You can wake up early Pioneer Day morning, run a marathon, watch a Days of '47 parade, follow that with a rodeo, enter a pie-eating contest, create pioneer crafts and take a horse-drawn carriage ride.

But you still wouldn't know everything there is to know about the holiday that commemorates the arrival of Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley (though you'd be nauseated, exhausted and probably collapse into the nearest handcart).

To find out more about the history behind the holiday, The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with Paul Reeve, associate history professor at the University of Utah. He shared some lesser-known facts about events commemorated by this uniquely Utah holiday.

» The first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 22, 1847 -- two days before the annual holiday. By July 23, some of the settlers were already camped near present-day 400 South and State Street in Salt Lake City. They had begun plowing in preparation for planting crops, Reeve said. The July 24 holiday commemorates the day Brigham Young arrived in the valley and declared it was the place Latter-day Saints would settle.

» In the 19th century before Utah attained statehood, Pioneer Day celebrations often included readings of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and/or speeches about it. "The Mormons perceived those American founding documents as divinely inspired," Reeve said. "It was one of the ways in which they were trying to demonstrate their loyalty to the American Constitution and founding at the same time they were being labeled as disloyal and un-American by outsiders."

» Contrary to some recountings, the Salt Lake Valley was not a barren wasteland when the pioneers arrived. Some of the pioneers who arrived in 1847 wrote in their journals about the grass, streams and other signs of life, Reeve said. Pioneer Thomas Bullock wrote in his journal on July 22, 1847: "We camped on the banks of a beautiful little stream which was surrounded by very tall grass," according to the Utah Travel Industry Web site.

» Immigrant groups passing through Utah in 1846 on their way to California blazed all but about a mile of what later became the Mormon route into the valley, Reeve said.

» The exact location where Young announced that the Salt Lake Valley was the place Mormons were destined to settle was not marked until the early 20th century. In 1917, a group placed a temporary marker where This Is the Place Monument now stands, according to This Is the Place Heritage Park's Web site. The monument was dedicated in 1947.