One of the most interesting stories of the Old West concerns a special group of immigrants, many of them Europeans and some of them from Scandinavia. They were Mormons and they were on their way to the Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.

To reach their destination, they had to travel into the United States to the western railhead, which at that time was in western Iowa. Having arrived there, however, many had no money to purchase oxen and wagons for the remainder of their journey. Therefore, between 1856 and 1860, some 3000 such immigrants put all their belongings into handcarts, which they pushed and pulled the 1,200 miles from the Missouri River, across the Great Plains and through the rocky Mountains, to Salt Lake City.

In 1926 the Norwegian-American sculptor Torleif S. Knaphus created a statue to commemorate them. He called it “Handcart Pioneers”. The statue at the Norwegian Emigrant Museum is an exact copy of the original. A larger copy was unveiled in Salt Lake city during the centennial of the Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley.

Torleif S. Knaphus was born in Øvre Vats in Rogaland in 1881. As a young student he studied under the famous Norwegian artist Harriet Backer. He joined the mormon church in Oslo and emigrated to Salt Lake city in 1906. Later he studied in Paris, Chicago and New York City. In time, Knaphus became a very well-known artist. Today his sculptures are found throughout North America. He passed away in Utah in 1965 at the age of 83.