"Each handcart was not to carry food for the journey, because they would have one wagon for 20 handcarts," Hartley said. In addition to food, the wagons would haul tents for 20 people each.

Part of Brigham Young's handcart plan that did not get implemented, Hartley said, was to have four way stations along the thousand-mile trail from Florence, Neb., to Salt Lake City, to supply the handcart companies. That plan was interrupted by the 1857 "Utah War" in which U.S. President James Buchanan sent a federal to Utah Territory to put down a supposed Mormon rebellion. Hostilities subsided without bloodshed, but the result was a surplus of wagons and oxen in Utah from army supply trains. These could be acquired inexpensively for use by volunteers to go east to Florence, Neb., to pick up Mormon immigrants and return to Utah with them. Thus the need for and era of handcart trains ended.

Celebration of the handcart sesquicentennial continues next weekend in Iowa City, Iowa, the outfitting point for the first handcart companies 150 years ago. There, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley is scheduled to deliver an address that will be televised in Utah.

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