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"We Have Now Laid the Foundation for Our Coming Day"

The sun has risen beautiful. Nature smiles and Heaven whispers "all is well," far beyond the graves of our fathers, the land of nativity and the church bells of those who would oppress us in this blest land . . . for we are all here in a land not polluted by the Gentiles. It is the garden of the whole earth. . . . Come on, all of you. I will not tell you anything about the road but this I will say that the ox team salvation is a hard one. The road you will know when you see it for it is so much worse than you [have] ever seen that you could not believe me if I told you the truth.1

So wrote an exhausted and relieved Susanna Sheets to family and friends back in Winter Quarters in mid-October, shortly after her arrival in the Salt Lake Valley with the emigrant camp. "It was the promised land of peace and rest," another remarked. "Yes, indeed it was beautiful to us weary pioneers who had come, at the tiring pace of the oxen, that slow and dreary thousand miles from Winter Quarters. . . . To me it was not the desert that so many have called it."2

"How Charming to Walk Into a House"

What had once been mere dream and vision, the domain of the cricket and the rattlesnake, was quietly becoming a destination, a home in the making. Unlike their pioneer camp predecessors, the newly arrived emigrant companies could already see improvements. "Here we found a fort commenced and partly built by the pioneers, consisting of an enclosure of a block of ten acres with a wall, or in part of buildings of adobes or logs. We also found a city laid out and public square dedicated for a Temple of God. We found also much ground planted in late crops."3

The first emigration company to reach the valley was that of Captain Horace Eldridge who, with his 20 creaking wagons, was loudly cheered as they maneuvered the last couple miles down from the canyon out onto the valley floor, reaching the tiny settlement at 5 P.M. on 19 September 1847.4 Within three weeks, every other company in Pratt and Taylor's camp had arrived, swelling the little city's population from approximately 150 to almost 1,650 souls. It was a time of rejoicing, tearful reunion, and profound relief. As Mary Kimball put it: "We had been cooking by sage brush fires and setting our table out doors for 14 weeks. . . . How charming to walk into a house and sit down to a table once more."5

Yet the sight of the tiny settlement did not instill an overbrimming confidence. Notwithstanding all the declarations, prophecies, and confirmations, every thinking person knew that it was an uncertain proposition, that the coming year would prove everything. Still very much a mountaintop experiment, they were unsure whether the settlement would last and their dream become reality. Would the early crops thrive? Could they make it through a high mountain winter? Would the spring planting prove successful? In short, would they survive? The final chapter in their exodus drama had yet to be written.