Deseret News
For a year of military service, the 500 members of the Mormon Battalion purchased the future of their faith.
From July 1846 to 1847, the battalion made a grueling 1,900-mile march from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego. And while the battalion never participated in a single military engagement, it helped to pioneer the American West and paid the way for the Mormon pioneers to find a new home in the Great Basin.
A story in the July 1, 2000, Church News by R. Scott Lloyd reported on a talk by Elder Marlin K. Jensen of the Seventy during a Mormon Battalion Heritage Day celebration in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leader spelled out the battalion's contribution:
"A road was carved out of the southwestern wilderness; the Gadsden Purchase (of land in 1853 from Mexico, which became part of New Mexico and Arizona) was accomplished; the acquisition of California certainly was stabilized and probably facilitated more than by any other single group of people or single act; and an economic impact was felt, not just in California with the gold rush, but in Utah as well for many, many years," Elder Jensen said.
From July 1846 to 1847, the battalion made a grueling 1,900-mile march from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego. And while the battalion never participated in a single military engagement, it helped to pioneer the American West and paid the way for the Mormon pioneers to find a new home in the Great Basin.
A story in the July 1, 2000, Church News by R. Scott Lloyd reported on a talk by Elder Marlin K. Jensen of the Seventy during a Mormon Battalion Heritage Day celebration in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leader spelled out the battalion's contribution:
"A road was carved out of the southwestern wilderness; the Gadsden Purchase (of land in 1853 from Mexico, which became part of New Mexico and Arizona) was accomplished; the acquisition of California certainly was stabilized and probably facilitated more than by any other single group of people or single act; and an economic impact was felt, not just in California with the gold rush, but in Utah as well for many, many years," Elder Jensen said.
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