page_title: Mormon Battalion
section_title: Historic sites and monuments
hierarchical_section_title: Mormon Battalion / Historic sites and monuments
caption_attribution_description: English: Mormon Battalion memorial, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego, California. According to the Veterans Administration, the memorial was erected in 1998 [1].
context_page_description: The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in United States military history in federal service, having been recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. The volunteers served from July 1846 – July 1847 during the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saint men, led by Mormon company officers commanded by regular U.S. Army officers. During its service, the battalion made a grueling march of nearly 2,100 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California.
  NOTE: The numbers provided above include non-military persons who were merely camp followers; family members, officers servants, laundresses and other camp followers. The original muster and pay rolls have been located at the National Archives and analysis of names, offices and service are underway. A scholarly paper is being prepared to share the documented Army records giving the most accurate number for Battalion membership. In addition, recent research has identified more persons who traveled with the Battalion but who were not officially part of the military unit.
context_section_description: Historic sites associated with the battalion include:
  Mormon Battalion Historic Site, a visitor center in the Old Town neighborhood of San Diego.
  Box Canyon historical site, in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, San Diego County, on Highway S-2, approximately 8.7 miles south of Highway 78 (Scissors Crossing). (GPS location: N33.0152, W116.4429) Here the Battalion cut a road into the rocky side of a canyon which was otherwise impassable to wagons. Remnants of the road cut into the rock wall are still visible.
  Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, the largest bas-relief military monument in the United States, on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles, dedicated in 1958 at the site of historic Fort Moore built by the Mormon Battalion in 1847, decommissioned in 1853.
  Mormon Battalion Mountain, a low-lying mountain within San Bernardino County's Glen Helen Regional Park at the mouth of Cajon Canyon, where in April 1847 a detachment of the Mormon Battalion arrived from Los Angeles with the assignment to set up camp, build a fort or redoubt and guard the pass from Indian raids. A historic marker within the park commemorates this event.
  Mormon Rocks, northwest of San Bernardino, California, in the Cajon Pass, just west of Interstate 15 on State Route 138. Near Mormon Rocks, the first wagon road was blazed through the Cajon Pass in 1848 by 25 veteran Battalion soldiers, with the wagon of Captain Daniel C. Davis, wife Susan and son Danny in their journey to the Salt Lake Valley.
  The Mormon Battalion Monument at the Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City, Utah.
  The Mormon Battalion Memorial in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, Point Loma, San Diego, erected in 1998.
  A sculpture of an infantryman of the battalion by Edward J. Fraughton erected in 1969 at Presidio Park, San Diego, which is pictured above.
  A large bronze sculpture of a meeting between the Mormon Battalion and Mexican El Presidio leadership sits in the Northwest portion of El Presidio Park, adjacent to the Pima County Courthouse in downtown Tucson, Arizona. Although their nations were at war, the military contingents from both nations were able to avert armed confrontation in part via this peaceful meeting of representatives of both armies.
  The Mormon Battalion Monument in Sandoval County, New Mexico outside of Santa Fe. It is a tower of stone with a wagon wheel on top. A bronze plaque marks the contributions of the battalion and lays out the map of their travels across the southwest.
  A stone monument with a bronze plaque that describes the details of the Mormon Battalion is located on the grounds of the Kaw Mission State Historic Site in Council Grove, Kansas. This is the site at which the Battalion camped while traveling along the Santa Fe Trail. Council Grove had a Government Blacksmith shop stationed along the Santa Fe Trail. Camp followers John and Jane Boscow (Burschough) died while at Council Grove and were buried not far from the later Kaw Mission Site.
  Monuments relating to the battalion are also located in New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas and Colorado, and trail markers have been placed on segments of the battalion route between Mount Pisgah (Iowa) and San Diego. Additionally, there is a monument to the battalion on the grounds of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in Oceanside, CA and the Utah State Capital grounds.
caption: Mormon Battalion memorial, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery
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