Stephen Sorensen, the trail coordinator for the reenactment company, said the idea was born out of the Utah Centennial Wagon Train that traveled north to south through the state last year as part of Utah's centennial celebration. For the Mormon Trail Wagon Train we wanted it to be more the just a trail ride. We wanted to have an authentic pioneer camp. The reenactment company is under the Heritage Gateway, a non-profit corporation through which monies are collected to fund the project.
Funding is ongoing, as is sponsorship.
Every Saturday throughout the course of the wagon train trip, four to five new families come to spend a week in the reenactment camp, interpreting how pioneers lived on the trail 150 years ago. The families sleep in raw canvas tents in bedrolls consisting of wool blankets and homemade quilts. They prepare meals in the outdoor community kitchen by following period recipes and cooking foods in iron pots over a fire fueled by wood or dried animal chips. The fact that the buffalo chip fire actually smells nice was a surprise. In Nebraska the train camped in a pasture.