“The Way It Looks Today,” Tambuli, June–July 1985, 35
The Way It Looks Today
A Camera Tour of Church History Sites in Illinois and on the Trail West
In the third and final part of this photographic essay on Church-related historical sites, we look at samples of the fine Nauvoo, Illinois, dwellings and buildings—many of which have been restored—that the persecuted Saints left behind as they set out across the seemingly endless plains to seek refuge in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Photographs are by Eldon Linschoten and Jed Clark.
The Jonathan Browning house and workshop, Nauvoo. Browning invented one of the earliest repeating rifles, his son, John Moses Browning, who settled in Ogden, Utah, invented the automatic machine gun.
First floor of Carthage Jail where the prisoners spent their first night.
Looking west down Mexican Hill on the Platte River near Guernsey, Wyoming. The trail through the rock was so steep the pioneers claimed that if a cup fell out of the wagon on the way down, it would land in front of the oxen.
Five miles west of Fort Laramie, Wyoming, the 10,000 foot high Laramie Peak marked the beginning of the western mountains.
Heber Springs near Horse Shoe Creek west of Glendo, Wyoming. Its lush green meadows were a favorite camping ground for the Saints. The springs were named after Heber C. Kimball, a superb horseman and frequently a scout, who was the first Latter-day Saint to come upon them.
Walking up Deer Creek, near Glenrock, Wyoming, in September 1847, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and a few others returning from the Salt Lake Valley to Winter Quarters, flushed a mother grizzly bear and escaped her charge only by clambering up these rocky cliffs.
Independence Rock, looking west. At this famous camping site in Wyoming, Latter-day Saint children climbed the rock’s sides and many adults carved or painted their initials on it.
The Salt Lake Valley as it looks today with a growing Salt Lake City nestled between the mountains.