Handcart Pioneer Monument

Inspired by a beloved Torleif Knaphus monument at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, this monument depicts the Mormon handcart brigades that traveled overland from Iowa to Utah in the 1850s. It balances the nearby "Tragedy at Winter Quarters" with an unrealistically positive view of a later Mormon overland migration.

Winter Quarters was the site of an 1846-47 winter encampment of Mormon settlers fleeing persecution in the Midwest and preparing to cross the Plains to Utah. Many died in the encampment and were buried in the Winter Quarters cemetery. In 1936 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marked that cemetery with a bronze Avard T. Fairbanks monument of a couple burying their infant. Then to mark the sesquicentennial of the Mormon Trail in 1997, the LDS Church erected a new Winter Quarters visitor center. This monument was installed in front of that visitor center. Inspired by a beloved Torleif Knaphus monument at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, it depicts the later LDS handcart brigades that traveled from Iowa to Utah in the 1850s.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) marked the site of the Winter Quarters cemetery with an Avard T. Fairbanks bronze statue in 1936. A half century later, a small visitor’s center appeared in a renovated home near the cemetery. Then in the mid-1990s, the LDS Church undertook a reimagining of Mormon historic sites. “A new day is dawning in church historical sites,” said LDS Museum of Church History and Art exhibit curator Marjorie Condor. “They are now telling a site-specific story.” But their “sacred purpose … is to witness and to remember.” As part of that massive project, the Church constructed a new visitor’s center at Winter Quarters with more than 7,000 square feet of exhibit space. The Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters was dedicated in 1997 to mark the sesquicentennial of the Mormon migration. Beyond drawing attention to the historic cemetery, Condor and other LDS employees designed a museum depicting Winter Quarters as a place of what Condor called “sorting out individuality and community” and “the great jumping off place.”^[1]

LDS sculptor Franz Johansen, assisted by his son Nathan, created a bronze pioneer family statue for the sesquicentennial of the Mormon Trail. Johansen’s bronze pioneer grouping stands in front of the Mormon Trail Center, luring tourists into its modern museum. In contrast to “cowboy” artists producing statues for other western audiences, the Utah farm-boy-turned-artist’s “figures and subject matter reflect his European training.” The Lehi, Utah, resident taught art at Brigham Young University for thirty-three years, and was called by the Church for a one-year mission to complete the statue. Johansen was “grateful I could use my abilities and talents to help the church . . . to help build [the] kingdom.”^[2] Rather than focusing on the experience of those who lived and died at Winter Quarters in the 1840s, however, Johansen turned his attention to what had become a sculptural shorthand for a uniquely Mormon migration: the LDS handcart companies of the 1850s.

Like Torleif Knaphus’ beloved monument on Temple Square, Johansen’s sculpture commemorates the faith that sustained handcart pioneers on the long journey. Also like Knaphus, Johansen instructed viewers in traditional gender role expectations: men perform physical labor, while women provide emotional support. (In reality, men and women worked together to push or pull the handcarts.) Johansen’s father pulls the handcart, while the mother walks beside him, wearing her hair in a bun and carrying her straw hat in her hand. The woman reaches a delicate hand to her husband. 

The artist explained to the Deseret News that “It shows the love that was there. It's an emotional pulling rather than a physical pulling.”^[3] A young boy and young girl walk alongside the handcart. The boy pulls on a rope tied to the cart that mimics his father’s toil, without substantially assisting with the actual work of pulling the cart. The bareheaded girl wears her hair in a jaunty ponytail that echoes her mother’s loose bun but belies the overall historical accuracy of the scene. She holds a small bunch of wildflowers in her left hand; her right hand is outstretched in a gentle gesture that echoes her mother’s. A toddler boy rides packed inside the cart among the family’s belongings. A bearded grandfather in a long coat and sunbonneted grandmother walk along behind the cart. The grandfather uses a walking stick, leaning forward at an angle that echoes the way that the father leans into the cart’s pull bar. The grandmother walks upright like the mother and daughter, and stretches out both her hands to steady the precious cargo in the cart in a gesture that mimics the mother’s and daughter’s emotional support of the father’s effort.

Unlike other handcart monuments, this family’s belongings are carefully tucked away under a canvas cover that echoes covered wagons common in other overland trail imagery. The cover means that only the grandfather’s hat resting atop the blanket, the young child tucked inside, and a spider-style cooking pot hanging beneath it are visible. 

Where Knaphus and others had included grease buckets and other specific objects to remind viewers of the hardships that Mormon migrants overcame, Johansen chose to emphasize the emotional connections among the family members. The sculpture includes a bronze base that shows the tracks of the settlers who went before them. But the feet of Johansen’s family members barely touch the ground in their sturdy boots, emphasizing their faith and anticipation of the promised land, rather than the determination required for the long, difficult journey. Their hopeful journey amid the particularly trying work of migration by handcart stands as an uplifting counterpoint to Avard and J. Leo Fairbanks’ grim tributes to the suffering that migrants endured at Winter Quarters. In place of Winter Quarters misery, Johansen offers hopeful overland migrants. In place of LDS guilt and embarrassment over the suffering of the handcart companies, he offers handcarts as a symbol of Mormons’ hard work and unwavering faith.

^[1] Peggy Fletcher Stack, “New Mormon Winter Quarters Center Helps Visitors Understand . . .; Zion in the Wilderness; Winter Quarters Is Site of New Visitors Center,” The Salt Lake Tribune, April 19, 1997, sec. Nation-World.

^[2] Jeffrey P. Haney. “New Statue Portrays Struggle of LDS Pioneer.” DeseretNews.com April 20, 1998. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/625423/New-statue-portrays-struggle-of-LDS-pioneers.html?pg=all.

^[3] Haney. “New Statue Portrays Struggle of LDS Pioneer.”

“Mormon Pioneers to Be Commemorated at Nebraska Center.” The Salt Lake Tribune July 22, 1995, sec. Religion.

Springville Museum of Art. “Johansen, Franz Mark.” Accessed May 27, 2016. http://www.springvilleartmuseum.org/collections/browse.html?x=artist&artist_id=377.