Fleeing religious and political hostility and persecution, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois, in February 1846 and traveled 265 agonizing miles in four months through winter cold, spring rains, axle-deep mud, exhaustion, and a lack of provisions before stopping to winter near the Missouri River. In the spring of 1847, after time to recover and prepare, 143 men, three women, and two boys set out across Nebraska toward a new Zion on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, following a rough trace used earlier by explorers, fur traders, and missionaries and beginning a western route later used by thousands of other Mormons and Forty-niners. These first pioneers established ferries, campsites, bridges, and supply depots along the way, and the Mormon Trail stretched across mid-America from the Iowa prairie over the Great Plains of Nebraska, through South Pass, Wyoming, and down the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah. Forced from their homes along the Mississippi, the Mormons began arriving in the Missouri River Valley in June 1846, and by September nearly 4000 refugees had settled in for the winter at Winter Quarters, laying out blocks and streets and building cabins, a grist mill, and a town hall. Winter Quarters had two main streets with 38 blocks, each containing 20 lots with crude shelters, tents, dugouts, and log cabins, and its 22 by 32 foot town hall, the Council House, served as the social center where gatherings, religious meetings, and dances briefly eased the cold and misery of winter. The one-and-a-half-story log structure had wooden floors, fireplaces, and windows, and a nearby cemetery holding the graves of several hundred emigrants testified to the harsh winter and crude living conditions they endured while waiting for spring and the chance to continue west.