The Neville Handcart (On Exhibit at the L.D.S. Church History Museum)

In 1974 the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. began to look for authentic artifacts of the American Migration to the West. Finding a covered wagon and pioneer clothing wasn’t the problem. The real project was documenting its actual use by real American pioneers crossing the Great Plains before the railroad was completed. As their research uncovered the real story of that migration, it became apparent that an authentic handcart must be found to document the saga of those pioneers too poor to use a wagon and ox team.

Meanwhile, the Huffakers of Woodruff, Utah had a problem. When their father Shelby died in 1959 he left in his old shed the handcart used by his great grandparents when they came across the plains. Clearly it was much too fragile an object to last forever. Yet, it was used every year in the Woodruff Celebration of the Fourth of July as their hometown pioneer artifact. Could it be possible that this was the last handcart in existence? Wasn’t there a place it could be housed to preserve and also display it for all those interested in the pioneer experience?

(The handcart that was used by William and Rachel Stiff (Neville) sat in the Huffaker’s shed for many years, it is no in the L.D.S. Church History Museum)

For at time it looked as if there wasn’t a single handcart which hadn’t been taken apart for firewood. But somehow the Smithsonian Institute learned of the one in Huffaker’s shed. Soon it was on its way back across the plains, winging its way high speed over the Wyoming hills on which it had bogged in sand and rock, and on to the Washington D.C. exhibit for hundreds of thousands of tourists to see, to wonder at, to think how it would feel to load all one’s belongings into a cart and push it into the sagebrush and sand, through streams and rivers, across rocks and over mountains.

When the temporary exhibit was taken down, the Smithsonian Institute returned the handcart to its owners who donated it to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It became a permanent display in the current Museum of Church History on West Temple across from Temple Square. Perhaps if one believed in ghosts, he would see a little old man and woman walking the sagebrush hills of Wyoming beside the once new handcart which was undoubtedly also pushed by their two grown sons.