This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.
In 1848 on a summer day, 662 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left Winter Quarters, Nebraska, striking a westward path on a 109-day journey to the Utah Territory.
The group included a number of well-known people important to the history of the church and the soon-to-be state of Utah, most notably Heber C. Kimball, after whom Heber City is named.
The company, now remembered as the Heber C. Kimball Company by church historians, arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Sept. 24, 1848.
Benjamin Thomas Mitchell, a 32-year-old pioneer originally from Pennsylvania, was one of the hundreds of new Utahns determined to create a life in the mountainous desert.
Read more at parkrecord.com.
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