The 1854 Mormon Emigration at the Missouri-Kansas Border
This lithograph depicting the landing in Kansas City in 1854, titled Kansas & Missouri Rivers, first appeared in United States Illustrated by Charles Anderson Dana. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 32 (Winter 2009–2010): 226–45 226 KANSAS HISTORY TH E 1854 MOR M ON EM IGRATION AT T H E MISSOURI -KANSAS BORDER by Fred E. Woods uring the nineteenth century, Mormons emphasized the doctrine of gathering to Zion, a concept introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) a few months after it was officially established in Fayette, New York, in 1830 under the direction of the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. After Smith’s death, his prophetic successor, Brigham Young, established a new gathering place for the Latter-day Saints in 1847, and thereafter the route to their new American Zion in the Salt Lake Valley was altered.1 Although for the next four years Mormon European Demigrants continued to disembark at New Orleans and head up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, instead of continuing north to their previous gathering place at Nauvoo, Illinois, they traveled west on the Missouri River to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and Kanesville, Iowa (later known as Council Bluffs, Iowa), the frontier outfitting points for Mormons during those years.2 After the explosion of the steamboat Saluda in 1852, when many Mormon emigrants were killed and injured during a treacherous ride on the Missouri River, church leaders decided to extend travel up the Mississippi River past St. Louis to Keokuk, Iowa, just a dozen miles south of Nauvoo.
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