Going the Extra Mile to Protect History While Visiting It

A perpetual wind blows across this horseshoe of granite boulders, where as many as 45 Mormon pioneers perished in a snowstorm more than a century ago.

Not far away, the open prairie is crisscrossed by ghostly ruts--a few inches deep and wide--left by steel-rimmed wagon wheels during one of the greatest waves of migration in U.S. history.

“Those people were tough,” said U.S. Bureau of Land Management district manager Kurt Kotter. “They were headed for Salt Lake City, and nothing would dissuade them.”

By the time the celebration is over, as many as 1 million Mormons--many of them clad in leather chaps or bonnets and shawls--will have relived at least part of the 1,300-mile journey taken by Brigham Young and his flock of 80,000 followers.

In one of the largest celebrations ever staged by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sesquicentennial events will be held across the nation beginning this Thursday through July 22 in honor of those who made the trek that began in 1847.

Among the myriad events planned: A train of wagons drawn by horses and mules will follow the old Mormon trail, where possible, from Omaha to Salt Lake City.

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But few places along the path over the Continental Divide are expected to attract as much attention and as many visitors as Martin’s Cove--a lonely, pristine spot 60 miles from the nearest town in the heart of the nation’s least populated state.

Federal land managers have their work cut out for them in preparing for the onslaught facing this untrammeled landscape, where the most numerous residents are cows and deer.

Admiring a granite slab into which the pioneers had carved their names, Kotter said: “Our biggest concern is protecting the resources while allowing people to connect with the physical challenges faced by the pioneers.

“Nobody wants to see these places loved to death.”

Under an unusual cooperative agreement, the bureau and the church have designed footpaths, retaining walls and interpretive signs to control and inform throngs in the cove.

The church also has contracted to buy an adjacent ranch, where volunteers are putting finishing touches on a shrine/museum near a portion of the Mormon trail that still looks as it did when Young and his followers passed through.

On May 3, church President Gordon B. Hinckley will dedicate the center, built to educate and edify visitors about the original trek and the group of pioneers suffering from hunger and hypothermia who sought shelter here during a severe snowstorm.

On dedication day in Martin’s Cove, which had been off limits to the public for more than 100 years, thousands of people will be invited to walk along a two-mile gravel road leading from the museum to a narrow passage between the cove’s dun-colored sand dune and massive boulders.

To enhance the experience, hundreds of visitors will be renting--and then pulling--oak handcarts built by church volunteers.

“So far, about 10,000 people have signed up for handcarts and to camp on the prairie at the church visitor center in June, July and August,” said Louise Johnson, a spokeswoman for the church.

“I’ve been warning people that it’s going to be hot and full of mosquitoes and rattlesnakes here this summer--but that doesn’t scare them one bit,” she added. “They say, ‘Mosquitoes? Great! Snakes? Wow! Hot? Wonderful! Can’t wait!’ ”

Just down the road, the owner of the only store for miles around is preparing to stock her shelves with sarsaparilla, sandwiches and “Mormon Trail” T-shirts. She also has applied for a permit to let hundreds of people sleep under the stars behind her business.

“If there’s money to be made in all this, I aim to make it,” said Teressa Norton, who bought the Muddy Gap service station about three years ago. “I also have two flush toilets. Suppose I ought to cash in on them?”

This always has been a crossroads of commerce. A stone’s throw from her tiny store is a braid of historic trails used at various times by American Indians, fur traders, Oregon-bound home-seekers, sourdoughs on their way to California and Pony Express riders.

Now, the trails are being remembered for conveying Mormons to Utah--in wagons and on foot--for three decades.

In an experiment with tragic consequences, an estimated 3,000 destitute converts from England chose to walk to their “New Zion” pulling handcarts brimming with their provisions and possessions.

Of those, about 250 died along the way. Among them were the men, women and children in the Martin handcart company who were pummeled by heavy snowfall here in 1856.

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As the person in charge of writing the Martin’s Cove interpretive signs, historian Lyndia Carter has faced the difficult task of satisfying both the Bureau of Land Management and the Church of Latter-day Saints.

“I feel like a fulcrum on a seesaw,” Carter said. “The BLM needs historical documentation to show this is not just a religious experience or folksy Western Americana,” she said. “On the other hand, the LDS church is not happy that the signs are not more religious than they are.”

But as someone who has enjoyed the cove’s solemnity, she has no intention of returning this summer.

“Here is a beautiful pristine part of the trail that has survived like no place else,” she said. “Put several thousand people on it and there won’t be anything left to adore.”

John Creer, who helped design and build the church’s visitor center, agrees--to a point.

“We don’t want the environment to take a licking,” he said. “If we start to overdose with people, we’ll put up a sign that says, ‘Full. Stay out.’ ”