Handcart Pioneers

LDS History > Handcart Pioneers

Handcart Companies
Between 1856 and 1860 nearly 3,000 emigrants from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined ten handcart companies--about 650 handcarts total--and walked to Utah from Iowa City, Iowa, (a distance of 1,300 miles) or from Florence, Nebraska (1,030 miles). Among these courageous handcart pioneers were cobblers, factory workers, farmers, fisherman, and aristocrats. Swiss, Danish, Scottish, Norwegian, Welsh, and English immigrants; they often didn’t share the same language. However they did share the same desire, to reach the Rocky Mountains and live among the members of their newfound church. This was, according to historian LeRoy Hafen, "the most remarkable travel experiment in the history of Western America."

Many families have a tradition that their ancestry came to Utah in a handcart company. These and others came overland between 1847 and 1868.

Google Books

 * The Divine Handcart Plan
 * Handcarts to Zion
 * Painters of the Wasatch Mountains
 * The Rocky Mountain Saints

Articles

 * 1848-1868 Companies
 * Martin Company: Mormon Pioneers Used Handcarts to Trek to Salt Lake City
 * Pioneer Voices
 * Some Must Push and Some Must Pull
 * They Came By Handcart
 * They Walked 1,300 Miles