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Rail Routes (1831-1869)

Stanley B. Kimball

The effective beginning of railroad travel in the United States came in May 1830 with the opening of

the first division of the Baltimore and Ohio line, an event that would greatly affect Mormon immigration. The story of Mormon immigrants and the railroads is little known. Generally, little attention has been paid to pioneer immigrants except as travelers in wagons. Yet very few Mormons went west solely by wagon.

Most Mormon immigrants began their wagon journey at the Missouri River by first taking various rivers and railroads from Canada and the East Coast, a distance up to 1,300 miles--the same distance between Nauvoo and Salt Lake City. At various times, Mormons traveled by a variety of rail and water routes to reach their destinations, starting as early as 1837. By 1856, rail travel extended west of Chicago and St. Louis when the Chicago and Rock Island railroad reached Iowa City, Iowa. By 1869, the Union Pacific reached Utah. Thereafter, Mormons were able to travel by rail all the way from the East Coast to Utah.

Starting in 1840, the first Mormon immigrants sailed to the United States. By February 1855, ninety-three percent of European immigrants entered the United States at New Orleans and took riverboats initially to Illinois (1839-1846), later to their wagons on the Missouri River. Thereafter, because of the developing railway network, emigration patterns changed and all European immigrants entered at Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. They then took various railroads as far as possible, at first to Chicago and St. Louis, thence by other rail lines (and Missouri River boats) to their wagons on the Missouri River at places such as Westport, Independence, Weston, and St. Joseph, Missouri; Leavenworth and Atchison, Kansas; Nebraska City and Wyoming, Nebraska; and Council Bluffs, Iowa. Train travel was cheaper, faster, and safer--safer because immigrants were not exposed to the river-borne scourge of cholera.

These observations mean that some 34,000, or 49 percent, of the approximately 70,000 LDS pioneers who crossed the plains before 1869 traveled by railroad to their waiting wagons. Mormon immigrants did not routinely travel by train, however, until 1856, when the Chicago and Rock Island railroad reached Iowa City, Iowa. The first Mormons to use this route were the handcart pioneers.