Last updated: January 16, 2023
Place
Mount Pisgah Historic Site
NPS Photo
Quick Facts
Location:
1741 Mt Pisgah Rd, Thayer, IA 50254
Significance:
Mount Pisgah was a temporary settlement established by the Mormon Pioneer 1846 Vanguard Company to provide for the Latter-day Saints that would follow.During the winter of 1846-1847, Mount Pisgah became one other item- a place of sorrow as dozens perished from malnutrition and disease.
MANAGED BY:
Three separate entities, two open to the public and one privately owned.
Mt. Pisgah was a semi-permanent settlement or waystation on the Mormon Pioneer Trail located in southcentral Iowa between Nauvoo, Illinois, and the Missouri River. Parley Pratt was sent ahead on the trail to locate waystations for the saints who didn’t have enough food or were sick. The largest of these was Mt. Pisgah, near the banks of a branch of the Grand River
The Mormon pioneer Vanguard Company arrived here in mid-May 1846, on the edge of the United States’ settled land. With a nearby spring for drinking water, Mount Pisgah was an ideal location for a second camp and resting place. A group of men were sent ahead of the companies to plow a great field, plant seeds, and build shelters for those that would be left at this location. In the first four days these men had planted nearly 1000 acres of crops. They planted corn, buckwheat, beans, potatoes, peas, cucumbers, pumpkins, and squash in a great field protected by a split rail fence. Over 2000 Mormon travelers lived temporarily in dugouts and cabins at the Mt. Pisgah waystation. Some stayed for a matter of months while others called Pisgah home for several years.
The waystation was available for Mormon Travelers between 1846-1852. Many of the new settlers never were able to leave this site for their new home in the west and are buried in unmarked graves at the site. The site is marked today by a monument which was placed there in Fall of 1888 and was to memorialize the more than three hundred saints who lost their lives at Mt. Pisgah.
The site is now a mix of privately and publicly owned lands. The county park area has wayside exhibits, historical markers, a monument, and a pioneer cemetery. Much of the village site itself is located on adjacent private pasture lands, which the owner opens to interested visitors and tour groups. Traces of wagon roads and outlines building footings are visible in places.
Visiting Mt. Pisgah today permits you to feel and visualize all that Parley Pratt when he trotted his horse down this slope for the first time on May 1846. These were his words in 1846,
“Riding about three or four miles through beautiful prairies, I came suddenly to some round and sloping hills, grassy and crowned with beautiful groves of timber, while alternate open groves and forests seemed blended in all the beauty and harmony of an English park, while beneath and beyond, on the west, rolled a main branch of Grand River”.
Site Information
Location (1741 Mt Pisgah Rd, Thayer, IA 50254)
Available Facilities
Currently, Mt. Pisgah contains three sections:
1. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints monument and cemetery: open to the public.
2. Mt. Pisgah County Park: restrooms, parking, and a picnic area; open to the public.
3. The majority of the site is a private ranch whose owner gives frequent tours.
Safety Considerations