Treks Damage Pioneer Trail

The wagon wheel ruts are still visible in places, even after 150 years. They mark the struggles of thousands of pioneers who settled the West.

Although they are well off modern highways, these parallel grooves in the sand and clay are attracting tens of thousands of pioneers from around the world who seek to relive the experiences of their ancestors.

But the new trekkers -- mostly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- are endangering parts of the original trail as they make their own tracks.

Some areas of the trail started “looking more like a road than a historic trail,” said Jack Kelly, manager of the Bureau of Land Management office in Lander, Wyo.

In a mutual desire to protect the trail, the BLM and the LDS church agreed to curtail the church-sponsored journeys -- but not do away with them altogether.

This summer’s first wave of church trekkers started out Wednesday. Over a 28-mile stretch of the Mormon and Oregon pioneer trails, they walk or pull handcarts modeled after ones that Mormon pioneers hauled over the trail from 1846 to 1869.

“We’re lucky in Wyoming because so much of the trail is intact,” said Lloyd Larsen, president of the Mormon church in Riverton. “We’ve seen just a huge increase in interest over the last 10 years. I think people are intrigued by the past. If you understand the past, it gives you some direction for the future.”

The original Mormon trail extended 1,300 miles over five states, beginning in Nauvoo, Ill., and traversing Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and into Utah. Faced with religious and political violence in Illinois, including the shooting death of church founder Joseph Smith, some 70,000 Mormons led by Brigham Young migrated West to settle in the Salt Lake Valley.

The exodus occurred before the Transcontinental Railroad was built. Some traveled by wagon train. Those who couldn’t afford that built wooden, two-wheeled handcarts that held food, cooking utensils, clothing, a tent and bedding.

In Wyoming, the Mormon trail enters in the southeast part of the state, heads northwest to Casper and then southwest to Utah.

Along the way are such landmarks as the Mormon Ferry, built by the first group of emigrants led by Young; Independence Rock, on which the names of pioneers are still clearly engraved; Devil’s Gate, a unique narrow passage, and Martin’s Cove, where more than 100 Mormon pioneers died after being caught in a fierce snowstorm in October 1856.

“It’s just an intriguing saga this country has been blessed with,” Larsen said.

For more than a century, the historic pioneer trails traversing Wyoming -- the Mormon, Oregon, Bozeman and California -- got little notice from tourists.

But interest started to grow after local LDS church members decided to commemorate the story of the pioneers in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the church’s move West in 1847. They researched the pioneers, documented their stories and started the handcart trek.

“As groups have come and experienced that, it just spread word-of-mouth,” Larsen said.

By 2002, the number of people making the trek had reached 12,000. Local church members invested time and money to provide water, camping facilities and other improvements.

The trek starts at Sixth Crossing -- a pioneer crossing point on the Sweetwater River in south-central Wyoming -- and snakes over a hilly landscape. It climbs the jagged limestone of Rocky Ridge, then descends to Rock Creek, where there is a cemetery for 15 Mormon pioneers who died in a snowstorm.

“The first time was difficult. You don’t really expect it to be so rocky and rugged. And the weather is constantly changing up there,” said Eli Zent, 18, of Shoshoni, who has done the handcart trek three times -- the first time when he was 12.

But with the number of trekkers growing so quickly, the treks began to take a toll on the old trail.

The BLM, which owns most of the land over which the trek traverses, decided to limit the number of church trekkers to 7,500 this year and 5,000 in 2006, and will ban motorized vehicles from one two-mile section. In addition, organized church treks will be limited to 200 people at a time and to weekdays, so the general public can visit the trail on weekends.

Kelly said the BLM would continue to study the trail to see if it needs to adjust the numbers later.

Larsen said the church supports the BLM’s decision because it wants the trail preserved. Church-sponsored treks are booked through 2008 under the limits.