Pioneers: a day to remember

So I just finished reading the 9th and final book of the Work and the Glory series. I think that the last couple of books in the series are my favorite. The saints finally get away from their persecutors and are leaving for the valley. They originally leave their beautiful home of Nauvoo in Feb. of 1846. They were again run out of their home by greedy, evil men. But they left their homes and in some case their families and friends and started the journey to the Salt Lake Valley. Brigham Young knew there was no way they would make it all the way to the Valley that summer/fall becuase of the terrible weather conditions for the first few weeks they had been on the trail. So Brigham Young decided to create three different stopping points or settlements along the trail for the saints. It would provide temporary housing for the winter for the saints already on the trail and it would provide a place for the saints to regain supplies next spring along the trail. Brigham Young was obviously a great leader, but his inspiration was surely from the Lord. So the Saints yet again built houses in Winter Quarters, which is now North Ohama, that they would leave in the Soring. But they did it because they had to and because it is what their prophet told them to do. They also planted some crops and fixed wagons, etc so that come Spring they would be ready to press on to the valley.
Fast forward to the Spring of 1847. The Saints have been living in Winter Quarters and Brigham Young has decided to send a Vanguard company of all men to the Valley first. This would ensure that they would get there quickly and have enough time to plant crops for the coming winter. The Vanguard company consisted of 143 men, 3 women, 2 children and 73 wagons. They left Winter Quarters on April 5, 1847. On June 1st the company arrived at Fort Laramie and here the company was joined by some of the Mormon Battalion.
When the Saints were at Winter Quarters, the U.S. was at war with Mexico and the President of the U.S. requested that the LDS church muster 500 volunteers and send them into the army and have them march to California where most of the action was taking place. This was a big request considering the saints needed all the men they could get just to get ready for the journey next spring. They would already be sending many of their men off in the Vanguard company so to send 500 more into the army was a big deal. But Brigham Young encouraged any available men to do so because the money they would make in the army would be a great blessing.
Some of the Mormon Battalion, mostly the sick, were left at Pueblo, CO, during their march and these saints wintered their. This is how some members of the Mormon Battalion met the Vanguard company in the Spring.
Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt were the first of the Vanguard company to enter the valley on July 21st, 1846. President Young entered the Valley on the 24th and thus we celebrate Pioneer day on this day.
I was so happy to end the series just a few days before Pioneer day. I have much respect for the pioneers. They endured a lot. I think this quote by Pres. Hinckley sums it up nicely.

There have been many movements of epic proportions in the history of mankind that are worthy of remembrance and which we cannot afford to forget. But the migration to this valley before the coming of the railroad is of so vast a scope, involving so many people, and entailing so much of human suffering and sacrifice, that it must ever occupy a unique place in the annals of human history. It has all of the elements of a great epic—persecution, flight into the wilderness, hope, vision, sickness, the unrelenting cruelty of the elements, deaths numbering in the thousands, and final triumph through unspeakable courage and labor. We must never forget those who have gone before. We must never take lightly the price they paid. It is a story not only for the members of the Church of which they were members; it is a story for all the world and for all generations. (President Gordon B. Hinckley, Days of '47 Pioneer Luncheon, Salt Lake City, Utah, July 24, 1995.)