In April of 1847, Brigham Young and his advance party left Winter Quarters on the Missouri River and trekked to the Great Salt Lake Basin, arriving July 24, 1847. One hundred and fifty years later, this journey was reenacted with covered wagons and handcarts in an event called The Great Trek. In 1997, the Max Pitcher family of Alpine, Utah, and other modern pioneers from This is the Place Park in Salt Lake City pushed and pulled a handcart 1000 miles from Omaha to Salt Lake City. Their route followed the Platte River Valley for 600 miles across Nebraska, through the Sandhills of Nebraska and the sagebrush plains of Wyoming, then along the original Mormon Trail by the Sweetwater River to Martin's Cove and Rocky Ridge, sites of early handcart disasters in 1856. They continued over the Continental Divide at South Pass, across the Green River Basin to Fort Bridger, and finally over the Rocky Mountains into the Salt Lake Basin.