No Motels on this Trail With faith instead of radios to ease the long wearing journey, the wagon train emigrants that arrived in Salt Lake City around the middle of last century managed to survive without gasoline or the inviting motel. For these Mormon wagon trains followed Brigham Young way back in the days when Indians held powwows, and buffalo roamed the plains. Very different from the smooth concrete highways we know today were the thick grasslands and steep mountains that the pioneers built their crude trails through. No Gas stations stood by the roadside, and no painted signs announced mileage distances. When evening came the emigrants would draw their wagons into a closed circle, unhitch the oxen and cook dinner over afire. Nothing as simple as spending the night at a hotel. Through the monotonous prairies they trekked and over the rugged mountains their wagons rolled, these Mormon pioneers pursuing a legend and a dream. The legend they had gleaned from optimistic reports of early settlements in the Salt Lake valley. The dream, well, it was the age old hope for a promised land where every man has an equal chance. The above photograph shows a Mormon emigrant train coming through Echo canyon in 1860, almost at the end of its long journey. Many pioneers did not own wagons and oxen, so pushed small handcarts filled with possessions all the way to Salt Lake City. Some emigrant trains were luckier ¬than others, but all suffered untold hardships. It was the influx of such wagon and pushcart trains that people the intermountain west, until the railroad took the job over.