Who were the Mormon pioneers?
Mormon pioneers were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who left the Midwest beginning in 1846 and crossed the continent to gather in the Rocky Mountains. About 70,000 came to Utah between 1847 and 1869, as a Newsroom article records.
The Heritage Area focuses on the communities established after that migration while also interpreting the Native American and other histories of the region. The Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area is a Congressionally designated heritage area and is independent of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
They were forced out of Nauvoo. Residents had spent more than five years building that city when, in January 1845, the Illinois legislature revoked the charter. Tensions, political conflict, and violence against Latter-day Saints increased during the Nauvoo period. The governor told them to disperse from Nauvoo or leave the state. Church leaders ultimately organized a large-scale migration west from Illinois. Church histories describe the migration as both a flight from persecution and a religious gathering intended to establish Latter-day Saint communities in the West.
The Church’s Mormon Trails exhibit describes that gathering this way:
Beginning in 1846, tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints left homes, friends, and families and endured the rigors of travel by ship, wagon, handcart, and train to gather with fellow Saints in the Rocky Mountains of North America.
Brigham Young’s vanguard company left in April 1847 and reached the Great Salt Lake Valley that July. From 1856 to 1860, about 3,000 people in ten companies came by handcart. The Church gives that handcart figure on Remembering Handcart Pioneers in the Sweetwater Valley.
The 2009 MPNHA Management Plan describes how that gathering became colonization in the Sanpete and Sevier country:
Ute Chief Wakara, whom the Mormons called Chief Walker, invited Brigham Young to send Mormon settlers to the Sanpete Valley. In November 1849, a handpicked group of men, women, and children (originally hailing from New England, England, and Scandinavia) left Salt Lake City and traveled south. This group established the first Anglo settlement in the area of Manti. … As the number of settlers increased, families were encouraged to move farther south along the Sevier River, where Mormon-patterned communities were established, usually seven to ten miles apart.
The same plan describes the towns those families built. Villages followed a Church design that clustered homes instead of scattering them across open land. Town sites used a grid of 10-acre blocks. Pioneers were assigned a corner lot for a home, with gardens and orchards on the adjacent land, and a share of the community fields around the town for crops and livestock. The center was reserved for churches, schools, and public buildings. In that “City of Zion” layout, each community had a Main Street and a Center Street. The arrangement encouraged interdependence and mutual protection.
Those patterned towns sit along what is now Highway 89. That corridor is separate from the 1,300-mile Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley. For the trail itself, see Mormon Pioneer Trail. For the Utah settlement story, see The Mormon Colonization.
Watch Stories from Highway 89 on Discovery Road.
Pioneer settlement in the five districts
Five districts follow Highway 89. Each has a settlement story. Visitor detail is on Utah Pioneers and the districts list.
Little Denmark
Sanpete Valley holds twelve pioneer towns between the Sanpitch Mountains and the Wasatch Plateau. Manti, founded in 1849, was the first Sanpete settlement. Ephraim is the largest of those towns (Scandinavian Festival, Snow College). Spring City is listed in full on the National Register. Mount Pleasant is a Preserve America and National Main Street community. The Mormon Miracle Pageant, held at Temple Hill in Manti, ended in 2019. See Little Denmark.
Sevier Valley
Pioneer farms and towns followed the Sevier River. Salina was settled in 1864, abandoned during the Black Hawk War, and later rebuilt. Richfield grew as the valley’s farming center. Southern Sevier County also includes Fremont Indian State Park. See Sevier Valley.
Headwaters
Headwaters follows Highway 89 from the south end of Sevier County to Long Valley Junction. Marysvale, Circleville, and Junction are the pioneer towns along that stretch. Big Rock Candy Mountain stands a few miles north of Marysvale. See Headwaters.
Boulder Loop
Boulder, Escalante, and Torrey sit on Scenic Byways 12 and 24. Fruita, inside Capitol Reef National Park, was a Mormon farming settlement known for its orchards. See Boulder Loop.
Under the Rim
Kanab is the film-history town known as Little Hollywood. Orderville practiced a United Order, a common storehouse, from 1874 to 1886. Glendale and Mt. Carmel share Long Valley. Kane County is the entry to the Hole-in-the-Rock route. See Under the Rim.
How to visit
For towns you can visit along the corridor, see Utah Pioneers. Print the free Travel Planner, or use the Highway 89 road trip page for a day, three days, or a week. Common questions, including how this corridor differs from the historic trail, are on the FAQ.