Omaha Nebraska Temple and Visitors Center, Winter Quarters

Traveling to Kansas City to visit Ryan and Hannah, and their new baby Madeline, I made a detour trip to Florence, Nebraska. Florence is a Suburb to Omaha. I crossed over the Missouri River on the Mormon Bridge, and found the visitors center, Temple, and Graveyard.



Statue to the memory of those who died at "Winter Qtrs", Florence, Nebraska.



Winter Quarters was once a refuge for thousands of Latter-day Saint pioneers en route to the Salt Lake Valley. Between June 1846 and October 1848 alone, some 2,000 Church members died at Winter Quarters due to heavy storms, inadequate provisions and shelter, scurvy, malaria, and the Saints’ weakened condition after being driven from Nauvoo or crossing the seas from Europe. Winter Quarters became a place that tested the faith of thousands who struggled through sickness and wilderness to reach their eventual destination in the Salt Lake Valley.





These are gravestones of recent deaths (within 100 years) of members of the LDS church in the Omaha area. Today their are only a dozen or so gravestones visable. All but one gravestone, of Amy Porter from the early settlers of Winter Qtrs, were gone by the time the church began the restoration of the cemetary. The Gravestone of Amy Porter is now preserved and found in the Visitors center across the street from the graveyard.
The cemetary was mapped out using Amy Porter Gravestone as a reference point for all of the other graves.





Omaha Nebraska Temple - Fall of 2011, as seen through the barren trees.







Visitor Center Missionaries.




Temple as viewed from the Visitors Center.




Sis. Atkin from the Morningside Stake, St.George Utah, with Sydne Davies