Though well supplied with the scientific instruments of explorers, Brigham Young's 1847 pioneer company charted no new routes to the Great Salt Lake Valley.

According to historian Andrew L. Neff, the Latter-day Saints were neither trailblazers nor pathfinders. They were homemakers.That objective explains why they equipped themselves with such things as telescopes, sextants, barometers, compasses, and spy glasses. The vanguard company hoped to chart the trail westward from Winter Quarters to make it easier for thousands of waiting emigrant families to follow.

The pioneers hoped to improve upon John C. Fremont's maps of his 1843-44 government exploring trip in the West. Already, Fremont had corrected popular commercial maps.

Elder Orson Pratt, skilled in mathematics, was astronomer and scientist for the Mormon pathmarkers. He took regular measurements of latitude and longitude, recorded temperatures, and made observations on flora, fauna, and topography. The instruments he used arrived in Winter Quarters on April 13, 1847, just three days before the party of 143 men, three women and two children headed out on the 111-day trip.

According to Pratt's journal, Elder John Taylor had purchased the fine brass and wood instruments in England at the request of Brigham Young. He delivered two sextants, one circle of reflection, two artificial horizons, two barometers, several thermometers, telescopes and other items.

Pratt's use of the instruments is reflected in the following typical journal entry for May 25, 1847:

"A hard frost last night, and at 5:30 o'clock the barometer stood 26:350; attached thermometer, 40 degrees, detached thermometer, 35.8 degrees. The morning is calm with a beautiful clear sky. We traveled five and a quarter miles, when I halted a few minutes to take the sun's meridian which gave the latitude 41 degrees, 41 minutes, 46 seconds. I here took a lunar distance for the longitude; also by an imperfect trigonometrical measurement with the sextant."

Just the day before he made these observations, a party of Sioux Indians had visited the camp looking for food. "The old chief amused himself very much," according to William Clayton, "by looking at the moon through a telescope for as much as twenty minutes."

Others who gazed through looking glasses were company leaders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and camp historian William Clayton. With their spyglasses they watched for Indians and buffalo and scouted the trail.

In early May, Brigham Young lost his spyglass while rounding up some cows scattered among a herd of buffalo. The glass was important enough for three men to spend five hours the next morning retracing the route until they located the missing treasure.

The recovered spyglass, together with Heber C. Kimball's own initialed glass and several of Orson Pratt's instruments, will be part of the new Church history exhibit scheduled for completion in late spring at the Museum of Church History and Art across from Temple Square.

The historic instruments will be seen in a setting with a relief map of the 1847 trek, accompanied by quotations from diaries explaining their use.

The pioneers' goal of making a new map was not realized. But William Clayton's 1848 Emigrant's Guide accomplished the same purpose. It contains Clayton's measured distances and his comments on the countryside, plus information on latitudes, longitudes and altitudes provided by Orson Pratt.

Pratt's sextants, telescope, barometers, and protractor now preserved at the Church museum carry manufacturers' names from London, England. In Salt Lake City in the early 1850s, Pratt set up an observatory in the southeast corner of Temple Square and installed a much larger telescope made by William Wurdemann of Washington D.C.

A quarter century later, John Taylor, then Church president, donated the English-made pioneer telescope to the University of Utah.