One of the harder stretches of the walk began inauspiciously, following the skin-crawlingly-named Poison Spider Road. A thick darkness ruled at this early hour, still well before 5am. About a mile in, a newer highway bisected my arachnid artery, forcing me to hurdle a pair of barbed-wire fences and wade through a dried-out drainage ditch, but I emerged unscathed and unbitten (so far as I know).
Adrenaline pumped through my veins. I had thought about this next stretch for so long that I could anticipate almost every part. While I had previously experienced flashes of the original, authentic Oregon Trail, over the next couple days I would be immersed in it, walking through some ninety miles of mostly genuine, historical track. Some of it, of course, would have been improved over time, resurfaced with more forgiving dirt and gravel coating, but still–my itinerary would align with many of those early emigrants, some 400,000 in all. This would be one of my best chances to experience something that seems increasingly ephemeral–something truly, purely real.
The sun rose, all evidence of Casper slipped away into the distance, and the yellow hills rippled out around me, wisps of wheat flowing in the wind. I didn’t know how my body would respond to a much greater pack load, not to mention the gallon water jug in my hands, but it was buoyant early, surging forward with enthusiasm for the long day ahead.
A small sign on the right announced my early progress. Like those emigrants, I had finally left the Platte River behind, after so many hundreds of miles of companionship through Nebraska and Eastern Wyoming. Now, though, we veered inland, climbing (the not-so-imaginatively-named) Emigrant Ridge to Emigrant Gap. The sign noted that those early pioneers could see the better part of their next week’s journey from this vantage point, as they began their climb to the Rockies in earnest. I popped a couple hard boiled eggs and pushed on.
While the ascent was never precipitous, it was persistent and mercurial, often rescinding its most recent meters with an equivalent descent. Still, the walking was a joy on this cool morning, with small, puffy clouds floating cherubically above in an otherwise bright sky. Around 6000 feet, I reached my next historically important spot, Willow Springs. Given the departure from the Platte, and the remaining distance from the Sweetwater, hydration was the big concern in this section–hence my jug. Willow Springs proved to be the most reliable spot on this stretch. Even today, it stands out–a green oasis encircling bowed willow branches. James Shields, a pioneer who passed through here in 1850, described it as follows: “This looks something like an Eden spot in a desert, the springs being surrounded with flowers and roses of different hues. There are also several cottonwood and willow trees growing upon the bank of each spring.”
The steepest climbs followed and I found myself wondering if I would be facing a bone-jarring descent before too long. Instead, though, the final ascent delivered views of a high-level plain, requiring only a short drop to emerge into this meseta. The long afternoon slid by slowly, mile by dry mile, measured by the gradual diminishment of my water supplies. First, the jug emptied, freeing my hands for the first time that day. Then the first liter bottle. I downed the dregs of the second as I emerged onto the highway around 5:30pm, in time for the final push. Like so many of those pioneers, I spent the night at Independence Rock. Initially underwhelming, sitting much lower than the more dramatic crags outlining the valley–just 136 feet–I came to admire the smooth granite, like a whale cresting the sea. Perhaps 550,000 emigrants passed by here, setting up encampments and regrouping before the next stage. (The different estimates one encounters speak to two things–first, that our records are hardly precise, and second, that like “the Camino,” there was no single Oregon Trail. People were always looking for better options, or ways to escape the dust of their fellow travelers, or access to better water points.) Many carved their names into the rock, offering one of our better record-keeping systems. (And highlighting as well that, however annoying and often egregiously selfish the graffiti issues are on the Camino right now, they also speak to this timeless human need to prove that we were here.) What’s the difference between vandalism and historical artifact? Timing.
The main difference between the emigrants camping here and me, meanwhile, is that the site now has a modern rest area, complete with clean restrooms, pure drinking water, and sheltered picnic tables. I unrolled my bivy in the corner of one, zipped myself in, wondered how I would ever manage to fall asleep with the distractions, and suddenly realized it was 4am.
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I’m surging forward on this grand historical conduit. Not merely the Oregon Trail or the California Trail or the Pony Express route. It’s also the Mormon Trail–a 1300-mile-long route bringing 50,000 to 90,000 Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City in the late 19th century.
I have to acknowledge my own skepticism about the legitimacy of Mormonism. It’s not personal; the Mormons I’ve known in my life have been unceasingly good people. It’s something more fundamental. I can’t fathom how someone would find the religion to be real. It seems like the most obvious fiction this side of Scientology.
This walk was an opportunity to challenge those judgments that I had formed over the years, so along the way I listened to Matthew Bowman’s The Mormon People and Benjamin Park’s The Kingdom of Nauvoo. It’s easy to have faulty ideas take root when you’re exposed to something primarily through popular sources–particularly stuff like The Book of Mormon (musical) and South Park. Both authors are Mormons and highly-qualified historians, so they seemed like good sources for a fresh start with the faith.
If anything, I emerged with an even more critical view of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saints movement. The original revelations are one thing. OK, Jesus came to North America after his resurrection, the angel Moroni was a pre-Colombian prophet whose spirit was ultimately tasked with guarding the golden plates that told the last testament of Jesus. For four years, Smith approached the golden plates but was unable to access them. Eventually, though, he succeeded, discovering that the plates were engraved with a sort-of modified Egyptian hieroglyphs, which he was able to interpret through a pair of “seer stones”, while he and the plates were obscured with a blanket. While a small group of followers would later claim to have seen the golden plates, in public people were permitted nothing more than to lift the box in which Smith claimed they were stored. The plates were subsequently returned to Moroni, Smith claimed. As such, the core text of the Book of Mormon emerged, more or less, from Smith narrating revelations with his head stuck in his hat, while a scribe feverishly copied down every word.
I mean, kudos to Smith for being able to pull that off. To be able to string together that many words over the course of 53-74 days (estimates vary), and for it to be coherent enough to inspire a strong base of followers… there’s definitely some genuine talent on display. It’s a matter of taste, of course. Mark Twain was unimpressed: “The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle–keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate… The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel–half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity.” Haters gonna hate. But believers are going to believe, and they did. The Book of Mormon went to print in 1830; by 1835, there were already 1500 to 2000 followers in Kirtland, Ohio, ready to follow Smith to paradise.
Admittedly, miracles defy belief. There’s no way around it. And religion runs on miracles. Some willing suspension of disbelief is required. Ultimately, then, what turned me fully against Smith wasn’t the initial series of revelations, but rather the all-too-convenient ways that he went back to the well over the subsequent years. Here are two examples. First, in 1842, the mayor of Nauvoo, John Bennett, ran afoul of Smith by trying to leap too recklessly into the still-emerging policy of polygamy (more on that in a minute). He was deposed as mayor, at which point Smith decided to fill the role, establishing his preeminence in Nauvoo on both a spiritual and temporal level. His main concern in that moment was potential opposition from Hiram Kimball, another town alderman, who at the time wasn’t a Mormon convert. Conveniently enough, Smith received a revelation in that very moment! Here it is: “Verily thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph by the voice of my Spirit, Hiram Kimball has been insinuating evil. & forming evil opinions against you with others. & if he continue[s] in them he & they shall be accursed. for I am the Lord thy God & will stand by thee & bless thee. Amen.” Kimball backed down and Smith became mayor.
Second, the whole polygamy deal. When did Smith become a polygamist? Historians have a hard time pinning this down. My best read on it is that he became a polygamist when his affairs with younger women risked going public and he needed to find a moral justification for his abuse of power. (Smith’s first affair, so far as we know, likely occurred with Fanny Alger, a 19-year-old domestic servant, in 1835.) His first wife, Emma, wanted no part of it. All that I needed to know of Smith’s character emerged from his flagrant efforts at deception as the extra wives piled up, orchestrating visits from different women while in hiding, explicitly instructing them to be circumspect about avoiding Emma in the process. Mormonism was highly vulnerable to state interference in these early decades, but nothing placed a bigger target on its back than the public emergence of polygamy, and the only priority it served was a selfish one for Smith. He surely recognized this on some level, hence his efforts to keep it on the down low for its first decade of practice. That was part of what made Bennett’s flaunting of the practice so inconvenient, both nationally and within Smith’s home. By some accounts, this was when Emma became first fully cognizant of Smith’s indiscretions.
Cue the next timely revelation. In 1843, Hyrum Smith, Joseph’s brother and a key leader, implored him to write down a revelation that could be presented to Emma. With clear guidance from on high, Hyrum believed, she would come around. Joseph (and the divine) came through. As William Clayton noted, “This A.M, I wrote a Revelation consisting of 10 pages on the order of the priesthood, showing the designs in Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon having many wives and concubines &c. After it was wrote Presidents Joseph and Hyrum presented it and read it to E[mma] who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious.” In a masterful example of understatement, Joseph subsequently said to his brother that, “I told you, you did not know Emma as well as I did.”
I could go on, but my larger point would remain the same: the best argument against Mormonism is its founder. Joseph Smith smacks of a false prophet, selling a bill of goods to his willing followers as part of a larger practice of self-aggrandizement. A talented man, no doubt, but one sorely lacking in credibility. How could anyone read about his life and have confidence in the legitimacy of Mormonism?
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With the calendar flipping to September, dawn comes slowly, but gradually, ever so gradually, the outline of Independence Rock and the surrounding ridgelines emerges behind me as I set forth along the highway. An hour later, I’m off-road again, veering through a small gap in the crags. A marker next to the tombstone of Frederick Richard Fulkerson informed me that I was walking through Rattlesnake Mountain, carrying the torch of uncomfortable nomenclature that was initially carried by Poison Spider Road. Just north of Rattlesnake Mountain was Devil’s Gate, one of the more evocative landmarks along the Oregon Trail–a tight cleft cut through the mountain by the Sweetwater, which I would get a better view of just ahead. Frederick died here in 1847; two weeks later, his mother died at the Green River. While the inscription on his tombstone has subsequently been lost, graffiti from T.P. Baker in 1864 endures quite prominently.
Death and suffering would be the most prominent theme of the day. Not mine, fortunately, but rather a large group of Mormon pioneers. Just ahead was Martin’s Cove, a genuinely idyllic and peaceful spot today, with lush lawns descending to the sparkling Sweetwater, ample shade, and (always to be appreciated) restrooms and drinking water. In 1856, though, this was the site of absolute disaster.
The tragedy could have been avoided. A group of 600 Mormon pioneers set out from Illinois on July 28, 1856, far too late in the season. Local guides strongly advised them against the journey, imploring them to wait for the following spring, but they were undeterred. And unlike the popular image of emigrants traveling the trail in covered wagon, they were using handcarts. Between 1856 and 1860, this approach was popularized among Mormons, and Brigham Young in particular, as a more affordable and potentially nimbler method of making the journey. In place of a large wagon and accompanying team of oxen or mules, these two-wheeled carts could be pulled and pushed with people power.
In that wet and muddy, and later icy and snow-bound, winter of 1856, though, those bedraggled Mormon pioneers suffered mightily. Men were prominent among the initial casualties, dropping dead from the strenuous demands, leaving women and children to face the treacherous fording of the Sweetwater near Martin’s Cove. Catching wind of the unfolding disaster, Brigham Young ordered a rescue mission, and Mormons from Salt Lake City rallied to assist. Without such heroic efforts, it certainly could have been worse. But gale-force winds and a subsequent blizzard turned cattle into popsicles and left the miserable migrants encamped at the cove for another five days before they could finally push forward.
Today, Mormon pilgrims come here en masse each year, reenacting the march through the cove, complete with authentic handcarts. On one hand, sure, it’s a story of poor planning and unnecessary hardship. No way around that. On the other, though, it’s a testament to suffering in pursuit of faith, of the community coming together to save those in need, of authentic sacrifice–the process by which the land, the lives, the group was made sacred. It’s a powerful founding myth around which to build a narrative.
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What makes any religion legitimate? Could any branch of Christianity emerge unscathed if given a similarly close critique? Arrogant, self-serving leaders? Wild and unbelievable miracles? Policies that undeniably served to enrich the bureaucracy at the expense of the flock? Abuse of power? Rare indeed is the long-standing organization that remains unsullied by corruption or falling far short of its ideals.
When I set out on the Camino the first time, one of my goals was to challenge my own religious bigotry. And it’s important to be clear that I had arrived at the conclusion that it certainly qualified as such, because for most of my life to that point I had viewed it instead as enlightened awareness. I saw things as they were! I wasn’t deluded by the superstitions that clouded so many others, by the power structures that oppressed so many. At the same time that I condemned the intolerance of so many for so many other groups, I directed my own brand of scorn and condescension towards believers.
Years of pilgrimage have led me to an awkward detente. I remain a non-believer, though I would certainly characterize that as agnostic today, as opposed to the arrogant atheism of my youth. And yet, in so many ways, I recognize the legitimacy of faith, particularly in the Catholic contexts where so many of my up-close-and-personal experiences have accrued. Part of this comes from personal judgment; I can see the good that emerges from shared belief. Part of it emerges from the research I’ve read on the power of community formed through religious membership. On par, I think members of formal religious organizations are better off than non-members.
Admittedly, I find the founding myth of Santiago de Compostela and the Camino–that the Apostle James evangelized in Spain and that, following his martyrdom, his remains were miraculously transported to Northwest Spain, and that he subsequently appeared on a white horse to help win a pivotal battle in the Reconquista–to be as unbelievable as Joseph Smith’s revelations. And yet, I also have to acknowledge that the lack of truth doesn’t completely strip the Santiago legend of its legitimacy. For me, that’s a massive intellectual stumbling block.
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After strolling easily through the well-manicured grounds of Martin’s Cove, the trail becomes overgrown, obscured, harder to follow. Fears of rattlesnakes return, as I wade through grass and sharp-pointed weeds, jabbing incessantly through my shoes and into my feet. Wheel ruts are my primary companion here, cut off from all humanity. No trucks, no houses, only a few old foot and hoof prints. Occasionally, though, I’m heartened to see slim cement posts, labeled on each side with reminders of the traffic that once poured through these largely-forgotten tracks. Known as Meeker Markers, they commemorate not only the historic routes, but also Ezra Meeker. Meeker had originally traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852. In 1906, then 75-years-old, he did something remarkable. He returned to the trail. He explained that, “The purpose of this expedition is to perpetuate the memory of the Old Oregon Trail and to honor the intrepid pioneers who made it and saved this great region the ‘Old Oregon Country’ for American rule.” He accomplished exactly that. The legitimacy of the Oregon Trail today is a credit to his efforts, a legacy of his work.
Like the emigrants, I used Split Rock as a landmark to guide my progress on this day. Characterized as a “gun sight” because of its cleft top, in the morning the rock directed me straight for South Pass, while later in the afternoon it pointed me back towards Independence Rock. In between, I navigated a series of sharp ascents through soft, sandy terrain, and then equally precipitous drops into vast valleys. There’s something utterly sublime about those moments when the trail suddenly crests arise, and what feels like all of Wyoming, all of the West, unfolds beneath your feet, and you can just pause and imagine long chains of wagons, careening onward to their destiny, forging the future that you would ultimately inherit, with all its mixed blessings. It was a messy, costly, deeply flawed process, one that is bound up in some of the original sins of this country, and it was also a brave, resilient, and remarkable story of shared humanity, holding each other together through collective hardship.
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Can a falsehood be transformed into a truth? Can illegitimacy become the foundation of something legitimate and lasting? Mormonism has evolved over the years, mostly distancing itself from polygamy, while also trying to align more closely with other branches of Protestantism. In a case of subtle rebranding, “The Church of Jesus Christ” took top billing over the “Latter Day Saints” part. The leadership of Gordon B. Hinckley, in particular, worked to emphasize the all-American qualities of Mormonism, stressing the importance of traditional marriage, family, and freedom. What stood out to me the most was the persistent emphasis on optimism. The Mormonism of the present is one of hope in many regards, grounded most fundamentally in a belief that humans can gradually perfect themselves, moving closer to Christ’s model, through consistent, daily efforts.
How would you measure a successful religion? According to a 2024 Gallup poll, two-thirds of Mormons self-report going to church weekly or almost weekly. That dramatically outpaces every other faith in the country. A 2024 APA poll notes that 7% of Mormon marriages end in divorce, in contrast to 51% of other Protestant Christian marriages. A 2012 Gallup study on religion and happiness, including 676,000 people, found that Mormons and Jews topped the “Well-Being Index Composite Score.” There are legitimate criticisms to be aired, of course, especially in the Church’s approach to LGBTQIA populations. I don’t want to suggest perfection. That has to be part of the story.
And yet, there are a lot of things that seem to be working very well for Mormons and Mormonism. Contrast that with, for one example, Evangelical Christians. I won’t get into Tim Alberta’s expose, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, but something has clearly gone amiss in that branch of Christianity. As Russell Moore has explained, white, Southern, Evangelical Protestants, are “numerous: According to the GSS survey, 45 percent of white Southerners self-reported attending church no more than once a year. If “lapsed evangelical Protestant” were a denomination, it would be by far the largest religious body in the South.” Moore explores the consequences of the decline in attendance, and I found his observations on trust to be the most striking. Moore writes that, “When asked, ‘Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance or would they try to be fair?’ 54 percent of white Protestant southerners who attended church no more than once a year said that most people would try to take advantage of them.” However, “Sixty-two percent said that most people would ‘try to be fair’ rather than take advantage of them, and 57 percent said that most of the time people ‘try to be helpful.’” The power of religion lies in the community it forges. That’s the power of Mormonism today; a strong house has, somehow, been built on shaky foundations. For Evangelicals, though, the whole structure seems to be crumbling. In a recent study, 38% of Evangelicals claimed that Jesus was not God. I’m no expect, but it doesn’t seem like you even qualify as Christian if you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus.
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The walk into Jeffrey City became a race against time, and I lost. For the first time in weeks, a thunderstorm came barreling towards me, and it smacked me full in the face. I barely held onto my poncho as I contorted it over my body and pack, not that it did me much good.
Even still, I couldn’t be happier. I was finally in Jeffrey City! I had dreamed of this place for years. Originally a small homesteading community known as Home on the Range, it transformed into a uranium mining town. It boomed in the mid-20th century and then busted in the early 1980s. Today, a very rustic bar and a curious pottery shop remain, along with some fifty people. It’s practically a ghost town.
And yet, it includes one other remarkable feature: a hostel for bicyclists on the Trans-America Bicycle Trail. Perhaps I took some liberty with their generosity, as a walker encroaching upon a biker hostel, but I figured I qualified. Located in the basement of the community church and largely unsupervised, I was astonished to pop open the backdoor and emerge into a basketball court, all of the walls lined with messages left by a decade’s worth of bikers. From there, hallways led to bedrooms, bathrooms, and a well-stocked kitchen. It was like finding a donativo albergue from the Camino in Wyoming, and I couldn’t have been happier. They even had hot water! I popped three packets of ramen into a pot, made some tea, and even listened to public radio on the stereo.
The story of Jeffrey City is, in a lot of ways, a sad one. The near-death of a community that had soared for decades, with the overwhelming majority of its residents tossed to the winds. And yet, the church has provided a rock on which the remainder could still hold solid–”oh, we’ll do anything to keep that space open,” said the woman working in the bar–while also forging a secondary community of bicyclists coming together in shared accommodation on their cross-country journeys. The feeling of connectivity is palpable, legitimate, real. It’s not about the history, so much as what you can build out of what endures, out of what reaches you in the present.
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While the lightning held to the horizon the following morning, clouds ruled the skies, often dropping a Portland-esque drizzle upon me. It was delightful. After two very long days, I concluded this three-day stretch with a shorter one, just 19 miles, mostly highway-bound, en route to Sweetwater Station.
While the route to this point had coincided with those four famous routes–Oregon Trail, California Trail, Mormon Trail, and Pony Express–Sweetwater Station is an even more remarkable place of connection. For 12,000 years, humans have encamped here. A northward road, the Chief Washakie Trail, is named in honor of the Eastern Shoshone chief who played a critical diplomatic role in the area, among many other things. This was also the location of another dramatic river crossing for that 1856 Mormon Handcart crew–alas, their struggles were far from over.
Mine, however, were complete–at least for now. I reached the intersection and stuck out my thumb. Five minutes later, I was flying westward for Lander, to resupply and take a day off, before I set forth on the second challenging leg of this jaunt through the heart of Wyoming.
