From Deseret News archives:
Trek salutes handcart pioneers
500 'trekkers' stage a 150-year re-enactment
Their three-mile trek from This Is the Place Heritage Park to the historic LDS 10th Ward, and then on to the Conference Center, brought both scowls and smiles even tears from motorists and onlookers, who watched the costumed troupe of some 500, featuring 100 handcarts and a few covered wagons, wind their way through downtown.
The event, organized by Rob Race and the Sugar House chapter of the Sons of the Utah Pioneers, gave participants the chance to relive a piece of Western history that has been heavily re-examined by historians and scholars in recent years. Ten different handcart companies brought hundreds of emigrants west before the railroad ended wagon and handcart travel. Two of them the Willie and Martin companies left Iowa too late the summer of 1856 and had to be rescued in Wyoming after about 200 people died of exposure and starvation when early snows stranded them.
Margey King and JoLynn Reese, fourth-grade teachers at Bonneville Elementary, learned about the trek last week and decided their students needed to experience a Utah history lesson firsthand.
The teachers sent home notes last Thursday asking parents to help outfit their children, who sang and laughed through much of the journey, though at least one was heard to ask "are we there yet?" even as the group left their point of origin. Parent Marcy Jenkins accompanied the group and said that, despite the sweat, it was "the best field trip I've ever been on!"
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