Pierre-Jean De Smet

Before Brigham Young ever saw the Salt Lake Valley, a Jesuit priest told him about it. Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, the great Catholic missionary to the Plains and mountain tribes, had traveled the Great Basin country and knew it well; when the Mormon pioneers wintered at Winter Quarters in 1846, planning a refuge in the West, he shared with Young what he had seen of the land around the Great Salt Lake. It was one of several accounts that helped steer the Saints toward the valley they would make their home.

What the plaque says

Father De Smet became well acquainted with the region of the Great Salt Lake, and gave much valuable information to Brigham Young and the Mormon Pioneers while they were at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in November, 1846.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ogden Union Station — 0.5 mi
  A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
• Snowbasin — 5.6 mi
  One of the country's oldest ski areas and a 2002 Olympic downhill venue — world-class terrain that somehow still skis uncrowded.
• Hill Aerospace Museum — 7.3 mi
  Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac
• Powder Mountain — 14 mi
  The largest ski resort in the United States by acreage — a famously uncrowded "PowMow" now remaking itself under Netflix's Reed Hastings.

More markers nearby

• Weber College-The Moench Building — steps away
• Bertha Eccles Community Art Center (2) Mark — 0.3 mi
• Bigelow/Ben Lomond Hotel — 0.3 mi
• Lorin Farr - Washington Blvd — 0.4 mi