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The doughty band of Mormon pioneers emerged, dusty and sweat-stained, from Emigration Canyon. The leader of the group viewed the panoramic Salt Lake Valley below, stretched forth a hand and said . . .

No one knows what she said.

Levinah Murphy led the first Mormons to the valley in 1846. But they were only passing through, attached to a larger party generally acknowledged to be under the leadership of George Donner. Their final destination lay across the Sierra Nevada in California.

Levinah, called "Old Mrs. Murphy" though she was only 36, was the matriarch of her group, which included children, sons-in-law and hired hands.

Widowed at 29, soon after her family's conversion to the Mormon church, Levinah was left with seven children to raise, the youngest just months old.

She made her way to Nauvoo, where she was one of the first to do baptisms for the dead, a new doctrine in the expansive Mormon theology.

How she ended up with the Donner party heading west a year ahead of the Saints is not entirely clear. According to a daughter reminiscing years later, Levinah heard rumors that the Mormons were removing to California. She set out early to not be a burden to the church. Eventually, she threw in her lot with the Donners and Reeds, who were richer, better equipped and seemed to know what they were doing.

They had come this far. The Valley of the Great Salt Lake lay before them. An inviting place, but not their destination.

The last haul had been murderous. Dozens of oxen had dragged the wagons, one by one, up the escarpment out of the canyon's choked creek bed. The animals were completely exhausted.

With my dog, I hiked up to the luxury apartments now at the mouth of Emigration. We made our way through side streets with signs warning "Wrong Way," "Do Not Enter," and "No Admittance."

The Donners, Reeds and Murphys could have used such helpful directions.

The dog and I agree that the escarpment, "Donner's Hill," is just above the choke point of Emigration Canyon. It is a steep 80 yards long, and seems to fit the descriptions and a 60-year-old photo.

That and the fact that the Salt Lake City street "Donner's Way" dead-ends there.

The rest of the Donner party's sojourn in Utah was not a happy one. Aware, in a vague way, of the Salt Flats, they made a desperate sprint across to the base of Pilot Peak, where water and forage awaited.

The problem wasn't the heat, which was bad enough in late summer, but the nature of the Flats themselves. Not a hard-packed salt pan, but rather a salt crust that wagon wheels broke to expose a gooey, wheel-sucking pie filling of mud and ooze.

They would lose more wagons and suffer a broken axle before staggering, spent and disheartened, on to the border of present day Nevada.

Despite the bad choices and miscues - not all of them self-inflicted - they still might have made it. In the end, they were defeated by the weather, which turned bad just at the crest of the Sierra Nevada.

Seven of Levinah's party of 13 made it. "Old Mrs. Murphy" entrusted the fate of her children to strangers near Donner Lake and died.

The Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley a year later, following the trail so painfully hacked out by the Donner party.

But the Mormons showed scant gratitude. It was put out by some that the Donners had been involved in the Mormon persecutions and deserved their fate. And as for Levinah Murphy, that's what one gets for keeping company with gentiles.

Later Utahns were more gracious. On the east side of the This Is The Place Monument is a relief that commemorates the Donner party and their contribution to blazing the trail into the Salt Lake Valley.