Eastern Oregon youths walk and roll in the footsteps of pioneers

Published 3:00 pm Tuesday, August 30, 2022

LA GRANDE — Handcarts can make people feel like they are turning back the hands of time, something Kaylee Carpenter, a La Grande High School student, understands well.

Carpenter is one of 270 youth and 100 adults from Union, Wallowa, Baker and Grant counties with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who participated in a pioneer trek earlier this month. It was a small scale reenactment of pioneers who pulled handcarts while crossing the plains and moving into the Salt Lake Valley in Utah from 1856 to 1860.

The youths traveled 16 miles on foot, including 14 while pushing and pulling handcarts in Wyoming.

“It was an amazing experience,” Carpenter said.

The handcarts, loaded with five-gallon water jugs and personal items in five-gallon gallon buckets, were pulled by up to four people and pushed from behind by up to four people. Moving a handcart filled with supplies is not easy.

“You don’t realize how hard it is until you are actually doing it,” Carpenter said.

The La Grande student believes the people pushing in the back have it the hardest because they must generate much of the momentum.

“The people in front have people pushing them,” she said.

Carpenter said the trek was exhausting under the hot sun, but noted the pioneers had to travel considerably further and often under much harsher conditions. The rugged circumstances, Carpenter said, did not rattle many of the pioneers, according to historic accounts.

“I don’t see how they could endure so much and still be so resilient and happy,” she said.

The group had to cross the Sweetwater River in Wyoming as part of the trek. Alyson Glabe, a student at La Grande Middle School, said the stream crossing was delightful because the river was low and the weather was hot.

“It was invigorating,” she said.

Carpenter noted that the crossing of the Sweetwater River was much more difficult for many pioneers who had to cross the river at different times of the year when the river was higher and had blocks of ice.

Greg Baxter, the second counselor, of the La Grande Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which comprises Union, Wallowa, Baker and Grant counties, said the trek was a transformative one for many of its participants in terms of building confidence.

“I heard one boy say, ‘Now I know I can do hard things and achieve good things,” Baxter said

The trek, which has been conducted every five years by the La Grande Stake since 2007, also had a familial feel because each handcart represented a family unit in a fictional sense with adults playing parental roles. Baxter said many times the members of the handcart parties did not know each other at first but became good friends as the journey progressed.

Baxter said that many of the youths had relatives who had made the journey into the Salt Lake Valley by wagon or handcart in the 1800s. Their descendants were on the minds of many of them.

“In a spiritual sense they felt they were walking with their forefathers,” he said.