Mormon Battalion Marker
Near Omaha, Iowa
On this ground in the summer of eighteen forty-six, one of the most remarkable marches in American history began. Latter day Saint families, driven west and camped along the Missouri River at a settlement they would soon call Kanesville, were asked to send their men to fight in the war with Mexico. On July first, Captain James Allen of the United States Army arrived seeking volunteers.
With the blessing of Brigham Young, who saw both proof of loyalty and badly needed pay for his people, more than five hundred men mustered into service on July sixteenth. They became the Mormon Battalion, and they marched some two thousand miles to California, the longest infantry march in the army's history. The settlement that sent them grew, took the name Kanesville to honor Thomas Kane, and by eighteen fifty-two was renamed Council Bluffs.
This marker remembers the men who left their families to walk into the West.
