Voyage of the Brooklyn Saints

On February 4, 1846, a party of Mormon pioneer families (the "Brooklyn Saints") began a voyage aboard the ship Brooklyn from New York City to Alta California, to establish the first Mormon colony in the West, as part of the plan by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to relocate the Mormon populace outside the United States to escape religious persecution. Two hundred thirty eight pioneers, led by Samuel Brannan, were recruited to sail around Cape Horn with heavy equipment for a large colony, plant crops, and build infrastructure to receive a larger migration that was planned to come west by wagon the following year.

Brooklyn took six months to sail 24,000 miles. It arrived at the San Francisco Bay shortly after the Mexican–American War commenced in California, just as US forces were gaining control of the area. Brooklyn's seventy male passengers were immediately pressed into service, delaying the construction of the planned settlement.

Initially, food and shelter was scarce, but soon many acres of land in the San Joaquin Valley were fenced and planted with wheat, and a grain mill was erected. Eight nearby towns were founded, connected by ferries, roads and bridges. The Brooklyn Saints were instrumental in building San Francisco, which, as other American settlers arrived, grew into "the great emporium of the Pacific".

In 1847, the Brooklyn colonists learned that instead of the main body of Latter-day Saints coming to California, Brigham Young had chosen the Salt Lake Valley as the new center place for the Mormon population. Although uniting with the rest of the Mormon populace was still much desired, the Brooklyn settlers lacked resources to undertake an 800-mile overland journey and start their lives over.

Within three months, funding for a second migration became possible when gold was discovered at Coloma (January 24, 1848). Brannan publicized the rich finds locally in his newspaper and sent riders with a special edition back east, spurring the California Gold Rush. He operated lucrative trading posts for miners, while most of the Brooklyn pioneers worked placer mines along the American River. With the gold they unearthed, by July 1849, about half of the Brooklyn pioneers outfitted wagons and headed over the Sierras to Salt Lake City on a new route built by veterans of the Mormon Battalion. Their Mormon Emigrant Trail through Carson Pass became the main route west for gold seekers to reach the mining regions.

In 1851, church leaders from Utah recruited about half of the remaining Brooklyn pioneers to build another Mormon colony at San Bernardino, California. Two Brooklyn Saints went to the Sandwich Islands, while most of the rest returned to their lives in the eastern states.