Official Trail Logo

NPS protected image/use requires permission by the Superintendent. Please contact us using the link above to request permission

The official logo for the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail is used on signs for the trails' routes, to mark trail sites and segments, on official trails publications and other materials, and for other official trails uses. The logo represents the Mormon Pioneer Trail and all trail partners working toward the goals and objectives of the Comprehensive Management and Use Plan for the trail.

Official Logo Use

The National Park Service encourages the appropriate use of the logo by trail partners. However, the trail logo is viewed by law as a protected federal mark and cannot be used without the permission of the Superintendent of the National Trails office. For permission to use the logo, please contact us.

Information

From Chad Orton, Church Historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, provided for the reason a Bison skull is used in Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail Logo:

"While the NPS logos for the Oregon and California trails—a wagon and a yoke—seem self-evident as to their significance, the NPS logo featuring a buffalo skull for the Mormon Pioneer Trail is less so. The advance [Brigham Young led] company would frequently leave messages for those traveling behind them along the Mormon Pioneer Trail in 1847. [These messages] let them know they were on the right trail and what the advance company had learned. The best known of these was the famous buffalo skull left near present-day Fort Laramie. [It] was placed on the day the [advance] company crossed the North Platte and began traveling on the south side along what became the Emigrant Trail [Mormon Pioneer Trail]. This is the basis for the logo."