Mormon Trail As per Grand Island Westbound Rest Area

The Grand Island rest area is close to Mormon Island.  This is a place where the Plate River flows in several different streams creating "islands" between the streams.

THE MORMON TRAIL
From 1847 to the 1860s, the Mormon migration along the Great Platte River Roas marked a distinctive chapter in the history of westward expansion.  In contrast to the random migrations of individual families or companies that charactgerized much of the activity to California or Oregon, the Mormon migration was the organized movement of an entire people in a new place of refuge in the mountains of the far west.

Searching to escape religious persecution that had followed them in the east, the pioneer Mormon company traveled the Great Platte River Road in the spring and summer of 1847.  The group purposefully stayed on the north side of the Platte instead of using the more heavily traveled Oregon Trail on the south side.

On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young's pioneer party founded Salt Lake City, a magnet that drew an estimated 60,000 Latter-day Saints to Utah along the Platte River Road for the next 20 years.

Pictures depict handcart pioneers, Brigham Young, statue at Winter Quarters in Omaha, and pioneers and the map of the Mormon Trail and a skull found that describes the trail as per Brigham Young.