Handcart Sculpture

(music)

[Narrator] Westward expansion in the United States was widespread in the mid-1800s. Settlers traveled long distances seeking land ownership, economic opportunity and religious freedom. One well-documented trek west involved members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, often called Mormons. They journeyed from Illinois to Utah along a now famous path.

[Jodi Evans, Registrar State Historical Society of Iowa ] The so-called Mormon Trail, which was the route that many Mormon families took to get to their new life in Salt Lake City, went straight across the southern part of Iowa.

[Narrator] Between 1856 and 1860, about 3,000 Mormon travelers crossed Iowa on foot, pulling handcarts, a simple solution for families who could not afford wagons or animals. In 1926, their journey to Salt Lake City, Utah was memorialized.

[Evans] This artifact is a sculpture entitled "Handcart Pioneer", by Norwegian artist Torleif Knaphus. It depicts a man and his wife and is family and their handcart as they walked across the country to a new life in Salt Lake City. This sculpture was cast in I believe the mid-1980s, taken from a life-sized original that is now in Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. This casting in bronze was made by making a mold of that original sculpture and then pouring in molten bronze, resulting in the sculpture you see here.

[Narrator] Donated to the State Historical Society of Iowa in 1988, this sculpture is one of about 20 bronze castings of Knaphus' work. It's almost three feet tall and about four feet long.

[Evans] The man is pulling the handcart, the wife is helping with one hand on the cart. There are children in the handcart and a small child is pushing from behind.

The handcart appears to be going through a muddy place. And so, all the family members would have to help to keep this handcart moving.

[Narrator] Sculptor Torleif Knaphus was an accomplished young artist in his native country of Norway when he converted to the Mormon faith.

[Evans] Torleif Knaphus was born in Norway in 1881. And in 1905, he converted to the Mormon faith through the work of missionaries to Norway.

In 1905, he moved to Salt Lake City and opened his studio and dedicated his life to creating artworks for the church. Many, many temples have works of his on their grounds.

[Narrator] Capturing moments in history through art has been part of the human experience for tens of thousands of years. Compared to ancient works, this artifact is a relatively young memento of the past. But it still preserves a significant moment in our nation's history.

[Evans] This sculpture of a family moving across the United States speaks to the resiliency of people wanting a better life and their sheer gumption of going after it and moving their family by whatever means from one place to another so that they could have a better life.