Pres. Hinckley keeps rapid pace, dedicates visitor facilities
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From the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the Missouri, President Gordon B. Hinckley on the same day dedicated a park in Nauvoo, Ill., and a visitors center at Winter Quarters, Neb., both designed to tell the epic story of the Mormon migration to the West.
As the prophet continued his rapid pace of getting out among the members of the Church, he dedicated the Nauvoo Pioneer Memorial Park on the afternoon of April 18. The park includes the area on Parleys Street from the Seventies Hall down to the Mississippi River, where the pioneer exodus of 1846 began. That evening President Hinckley dedicated the new Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters, more than 300 miles away, in the Omaha suburb of Florence. In between he was feted at a dinner in connection with the visitors center dedication and met with a number of news representatives at a media briefing in the visitors center.At the news conference, President Hinckley said: "I never go to Nauvoo that I am not sobered very deeply. I never come here and look at that monument over there
Avard Fairbanks' monument in the Winter Quarters pioneer cemetery that depicts a father and mother sorrowfully burying a child in a shallow graveT, that I am not deeply touched. I never get over it. I think it is ingrained very deeply in me a respect and love and appreciation for those who 150 years ago moved over this trail."
The following morning, on April 19, the prophet spoke to a vast crowd at Miller Park, where a wagon train to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the pioneer trek was forming. The train will travel the 1,000-plus miles to the Salt Lake Valley during the next three months. After his speech, in which he bid goodbye to those who are making the re-enactment trek, he left for Elko, Nev., where he participated in a regional conference on April 19-20.
President Hinckley's visit to the two sites of early Church history was a busy time. But once again it emphasizes his great love for that chapter in Mormon history, a chapter that will be celebrated worldwide this year as the Church commemorates the sesquicentennial of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley.
