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SALT LAKE CITY — A newly redesigned website allows Internet users to learn more about their pioneer heritage, including accessing journals, photos and major events of their ancestors' lives.
The Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel website, a joint effort between the Church History Library and FamilySearch, houses information about pioneers who were unknown until recently, according to a press release from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Since the website's birth, historians have been able to reconcile and better understand the pioneer's trek west. Currently, the website offers facts about more than 57,000 pioneers in 370 pioneer companies and "thousands of original trail excerpts that are authoritatively documented," according to the press release.
"This is an extremely significant database," Church History Library Director Keith Erekson said in a statement. "It reveals so much about individual pioneers and their experiences, but it also offers fresh new insights about their collective experience."
Since the redesign, users can submit family photographs of pioneers, link to digital copies of Internet sources and access new interesting articles and funny stories from the trail.
This is an extremely significant database. It reveals so much about individual pioneers and their experiences, but it also offers fresh new insights about their collective experience.
–Keith Erekson, Church History Library Director
An LDS social media campaign titled #IAmAPioneer will feature Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel. This campaign is designed to encourage people to recognize themselves as modern-day pioneers and share their stories with future generations.
The website can be accessed through either FamilySearch.org/pioneers, where users' family tree "will be polled matches in the updated pioneer database," or history.lds.org/overlandtravels, where one can look through information about known pioneers and companies and other information relating to this time in history.
Visit history.lds.org/section/pioneers for accounts about pioneers from all over the world.
