1847 — The Pioneer Wagon Train
Winter 1846–1847. The Mormon Battalion and the pioneer wagon train cross Iowa and Nebraska. Three wagons, sealed and unmarked, travel at the centre of the column.
The pioneer wagon train left Nauvoo in February 1846 and reached the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. The conventional history focuses on the privations of the journey.
What the conventional history does not mention is that the train carried three sealed wagons at its exact centre. The wagons bore no markings. They were guarded at all times, day and night, by rotating teams of four men under orders from Brigham Young himself. The wagons’ contents have never been inventoried in any surviving church record.
The committee has located a single inventory note, in the personal diary of an ordinance worker named ███████, dated 6 June 1847, while the train was camped on the prairie near present-day Laramie:
“The three sealed wagons passed me on the trail at noon. I asked Brother [REDACTED] what was in them. He said only: ‘what keeps us warm in the winter.’”
The phrase is verbatim from Smith’s 1832 revelation recorded in the Book of Commandments.