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By Kent Larsen
Mormon Trek To San Bernardino Re-enactment Planned
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- The 800-mile trek from Salt Lake City to
San Bernardino by 437 Mormon colonists will be replicated this coming
summer as part of the commemoration of the founding of San
Bernardino. The little-known 1851 trek was taken at the instruction
of LDS Church president Brigham Young, who wanted to establish an
outpost to secure a Mormon supply line to the Pacific.
"This is a unique story in the history of the West, yet nobody knows
about it," said Marilyn Mills, co-director of the Heritage Trails
Celebration, who will take part in the planned trek. More than 200
LDS Church members dressed in pioneer clothing and traveling in
covered wagons will leave Salt Lake City on April 25th and travel to
San Bernardino through the deserts of southern Utah, Nevada and
California. They expect to arrive in San Bernardino at the end of
June. After they arrive, the organizers will hold a three-day
festival at Glen Helen Regional Park.
The organizers say this is an important part of Southern California
history also. "This was the first Anglo American settlement in
Southern California," said Nick Cataldo, a past president of the San
Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society. The group established a
town that attracted freed slaves, former slaveholders, Jewish
merchants, trappers, prospectors, Spanish landowners and Native
Americans.
In the six years after the arrival of the Mormon pioneers, San
Bernardino grew to a prosperous town of 3,000. However, the Mormon
participation soon waned. Faced with US troops coming to Utah in
1857, Brigham Young called the settlers back to Salt Lake City to
defend the community. Two-thirds of the Church members obeyed and
returned, while those remaining either left the Church or were
excommunicated. Church members didn't return to San Bernardino for
sixty years.
"That's the most striking feature" of the Mormon immigration to
Southern California, said Donald Waldie, a social historian and
author. "The Mormons came, settled down and then went back. The
history of California is much different than that."
Source:
Reliving a Mormon Journey
Los Angeles Times 30Dec00 N6
By William Lobdell
The Faithful Will Travel From Utah to San Bernardino to Mark Pioneers' 1851 Trek
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