Big Mountain

The Mormons who crested this pass in July 1847 were not the first over it, and they knew it. A year earlier the Donner-Reed party, misled onto Lansford Hastings' untested cutoff, had spent roughly two weeks hacking a wagon road down through the Wasatch to the valley — a delay that helped doom them in the Sierra snows that winter. The trail they cut at such cost let Brigham Young's companies descend in a fraction of the time. That grim inheritance became the main road into Utah for a decade.

What the plaque says

On 19 July 1847, scouts Orson Pratt and John Brown climbed the mountain and became the first Latter-day Saints to see the Salt Lake Valley. Due to illness, the pioneer camp had divided into three small companies. On 23 July, the last party, led by Brigham Young, reached the Big Mountain. By this time most of the first companies were already in the valley and planting crops. Mormons were not the first immigrant group to use this route into the Salt Lake Valley. The ill-fated Donner Party blazed the original trail one year earlier. they spent thirteen days cutting the trail from present-day Henefer into the valley. That delay proved disastrous later on when the party was caught in a severe winter storm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Mormons traveled the same distance in only 6 days. Until 1861, this trail was also the route of California gold seekers, Overland Stage, Pony Express, original telegraph line, and other Mormon immigrant companies, after which Parley's Canyon was used. This monument, erected and dedicated 25 August 1984, by South Davis Chapter, Sons of Utah Pioneers, replaces the original plaque erected 23 July 1933, by Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmarks Association and the Vanguard Association of the Salt Lake Council, Boy Scouts of America.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emigration Canyon — 8.1 mi
  The final stretch of trail the Mormon pioneers took into the valley
• Utah Olympic Park — 9.2 mi
  The ski jumping and bobsled venue from the 2002 Winter Olympics
• This Is The Place Heritage Park — 9.9 mi
  A living history village at the mouth of Emigration Canyon
• Natural History Museum of Utah — 9.9 mi
  A world-class museum built into the foothills above Salt Lake City

More markers nearby

• Mormon Flat — 3.7 mi
• Little Emigration Canyon — 3.7 mi
• Ephraim Hank's Pony Express Station — 3.7 mi
• Memories at Mountain Dell — 3.9 mi