The Know

For Latter-day Saints, Pioneer Day commemorates July 24, 1847, the day when President Brigham Young, who was part of the first pioneer wagon companies, arrived at and looked out over the expansive Great Salt Lake Valley, declaring something like, “This is the right place.”1 While little was known about the desolate Great Basin at that time, early members of the Church knew that Joseph Smith had spoken prophetically to them on several occasions about gathering, principally and crucially, in the Rocky Mountains.2 Going to the Rocky Mountains had become “a settled belief, repeated several times,” beginning earlier in Church history than has usually been recognized.3

As early as February 15, 1831, the US Superintendent of Indian Affairs was informed that some Latter-day Saints in Delaware intended to apply “for permission to go among the Indians; if you refuse, then they will go to the Rocky Mountains,” for where federal permission was not needed because it was then part of Mexico.4 The Saints were already seeking several ways to take the Book of Mormon to the Native Americans, who were understood to be descendants of the Lamanites.

Additionally, on April 11, 1831, Thomas B. Marsh and his wife Eliza wrote to Lewis and Ann Abbott that the Saints were planning to assemble in Ohio:

There our heavenly Father will tell us what we shall next do; perhaps it will be to take our march to the Grand River in the Missouri territory or to the shining mountains which [are] 1500 or 2000 miles west from us. How soon it will be we do not know. In fact, we know nothing of what we are to do until it be revealed to us. But this we know; a City will be built in the promised land, and into it will the descendants of Joseph who was sold into Egypt be gathered.5

Then, on May 7, 1831, Joseph Smith prophesied in Kirtland that “Zion shall flourish upon the hills and rejoice upon the mountains, and shall be assembled together unto the place which I have appointed” (Doctrine and Covenants 49:25). Likewise, on November 3, 1831, Joseph prophesied about gathering the inhabitants of the earth unto Zion, “in the barren deserts” within “the boundaries of the everlasting hills,” where they would be “filled with songs of everlasting joy” (Doctrine and Covenants 133:29, 31, 33).

Wilford Woodruff later reported that in April 1834, Joseph prophesied about “filling the Rocky Mountains with the Saints of God.”6 At the St. George Stake conference on June 12–13, 1892, Woodruff recalled meeting Joseph Smith for the first time in April 1834, when the Prophet said, “This work will fill the Rocky Mountains with tens of thousands of Lamanites who dwell in these mountains, who will receive the Gospel of Christ at the mouth of Elders of Israel, and they will be united with the Church and the kingdom of God, and bring forth much good.” President Woodruff then commented:

I little thought, when I listened to those words, that I should ever live to see the fulfilment of these words of the Prophet. I little thought that I should ever visit the Rocky Mountains, or ever see the Lamanites of whom he then was speaking. . . . But I have lived to see these days. I have lived to see the Lamanites in these mountains. . . . I have preached the Gospel to them, in connection with my brethren, through interpreters. I have spent many interesting days with these Lamanites in the mountains of Israel.7

On January 6, 1836, Lorenzo Dow Young (a brother of Brigham Young) became ill while finishing the exterior of the Kirtland Temple in freezing conditions. Two weeks later, when a doctor had given him little hope for recovery, Joseph Smith sent sixteen elders with specific instructions on how to administer to him. In that blessing, Hyrum Smith promised the faithful Lorenzo that he would “live to go with the Saints into the bosom of the Rocky Mountains to build up a place there,” which miraculously came to pass.8 Many people in Kirtland were aware of these powerful prophetic forecasts.

Sometime before 1844, the Prophet told Lorenzo Snow that he “anticipated moving to the Rocky Mountains with all his family.”9 And as Oliver B. Huntington recalled, Joseph Smith Sr. (who died in 1840) told him in his home in Nauvoo that the Lord had instructed his son, the Prophet, “that we would stay there just 7 years and that when we left there we would go right into the midst of the Indians, in the Rocky Mountains.”10 That seven-year prophecy was, in fact, fulfilled in 1847.

On July 2, 1842, Oliver H. Olney recorded in his journal that some Church members were forming a company “to go as far west as the Rocky mountains and that without delay. . . . They say that they must go where there is no law to baffle them in their doings.” Five days later, Olney added that this move west would be for the protection of religious freedoms so the Church could “raise up a Righeous branch somewhere near the Rocky Mountains in the far west, where no law can touch you or hinder you on the way.”11 Also in 1842, Joseph Smith “stated many things concerning our “going to the mountains. He said we should go and build many cities and we should become a mighty people in the midst of the mountains and should perform a work that will astonish the nations of the earth,” as Anson Call recorded twelve years later.12

Early in 1844, in his presidential campaign literature, Joseph strongly endorsed the westward expansion of the United States:

When the people petitioned to possess the territory of Oregon, or any other contiguous territory, I would lend the influence of a chief magistrate to grant so reasonable a request, that they might extend the mighty efforts and enterprise of a free people from the east to the west sea, and make the wilderness blossom as the rose; and when a neighboring realm petitioned to join the union of the sons of liberty, my voice would be, come: yea come Texas: come Mexico; come Canada; and come all the world—let us be brethren: let us be one great family; and let there be universal peace.13

Then on June 22, 1844, five days before Joseph was murdered, he said in his final goodbye to the Saints in Nauvoo: “You will gather many people into the fastness of the Rocky Mountains as a center for the gathering of the people.”14 Wherever else the Saints were settling—in Missouri, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, England, Scotland—a central stake of Zion was to be established in the heart of the Rockies.

On March 3, 1861, Brigham Young affirmed that “hundreds of people in this house are my witnesses, who heard Joseph [Smith] say, when asked whether we should ever have to leave Nauvoo, ‘The Saints will leave Nauvoo. I do not say they will be driven, as they were from Jackson County, Missouri, and from that State; but they will leave here and go to the mountains.’”15

On August 9, 1846, Brigham confided to Wilford Woodruff that “he had not expected to see the Rocky Mountains this year, but when the Lord commanded him to go direct, he intended to go, [even] if he left all and went alone; but [that] he thought the Lord would let him take the people with him and [that] when He found the place for the temple he would work hard until it was built. He said [that] the Lord, revelation, [and] a vision was with him.”16 On January 14, 1847, Brigham Young sent back from Winter Quarters wise instructions based on the will of the Lord, guiding the Saints in successfully moving forward to reach Zion (see Doctrine and Covenants 136).

Lastly, on February 17, 1847, the deceased Prophet Joseph Smith appeared to Brigham Young in a dream as the first pioneer companies were preparing to leave Winter Quarters on the Iowa–Nebraska border and begin moving up the trail into the Rocky Mountains. In the dream, Joseph instructed Brigham,

Tell the people to be humble and faithful, and be sure to keep the Spirit of the Lord, and it will lead them right; . . . it will whisper peace and joy to their souls; it will take malice, hatred, envying, strife, and all evil from their hearts; and their whole desire will be to do good, bring forth righteousness and build up the kingdom of God.17

The Why

In the following years, enthusiastic crowds celebrated Pioneer Day on July 24 each year by gathering at the temple block in Salt Lake City to hear Church leaders speak . Those speakers gave many answers to the question of why the Saints had come to the Rocky Mountains: They had not come for political control, for land grabbing, or for the beautiful scenery. Instead, after they had accomplished the work in Nauvoo that Joseph had charged them to finish, they came to establish a central gathering place for the worldwide Zion.

Already on July 24, 1852, Elder George A. Smith articulated several of those reasons. He said they had come so that “they could lie down to rest in perfect peace—without being disturbed by the cruel hand of persecution.” They came to establish “institutions that insure freedom to all, liberty to every person—the liberty of conscience, as well as every privilege which can be desired by any citizens of this earth.” They came because they “were led by the hand of God, through His servant Brigham.” They came to “stand unflinchingly true by the Constitution of the United States.” They came “for Liberty and Truth, forever!”18

The next year, on July 24, 1853, President Brigham Young spoke at length about establishing the kingdom of God and welcoming all on earth, which he said was the reason the Saints came to gather in the Salt Lake Valley.19 He emphasized that they had come voluntarily. They chose to leave Nauvoo peaceably.

Then in celebrating Pioneer Day on July 24, 1854—the seventh anniversary of the Saints’ arrival to the Salt Lake Valley—two leaders spoke passionately on why the Saints had come. Daniel H. Wells spoke strongly about how they came “seeking a home . . . where they might rest . . . and feel secure from the wrath of [those] . . .  who had pursued and hunted them with relentless fury, and driven them from the abodes of civilization.” They came, he said, as “directed by the same God who led Moses and the children of Israel out from the land of Egypt.” They came, following their “beloved President at their head,” believing in “a wise and beneficent God” who has said it was His business and His “purpose to provide for [His] Saints.”20 George A. Smith also spoke about the first company coming “to prepare the way for a safe retreat from tyranny and oppression.”21

Having completed that seventh-year landmark, the Saints continued gathering on Pioneer Day to speak and testify about why they came to the mountains of Utah Territory. They continued to emphasize that they came because they had been commanded by God and led by God to do so and that they gathered out of obedience to their beloved Joseph Smith, who had pointed them toward the Rocky Mountains. They spoke emphatically that they came by the providence of God to find peace and safety and to protect their religious rights.

They also saw their coming as fulfilling biblical prophecy. Writing in 1853, Benjamin Brown explained that “the Bible distinctly depicted a great portion of the work of the last days as being on the mountains,” where an ensign (a clear banner of central solidarity) would be lifted to the nations. There, the Lord’s house would be built and “all nations flow unto it, that they may learn the ways of the God of Jacob, and walk in His paths.” All this ties into the fulfillment of Isaiah 33:16–17 and 35:1, which passages speak of the rocks as symbolizing the defense of the Saints, where they “dwell on high” and where God has caused “the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad for them, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.”22

For these reasons, the Saints sacrificed all they had to come to the Rocky Mountains and “find the place which God for us prepared, far away, in the west.”23