Trail of honor

NAUVOO, Ill. — Wrapped in doubled-layered sweaters, heavy coats and scarves, about 400 devoted Mormons marched down Parley Street to the frozen Mississippi River with remembrance on their minds.They were remembering the sacrifice of their ancestors, who began their harsh trip west to Utah 163 years ago on Feb. 4. After arriving at the river, they remembered those who fell along the way by reading their names out loud at the Pioneer Memorial.\"It was a great ordeal. We look back on it now as the beginning. We call it our Trail of Hope,\" said Dean Hughes, public affairs representative for Historic Nauvoo. \"We see those early pioneers as a tough people. We've inherited some of that strength from them.\"Every year on Feb. 4, local Mormon residents and missionaries from as far away as Canada and California take the one mile exodus walk down Parley Street to commemorate the Mormon pioneers who traveled west to the Great Salt Lake Valley.During the winter of 1846 to 1847, Latter-Day Saint leaders laid plans for the migration of the Saints from Nauvoo. Since Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the 1830s, the Mormons were often harshly treated and persecuted by their neighbors due to their religious beliefs.\"They planned to leave in the spring, but for some of the older settlers, that wasn't good enough, and they started to pressure them to leave in the winter,\" Hughes said.While some of the Mormons crossed the Mississippi River in flat boats, most of the original pioneers crossed by covered wagon after the river froze over. From 1846 to 1849, more than 70,000 Mormons traveled along the Mormon Pioneer Trail that went across Iowa, connected with the Great Platte River Road at the Missouri River and ended in Utah.\"Nauvoo was a large city,\" Hughes said. \"It was a city of 15,000 people. It was as big as Chicago.\"Wednesday, three covered, horse-drawn wagons trailed behind the walkers to represent the wagons that made the trip in 1846. Many of the participants pinned paper name tags to their jackets — the names usually belonged to their specific ancestors, though some just wore the tags in remembrance.