Tour Map 1

Pioneer Heritage Society - Tour 1

Council Point:
Council Point was the support town for the Middle Mormon Ferry and was located in what is now the south edge of the City of Council Bluffs. It was the first community built by the LDS in this Middle Missouri Valley area. It was built near the ruins of Fort Croghan and was laid out with an east-west orientation along its main street. Fort Croghan was built here in 1842 to stop whiskey runners who came by boat with whiskey, up the Missouri River to sell to the Indians in exchange for horses and blankets and whatever they could get. Whiskey created fights among the Indians and was very damaging. United States Indian Agents constantly complained about it, but of course the American Fur Company and other traders wanted to use whiskey because in that way they could get furs and horses and other supplies for very little. The result was that the Indians suffered great problems among them.
When the saints arrived in this area, the Pottawattamie-Ottowa-Chippewa Indian chiefs had just returned from Washington, D.C. where they had agreed to sell southwestern Iowa, if their tribe would agree to remove to northeastern Kansas. On June 5 the chiefs met with some of the tribe at the old Fort Croghan ruins that had been built in 1842 by United States Dragoons to stop the whiskey trade. The very next year after it had been built, the Missouri River ruined much of the fort, but there was enough left standing that the Indians met there. The chiefs proposed what they had agreed to in Washington, D.C. and it was accepted nine days before the LDS arrived here. In the distance on our right when facing the marker, is a little old farmstead approximately where the Welsh Tabernacle was built. People coming from Wales had their own Tabernacle and many of them settled in this area, while waiting before they went west.
Council Point was the largest of the LDS communities in Iowa after Kanesville. Kanesville had a population of 7,000-8,000. Winter Quarters was about 4,000. Grand Encampment was not a permanent community, but if you were going to count that, it would have had a population of about 10,000 at its height, and then this community, which would be in excess of 300. The average LDS community in southwestern Iowa was probably about 250 residents. Harris Grove had a roster of 243 LDS. At the time the saints were here, there were a few cabins and buildings located on the road between Council Point and Kanesville which went by the name of String Town.
Also located in this area was the Emigrant (steamboat) landing, which was used by about 8,000 European saints who came up the Missouri River by steamboat before setting out across the plains. It was probably constructed in 1837 and was used at one time by Abraham Lincoln in 1859, a few months before his election to the presidency. If you pass the marker and follow the road around the corner, the site of the Hardin/Emigrant landing for steamboats would be to your right. The Missouri River poked an elbow up in here at that time. About an eighth of a mile south of here, the Missouri River ran and right there at the point of the elbow is where the steamboats landing was established in 1837 to supply a government Indian farm. When the LDS came the landing was still in good condition. They used it and called it Emigrant Landing. Earlier people had called it the Hardin Landing after Davis Hardin who ran first a forty acre farm and then an eighty acre farm for the Indians.
See how the land is flat here but how it rises over there, beyond where the Welsh Tabernacle was located. If those trees weren't all leafed out, you could see that the bank of the elbow goes around there. The wooded area is up on the bank. This was the Missouri River that came in. It comes down from the northwest and at the time, it came down and then poked an elbow right up here and turned here and went off to the southeast. If you go over about 100 yards, that is where the Emigrant Landing was located. Adjacent to Emigrant Landing was Reuben H. Allred's Rope Walk. A rope walk was a long shed where they harvested what they called hemp. They took the fibers and made cord and rope and cable. The purpose of that was to assist the ferry boats they were building. They went on west of Grand Encampment to where the Missouri River was still flowing pretty much in a southerly direction. If you were to go there today, it would be about a half mile south of the east end of the South Omaha Bridge. There they cut a dugway into the bank of the river so that when they loaded their boat, the river would not rock the boat but it would be very still. They went to the Indian Mill two miles northeast of what today is Council Bluffs and bought lumber. They built a properly caulked boat capable of carrying two or three loaded wagons. They would pull their wagons onto the boat, unhitch their teams and bring them around and tie them to the wagon wheels so if the animals became frightened they wouldn't pull the load and tip the boat load into the river. They would put on two or three fully loaded wagons and take them across the river. They cut a dugway into the Iowa bank of the river one half mile south of the east end of the south Omaha Bridge. Then they went downstream a half mile and cut a dugway into the Nebraska side of the river. Then they went upstream a full mile on the Nebraska side and cut a third dugway, half a mile north of the Iowa dugway, and cut another dugway into the Nebraska bank of the river. Then they stretched hemp cable from the Iowa dugway to the dugway at the bottom, or the lower dugway in Nebraska and then from the Iowa dugway to the upper Nebraska dugway. Thus there was a V-rope across the Missouri River. When they loaded their wagons they would push their boat into the river and attach the ferry to the cable and the river would push the boat to the Nebraska shore. There they would unload and then back the boat out of the dugway and pull and pole the boat up-river to the upper leg of the V-rope. If there was return traffic, they would be loaded in that upper dugway. Then the boat would be attached to the cable and the river would push it back to the Iowa side. Not exactly rush hour traffic.

The Grand Encampment:
For a while after the LDS pioneers arrived here, the wagon trains kept coming. They left Nauvoo in February and March and April, May, and June. One wagon train after another would come across southern Iowa and then they would come through the loess hills just south of here about two miles and then turn north until they got to this spot, where they would wait. While waiting, they organized themselves into big wagon squares on the tops of hills. So if you had been here in pioneer times you would have looked up at the hill tops (where Highway 92 goes east past the Iowa School for the Deaf), and you would have seen great squares of wagons and between the wagons would be white tents that were set up for the people to live in. They also put split rail fences around their wagon squares and along the roads going down the hillsides. Often times they would put their split rail fence down to the main road. The main road would have been about where Highway 92 is today, they were on either side of Highway 92, starting just east of the present Iowa School for the Deaf and stretched east another nine miles. Upon his arrival here, Hosea Stout said Grand Encampment started three miles east of the Missouri River and went another nine miles to the east. We think there were about 10,000 people in Grand Encampment at its greatest point.
As you can imagine, when June turned to July the rains stopped, and since there were thousands of head of livestock, they grazed off the grass. Wood had been cut for firewood and for picket fences, and for other uses. The abundant springs of water began to dwindle because rains were stopping. Wagon masters started looking north, south, and east for areas where they could find sufficient wood, water, and grass. One by one, the wagon trains pulled away. They eventually settled something like 86 or 87 LDS communities in southwest Iowa.
Thomas L. Kane came to Grand Encampment where he helped recruit the Mormon Battalion. While he was here he described it. He said: "Each one of the Council Bluffs hills was crowned with it's own great camp, gay with bright white canvas and alive with the swarming stir of busy occupants. In the clear blue morning air the smoke streamed up from more than a thousand cooking fires. Countless roads and bypaths checkered all manner of geometric figures on the hillside. Herd boys were dozing upon the slopes. Sheep, cows, and oxen were feeding around them and other herds grazed in the luxuriant meadow of the swollen river. From a single point, I counted 4,000 head of cattle in view at one time."

Hyde Park:
Located about 10 miles southeast of Council Bluffs at 11212 Dumfries Ave., about a mile and a half south of Pioneer Trail Road (Hwy G66) this site was selected by Orson Hyde in late June of 1846 before he went to England on a mission. They started building cabins here in late July. Then Orson and Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor left here with Ezra T. Benson to go on a mission. The first three were to go on a mission to England and Ezra T. Benson was to go to the eastern states. Orson left this area July 31 of 1846 and went down river with the other three apostles as far as Fort Leavenworth. There they collected some money from the soldiers who were in the Mormon Battalion and then sent that back with a courier to Cold Spring Camp. That was before the Saints had moved to Winter Quarters. Then they went on to their missions.
Orson Hyde edited the Millennial Star in England for about three or four months, October of 1846 to January of 1847. He toured mission locations in England and Scotland and visited the Saints in various locations. Orson then sailed for home February 14, 1847 and reached New York City, April 6. He returned to Hyde Park on May 12. He found that Richard Bentley and William Price, brothers-in-law, had built a double cabin of hewn logs just straight out from this historical marker about a hundred yards. The Hyde's were living in one end and the Price's and Bentley's were living in the other end of this double cabin. They were very large and commodious. Each family had at least a 10 X 12 square foot area that they could live in.
On Sunday, December 5, the Bentley side of the cabin was used for a meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve. Orson Hyde's end of the cabin had a leaky roof and so the Quorum was given use of the Bentley side of the cabin for their meeting. The ladies worked hard on food at the other end of the cabin. There was a discussion about re-creating the First Presidency of the Church. After some discussion it was apparent that a number of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve did not like the idea of reorganizing the First Presidency because they had become accustomed to being the executive body of the Church. They thought that was nice. Those who favored re-creating the First Presidency liked the idea of returning to the original form of the Church. After some discussion it was apparent that the purpose of re-creating the First Presidency was to free the Quorum of the Twelve to go out and testify of Christ, to travel wherever the Church was and to strengthen the Church. Suddenly there was a voice as they were pondering what they would do which said, "Let my servant Brigham step forth and receive the full power of the presiding priesthood in my Church and Kingdom."
People from the community of Hyde Park rushed to the cabin and knocked on the door. Orson Hyde stepped up and answered the door. Neighbors said they thought there had been an earthquake. Orson Hyde said, "Everything is all right. The Lord has just spoken. He may be very near. You can be sure that everything is all right and you can go home." So the people left. Orson Hyde then nominated Brigham Young to become the new President of the Church and to select two men to be his counselors. He chose Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards.
The next day, on December 6, the Quorum met again and decided to build a tabernacle in Kanesville, capable of holding 1,000 people in general conference. The building was constructed and conference started on December 24 and ended on December 27. They went right through Christmas, including Christmas, and in conference on December 27, sustained Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards as their new First Presidency and Joseph Smith's Uncle, John Smith, as the Patriarch of the Church.