Mormon Handcart Pioneers Statue

The Mormon Historic Site Foundation dedicated this bronze monument in 2006 to commemorate Mormon converts who camped in nearby Coralville while building the handcarts they later pushed and pulled across the Plains to Utah in 1856. The statue is a reproduction of a popular monument in Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. The dedication ceremony coincided with the opening of an exhibit on Mormon history at the nearby museum operated by the Johnson County Historical Society.

In 1856, 1300 Mormons rode the railroad to its western terminus at Iowa City and then camped at nearby Coralville to build handcarts before setting off across the Plains. Both a 1936 historical marker and this heroic-sized statue tell this unique Mormon history in Coralville.

The use of handcarts was unique to the Mormon migration. Whereas non-Mormons traveled overland as families and companies at their own expense, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored the mass migration of Saints from the eastern United States and Europe to Utah through its Perpetual Emigration Fund. Due to financial setbacks, the emigration fund was unable to pay passage across the Atlantic, railroad fare to the end of the line in Iowa, and also provide wagons and ox teams for the many poor European immigrant converts. Beginning in 1855, the Church instead organized companies that would push or pull wooden carts from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. 

Five handcart companies set out during the 1856 travel season. Three companies arrived safely, but due to their late start, the last two companies suffered through harsh winter conditions, and more than two hundred people (nearly a quarter of the emigrants) perished. Despite those difficulties, additional handcart companies successfully crossed the Plains in 1857, 1859, and 1860, before the church abandoned that model.

Many late-19th-century Mormons, beset by discrimination and economic hardship, appeared eager to forget the handcart brigades. Handcart stories, like that of the Donner Party in the mainstream migration to the West Coast, evoked tragedy, poverty, and perhaps an element embarrassment. But that began to change in the early 20th century, as Mormons increasingly assimilated into mainstream American culture. By the late 20th century, handcarts became valued symbols of a uniquely Mormon migration.

In 2000, the Mormon Historic Site Foundation (a non-profit organization independent from the LDS Church that raises funds to commemorate Church history sites throughout the United States) erected a heroic-sized statue of handcart pioneers. Stanley J. Watts produced a replica of Torleif Knaphus’ popular handcart family monument in Salt Lake City. The Watts replica was placed near the new Johnson County Historical Museum. But rather than installing the monument in front of that museum, like at the Mormon Winter Quarters (outside Omaha, Nebraska), the foundation placed the sculpture on the plaza in front of the Marriott hotel (a hospitality company with Mormon roots).

A bronze plaque briefly recounts the history of the handcart companies, and declares that the monument honors the “dedicated families who sacrificed homelands, possessions, and in some instances even their lives for their faith.”

Lyndia McDowell Carter. “The Mormon Handcart Companies.” Overland Journal 13, no. 1 (1995): 2–18.

LaRene Porter Gaunt and Linda Dekker. “Go and Bring Them In - Ensign Dec. 2006 - Ensign.” Accessed March 9, 2016. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2006/12/go-and-bring-them-in?lang=eng.

William G. Hartley. “The Place of Mormon Handcart Companies in America’s Westward Migration Story.” Annals of Iowa 65 (Spring/Summer 2006): 101–23.

Elizabeth Cannon Porter. “A Monument to the Handcart Pioneers.” Improvement Era July 1925.

Don H. Smith. “Leadership, Planning, and Management of the 1856 Mormon Handcart Emigration.” Annals of Iowa 65 (Spring/Summer 2006): 124–61.