Citing the courage, loyalty and sacrifice of the members of the Mormon Battalion, President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated a monument in their honor Saturday, Dec. 14 in downtown Tucson.

"It is a very significant thing which you have done here," President Hinckley said, speaking to between 2,000-3,000 people gathered in the El Presidio Park for the dedication. "Tucson was one of

the Mormon Battalion'sT very important stops. The erection of this monument becomes a memorial to their courage, to their valor and their confidence in their leader, to their absolutely dogged marching, marching, marching ever westward, to build a road to California."In the dedicatory prayer, President Hinckley said that although the men of the battalion are long since gone, no one can dispute the depth of their sacrifice - "their terrible suffering on pitiful rations, their lack of water, their exposure to the heat and the cold of these desert areas, their backbreaking labors in cutting a road through the mountains and their eventual arrival at San Diego.

"May [the monument] stand through all generations yet to come as a memorial to their names and as a reminder of their great sacrifice," he said. "May all who pass this way be constrained to pause and think of these great men of another generation."

President Hinckley left Salt Lake City the morning of Dec. 14 for his whirlwind, one-day Arizona visit. (See separate story on this page.) While in Tuscon, the prophet spoke to missionaries from the Arizona Tucson Mission and was the featured speaker at the Boy Scout Mormon Battalion Encampment Devotional. President Hinckley later dedicated the Mormon Battalion Monument. Before flying home to Salt Lake City that evening, he also addressed the youth during a fireside.

"I just want to compliment all who had anything to do with the erection of this monument, which commemorates the coming of the battalion to Tucson, which was then a sleepy little village of four or five hundred people," said President Hinckley. "The battalion had traveled all the way from Council Bluffs and they were in very bad condition. They had come without water much of the time. They had gone without food much of the time. When they came here they replenished their supplies, but they did not last very long."

President Hinckley said that on Christmas day, the battalion marched 18 miles up the Gila River. "Twenty-three of them died in those months. It is a wonder to me that there were not many more. . . . When they were sick they just kept pulling, marching ever westward."

Frank McAllister, vice chairman of the Tucson Mormon Battalion Monument Foundation - the group which developed the monument idea and raised $200,000 to cover the cost of the monument, which was gifted to the city - spoke at the dedication program and also reviewed the historic trek of the battalion.

He related that the U.S. 101st Infantry "Mormon" Battalion, comprising nearly 500 men, plus 80 women and children, left Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 20, 1846, with the blessings of President Brigham Young. The men had been called into action to assist Col. Stephen Kearney, U.S. Army Commander of the West, in the war against Mexico, and President Young saw this as an opportunity for the Saints.

Five months later and after covering nearly 1,500 miles of harsh, unforgiving trackless territory, the weary group, now reduced to 397 men and four women, neared the Tucson Presidio, a small Mexican settlement and garrison.

Brother McAllister pointed out that exactly 150 years ago, on Dec. 16, 1846, near the site of the monument, Capt. Jefferson Hunt directed Pvt. Christopher Layton to post an American flag to signify that the battalion had been there. This was to be the first U.S. flag flown over what would later become Arizona.

The monument immortalizes Hunt and Layton as they prepared to raise the flag. Teodoro Ramirez, a highly respected Mexican townsman and merchant at the Presidio, is the third figure on the monument and is shown trading goods with the men. Brother McAllister said Ramirez also represents "the kindness and courtesy and the generosity of the people of Tucson shown to the Mormon Battalion on that day."

Two days later the battalion continued on their way, reaching San Diego on Jan. 29, 1847. Their trek became the longest and most arduous infantry march in U.S. history. The trail they forged to the Pacific Ocean would later become a train route and an interstate highway, and would be instrumental in the settlement of what would become the southwestern United States.

Sculptor Clyde Ross Morgan, an internationally renowned artist from Sedona, Ariz., was commissioned to design the monument.

Richard Burton, chairman of the foundation, said the dedication marks the culmination of eight years of effort and that "faith and prayers were answered" in making the monument possible.