Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters

The Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters is located in Omaha, Nebraska, adjacent to the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery. Over six hundred of the Saints died at Winter Quarters before embarking on the trek to the Salt Lake Valley. The cemetery includes a sculpture called “Tragedy of Winter Quarters” by Avard Fairbanks.

The Mormon Trail Center is a visitors’ center that hosts exhibits about Winter Quarters, a major temporary settlement for Latter-day Saint pioneers after they were forced to leave Nauvoo, Illinois. The exhibits include descriptions of the westward migration to the Salt Lake Valley by wagon, handcart, sailing ship, and train. Although Winter Quarters was a temporary settlement, it, and as many as 90 others like it, were well-established by the Saints as if they would stay there much longer. In all, more than 3,400 people lived here and the Saints were able to establish a community until they left for the Salt Lake Valley.[1] Many of the Church leaders spent time here, including Brigham Young. In Winter Quarters he received a revelation regarding the travel west; it is now section 136 in the Doctrine and Covenants.[2]

Winter Quarters was essentially abandoned in 1848. Those who did not go west immediately, traveled back across the river to Kanesville which became the launching place for emigrants going to settle in the west.

Church members and members of others faiths gathered on September 20, 1936 to participate in the dedication of the monument at Winter Quarters. The First Presidency: Heber J. Grant; J. Reuben Clark; and David O. McKay, along with several other General Authorities, were present at the dedication. Heber J. Grant said at the dedication that “there are times and places in the life of every individual, every people, and every nation when great spiritual heights are reached, when courage becomes a living thing . . . when faith in God stands as the granite mountain wall, firm and immovable. . . . Winter Quarters was such a time and place for the Mormon people.”[3]

The center was dedicated by Gordon B. Hinckley in 1997. Franz Johansen sculpted the statue of a Mormon handcart family that is situated in front of the center.