Far West, then on to John Whitmer's grave

The area that would have become the Far West Temple is marked by four massive cornerstones and enclosed by a wrought iron fence.

Memo to self: Re-read Fawn M. Brodie's 1945 "No man knows my history: The Life of Joseph Smith." I dated the copy I now have (Second Edition: Revised and Enlarged) 10 January 1989. So it's been more than 16 years. I've spent the morning reading reviews and retrospectives of Brodie's blockbuster, as opposed to doing something useful, so might as well return to the real thing.

Like it or not, "No man's" publication was the definitive 20th century event in Mormon studies. Mormons hated it. Non-Mormons loved it. The truth lies somewhere in between. It's helped to shape nearly everything written since about Mormon history by Mormon and non-Mormon alike. Besides, it is so wonderfully written that it reads like a novel (which some critics have suggested it is).

Memo to others: If you're going to become a Mormon trekker, buy the latest version of Becky Cardon Smith's "The LDS Family Travel Guide." It's updated annually. In addition to telling you how to get to places, it helps to see the high and low spots of Mormon history through Mormon eyes. And that's useful. For the Midwest, you want the "Independence, Nauvoo and Winter Quarters" version. There are other versions for other regions.

After dusting myself off, I left the Far West Cultural Center, wound my way back to pavement and headed about four miles straight north to the site of Far West. The site is high prairie, empty now save for the LDS Temple Site memorial and a Community of Christ (formerly RLDS) church off to the southwest.

The Mormons began arriving here, in Caldwell County, soon after the county was created for them during December of 1836 after much unpleasantness in Jackson and Clay counties to the south. Far West was designated the county seat and remained such until after the Mormon expulsion, when the more centrally located Kingston was created.

As planned, Far West would have rivaled any Missouri city in size and scope. Originally headquarters of only the Missouri Stake it became the headquarters of the entire church during the spring of 1838 when financial and other troubles ripped apart the Mormon community and church headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, leaving the temple there in dissident hands. Joseph Smith and family fled here, to Zion, during March of 1838.

As Mormon immigrants continued to flood into Caldwell, then adjoining counties, tension mounted and erupted in what we now call the Mormon War. The surrender of Far West on 2 November 1838 marked the end of the 19th century Mormon dream in northwest Missouri. Joseph Smith left the city under arrest and a majority of the Saints fled, coming to ground again after a year or so had passed in Nauvoo. Then, Far West vanished for more than a century.

But beneath the prairie, the cornerstones laid for a temple to replace the building lost in Kirtland remained. Latter-day Saints purchased the temple site during the early 1970s, excavated the cornerstones and developed the current memorial.

It is a wonderful, quiet place with broad prairie views in all directions. I first visited here with my parents during the early 1970s, not long after development began. It's been interesting to watch it develop, and some Mormons expect that church authorities might someday authorize construction of a temple here to fulfill the original dream. I rather hope not.

A fenced and carefully landscaped enclave is about the size the temple would have been. The cornerstones now have glass covers and explanatory plaques. Huge stone panels at the east end repeat revelations relevant to the the temple and the Missouri experience.

There almost always are Mormon pilgrims here, if you wait a bit, but it's rarely crowded (except when a tour bus comes in off Interstate 35 some miles to the west). I shared my visit during early August with an extremely pleasant young family from Utah, making its first trip via Independence, Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman to Nauvoo. It's been said (inaccurately) that Mormons have little theology but much history. What they do have, is an intense consciousness of and interest in history, and the parents in this instance gathered their children on the curved benches before the revelation panels, read the inscriptions, read accounts of what had transpired here from a guide book, then visited each point of interest within the temple in turn. And finally, I fumbled with their camera so they would have a photograph of the entire family together within the temple enclave to take away with them.

They were headed north from Far West to Adam-ondi-Ahman, where Joseph Smith declared following a revelation Adam had lived after expulsion from the Garden of Eden (at Independence) and where "Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the Prophet."

I headed east instead, to Kingston to visit the grave of Book of the Mormon witness and Mormon historian John Whittmer, then finally to Haun's Mill.

Still on the trail (Mormon, that is)

Please note that the Far West Cultural Center no longer exits as a physical place. The Far West Cultural Center Web site, which contains a wealth of resource information, still is available.

This is the welcome sign at the Far West Cultural Center southwest of Mirabile, Caldwell County, Missouri.

Time flies when you're having fun. August began with a week of vacation and will end the same way as we all scramble to comply with our corporate master's not-so-benign "use-it-or-lose-it" time off policy before the end of the fiscal year.

Any trek down the Mormon Trail, and that's where I've been this summer, leads me inevitably to a research project that's been ongoing for many years: Trying to figure out the circumstances that resulted in the southeasterly townships of Monroe County, Iowa --- Pleasant, Mantua and Urbana --- becoming from 1843 until as late as 1866, when the last of the refugees arrived, an enclave for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nearly all of whom abandoned that pioneering and consumately American faith.

These "refugees" range from my own great-great-great-grandparents, William and Miriam (Trescott) Miller and their large family, to Lucius Augustus Snow, brother of Lorenzo Snow (fifth president of the Mormon church) and of Eliza Roxey Snow, a towering figure in the church and a plural wife of both Joseph Smith, the prophet, and of Brigham Young, the "American Moses." (Many members of the Community of Christ --- formerly Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints --- maintain that Joseph Smith neither promoted or practiced plural marriage and therefore deny that Eliza was married to the prophet.)

I've been focused during August on two apparent key figures in this business, Robert Rathbun (early Mormon high priest and blacksmith) and his brother-in-law, George Miller, brother of my ancestor, William. Both died in Iowa: Robert during 1856 at Iowaville in Van Buren County and George, during 1875 in Mantua Township, Monroe County. If either could speak, many mysteries would be solved. Both apparently were pioneering Baptist preachers in Ohio who followed another towering LDS figure, Sidney Rigdon, into the emerging Disciples of Christ (or Campbellite) fold and then launched themselves into the early Mormon church. Robert's son, Hiram, maintained that his father and uncle (George Miller) were instrumental in Rigdon's conversion --- but that is a claim that I suspect would be disputed.

Whatever the case, the key events that led to the Monroe County settlement began in Caldwell County, Missouri, during the Mormon War of 1838, so that was where I headed first during early August.

My first stop, 80 or so miles south of Lamoni on Interstate 35 and after a left turn at the Wallace State Park exit onto narrow, twisting and scenic state roads, was the Far West Cultural Center just outside the tiny Caldwell County town of Mirabile.

Enter the cultural center gate and climb a hill to the Wash House visitor center and gift shop. As I said, everything here is very plain. The Wash House lacks even screen doors, so wasps were tormenting (although not stinging) both the guide and her guests.The 1837 log cabin is up the hill behind the Wash House.

If you're planning a visit, it's useful to keep in mind that the Far West Cultural Center is more of dream than reality (although they do have a wonderful Web site). Located back in the woods southwest of Mirabile off twisting gravel roads, it is very plain, consisting of the bedragled remains of the 1837 Charles C. Rich log house (concealed for more than a century within what appeared to be a far later farm house), the Wash House gift shop and visitor center (an old wash house moved to the site) and a few surrounding acres.

These are the bedragled remains of the log house Mormon pioneer Charles Rich built for his family during 1837. For nearly a century, it was concealed at the heart of a newer-looking farm house and was discovered by accident. Most traces of later additions have been removed. The metal frame supports a canvas that protects the remains during inclement weather. Are there plans to restore the cabin? No. The Cultural Center intends only to stabilize and protect what remains.

The log house probably is the only remaining Mormon structure in Caldwell County, set aside specifically for Mormons during late 1836 and site of Far West, which Joseph Smith and church leaders envisioned briefly as the equivalent of later church headquarters cities, Nauvoo, Illinois, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Digs at the log house site confirmed that it had been built there rather than moved from another location. Two notching patterns on the logs indicated the cabin had been raised slightly at some point to allow insertion of a hardwood floor above the original dirt. The cabin was built using "V" notches, evident here where the top logs join at the corner. When the cabin was raised, new layers of logs using dove-tailed notching (evident on the corner link between the lower logs) were added.

And the cultural center is a logical dream because there is no other interpretive or visitor center in Caldwell County, of great importance in Saintly history, and it does seem like there should be one.

But as I said, it's very plain --- and that seemed to disconcert an LDS family there at the same time I was, fresh from the expensively restored and carefully polished Nauvoo. It could be a cultural shock to come from "there" to "here," but that rustic site near Mirabile probably gives a more accurate view of what life was like for our pioneering ancestors than Nauvoo does.

So I loved it --- poking around the log cabin remains, peering down the hand-dug, fieldstone-lined well, contemplating the locust trees planted by Mormon pioneers because they grew quickly and produced needed wood. And in the "Wash House," I found and bought a coy of Clark V. Johnson's and Ronald E. Romig's "An Index to Early Caldwell County, Missouri, Land Records," which helped to make my day.

From the cultural center, I twisted my way back to Mirabile, then north a few miles to the site of Far West itself and the LDS-owned and maintained temple site memorial.