Celebrating Zion: Pioneers in Mormon popular historical expression

From 1846 to 1869, eighty thousand Mormons took wagons and handcarts across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains to perform the Western Hemisphere's largest ever religious migration. This dissertation examines how Mormons celebrate this pioneer experience as an identity-defining touchstone of their American-born religion. In the 1990s, Latter-day Saints still remember their precursors' flight from persecution in folklore; art; numerous museums and monuments; as well as annual plays, pageants, and parades throughout the West. The most significant uniquely-Mormon holiday is Pioneer Day--the yearly July 24th celebration of Brigham Young's arrival in the Salt Lake Valley.;While several studies have recounted the story of the Mormon Exodus itself, my dissertation will be the first to examine the historical development, geographic distribution, and cultural function of Latter-day Saint remembrances of their pioneer past as Mormondom has responded to the challenges of rapid global growth and increased contact with the "Gentile" world.;In so doing, this project suggests a new area of scholarly inquiry--the study of sacred migrations or "trek studies"--as a useful tool in understanding the history and identity-forming processes undergone by many peoples.