Roger BROWN

                   Mount Pisgah, Union County, Iowa
Mount Pisgah was a temporary way station in southern Iowa for members of the LDS Church
traveling west to Winter Quarters from Nauvoo.  Mount Pisgah was established in southern Iowa as a temporary way station for Mormon emigrants who were crossing the Plains from 1846-1852.
The picturesque setting was a welcome to many of the expelled Saints. Ezra T. Benson described
Mount Pisgah as the first place that I felt willing in my heart to stay since I left Nauvoo.1
Shortly after arriving, Indian Chief Pied Riche welcomed the Saints to the area and described
how their people had also been driven from their home in Michigan and felt that they must help
one another, and the Great Spirit will help us both.  Because one suffers and does not deserve it is no reason he shall suffer always. We may live to see it right yet. If we do not our children will.However, despite the scenic beauty of the area, the Saints who lived at Mount Pisgah endured many hardships. Within the first six months of settling the area, at least 150 people died.2  Among those who died there was Joseph Knight, Sr. who had joined the Church early in Colesville, New York. Also, the call to fulfill positions in the Mormon Battalion came to Mount Pisgah and approximately 65 of the able-bodied men left in the service of the military.
In 1852 the Mount Pisgah stakes were instructed to dismantle their settlement and emigrate
to the Salt Lake Valley. In 1888, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased the
pioneer cemetery and the surrounding one acre. Also, a monument was erected listing the names of many people who lost their lives at Mount Pisgah. 
SOURCES
1 Leland H. Gentry, The Mormon Way Stations: Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah, BYU Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1991, 454.
2 Taken from an informational marker near Mount Pisgah. 
3 Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Co., 1941), 546.
Orson Pratts Account of Mount Pisgah
The twelve, with some others went out several miles into the regions round about to view the
country. We found the same very broken and hilly although well adapted to farming. We concluded to form another settlement here, for the benefit of the poor, and such as were unable, for the want of teams, to proceed further. Accordingly, the camp commenced building houses, ploughing, planting, and fencing in farms and immense quantity of  labour was performed in a very few days. And the place in a short time began to assume the appearance of an old settlement. The ground being more hilly and elevated than the prairies over which we had passed we concluded to call the place Mount Pisgah.
Wilford Woodruff s Account of Mount Pisgah2
I stopped my carriage on the top of a hill in the midst of a rolling prairie, where I had an
extended view of all about me. I beheld the Saints coming in all directions from hills and dales,
groves and prairies, with their wagons, flocks and herds, by the thousands. It looked like the movement of a nation.
Parley P. Pratts Account of Mount Pisgah3
Riding about three or four miles through beautiful prairies, I came suddenly to some round
and sloping hills, grassy and crowned with beautiful groves of timber; while alternate open groves
and forests seemed blended in all the beauty and harmony of an English park. While beneath and
beyond, on the west, rolled a main branch of Grand River, with its rich bottoms of alternate
forest and prairie. As I approached this lovely scenery several deer and wolves, being startled at
the sight of me, abandoned the place and bounded away till lost from my sight amid the groves.
Being pleased and excited at the varied beauty before me, I cried out, this is Mount Pisgah. I
returned to my camp, with the report of having found the long sought river, and we soon moved
on and encamped under the shade of these beautiful groves.
                  

                      Also known as Polly.