Mormon Grove: The City That Disappeared

The grove was Milo Andrus's choice. In 1854 the Latter-day Saint leader recommended a new outfitting site four miles west of the coming town of Atchison, after cholera at earlier camps; Atchison needed builders, and the emigrants needed wages to buy their outfits. Andrus oversaw it in 1855: 160 acres inside a sod fence, thirty to forty of them planted as the Perpetual Emigration Farm to feed the arrivals. That year 2,041 people and 337 wagons left for Utah, Andrus leading one of the trains. He had led a company west in 1850 and would lead another in 1861.

What the plaque says

Mormon Grove The City That Disappeared Near here, located in a grove of young hickory trees, was an important rallying point in 1855 and 1856 for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), then emigrating to the Rocky Mountains. The campground, really a temporary village covering about 150 acres, consisted of the grove, a large pasture fenced by native sod and a ditch, and a burial ground located on the elevated ridge between the grove and the farm. Though one or two permanent structures were erected, most residents lived in tents, wagon boxes or make-shift dwellings. During the peak year of emigration at Mormon Grove in 1855, nearly 2,000 Latter-day Saints with 337 wagons left here for the Salt Lake Valley. It was also a tragic year for the U.S., British, and European Mormons at the little waystation, many dying in a cholera epidemic. In 1856, Iowa City, Iowa, became the major jump-off point for Latter-day Saint westward travel, and Mormon Grove became a forgotten gathering place. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Kansas Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum — 1.3 mi
  A hangar at Atchison's airport built around Muriel, a 1935 Lockheed Electra 10-E of the model Earhart vanished in, saved from scrap, restored over three decades and brought to her birthplace in 2016.
• Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission Museum — 21 mi
  The surviving part of an 1846 Presbyterian mission school near Highland, built largely with the tribes' own annuity money and returned to the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska in 2021. Closed during remodeling.

More markers nearby

• Atchison — 2.8 mi
• Historic Fort Leavenworth — 10 mi
• Troy — 18 mi
• First REA Project in Kansas — 18 mi