oregon Trail as far as Fort Bridger in the southwest, then proceeded southwest into Utah. Subsequently, Mormon migrants who planned to settle in southern California left Salt Lake City on a southwesterly route that joined the Spanish Trail to the Los Angeles area.