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Nauvoo Tourist Sites

Milton V. Backman

For seven years (1839-1846), Nauvoo was the major gathering place for Latter-day Saints. Following their expulsion from western Missouri, many of these religious refugees settled along an extended horseshoe bend of the Mississippi River. As converts from many other parts of the United States and from Canada and Great Britain gathered there, the population increased rapidly. By 1845 there were almost 12,000 inhabitants in Nauvoo, making the community one of the fastest growing cities in Illinois. The decline of this population was even more rapid than its spectacular increase. Because of pressures from mobs, in 1846 the city was virtually abandoned. A large percentage of the residents left to seek another asylum in the Great Basin of North America.

When Latter-day Saints arrived at the bend of the Mississippi, they found a few settlers living in and near a community called Commerce. Earlier the Sac and Fox Indians called that place Quashquema, after their chief. The Prophet Joseph Smith renamed it Nauvoo, which in Hebrews means "beautiful place." Following the Exodus of most Latter-day Saints from the city, a secular group of about 280 French Icarians (followers of Etienne Cabet) established a temporary experiment there in communal living. Then German, Swiss, English, and Irish settlers arrived; these European immigrants planted vineyards and established a wine industry. In 1874, sisters of the Benedictine order started a school that eventually became St. Mary's Academy and is currently a residential school for teenage girls. Meanwhile, some of the old wine cellars were converted into caves for aging cheese, and today Nauvoo is known for its production of blue cheese.

In the twentieth century, descendants of early Latter-day Saint settlers returned and restored many homes, shops, and other structures. Between 1909 and 1917, the RLDS Church (Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) purchased the Nauvoo House, Homestead, and Mansion House (the latter two were homes where Joseph Smith lived), and these purchases led to the recent formation of the Joseph Smith Historic Center. This center includes these buildings, a Visitors' Center, the Smith Family Cemetery, and Joseph Smith's Red Brick Store.

While the RLDS Church was establishing a historic center in the south section of Nauvoo, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) began purchasing and restoring other properties in Nauvoo. Between 1937 and 1961, Wilford Wood, a resident of Bountiful, Utah, purchased most of the temple site; in 1954, James LeRoy Kimball, a Salt Lake physician, bought his great-grandfather's residence, which was made into a summer home. In 1962, Dr. Kimball became the first president of the Nauvoo Restoration, Inc. (NRI), and was charged with the mission "to acquire, restore, protect, and preserve, for the education and benefit of its members and the public, all or a part of the old city of Nauvoo." During the ensuing 23 years, NRI restored 31 structures.