Wiping the sweat from beneath their sunbonnets didn't wipe the smiles off the faces of a giggling group of fourth-grade girls who were among hundreds of handcart "trekkers" who made their way through Salt Lake City streets Tuesday, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first LDS handcart pioneers to reach the valley.

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.

All 45 of their students wore period costumes, and each took a turn pushing and pulling the handcart and carrying a flag on their half-day away from school. "We're so proud of them. They walked the entire way," Reese said, as boys and girls mingled outside the Conference Center once the trek had come to a halt. "They tore their skirts on twigs and branches, and walked into some posts," added King. "But they got a taste of what it was like. This only happens every 150 years. We hope the kids remember it forever."

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!"

A police escort led the procession north along Foothill Boulevard, past the University of Utah to the 10th Ward chapel at 800 East and 400 South, where the first handcart immigrants to the valley were welcomed. From there, a re-established Nauvoo Brass Band provided marching music for the rest of the trek along 300 South to State Street, then north to South Temple, west at Eagle Gate and past the Beehive House, Church Administration Building and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, past Temple Square and then north to the Conference Center.