1 / 3

Kids participate in a tug-of-war game on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at Robinson Park in American Fork.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

2 / 3

A family pushes a handcart on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at Robinson Park in American Fork.

3 / 3

A women teaches about the pioneers on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at Robinson Park in American Fork.

❮ ❯

Pioneer Day was celebrated the old-fashioned way Thursday afternoon in American Fork, as children participated in games and activities Latter-Day Saints settlers would have played when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley 178 years ago.

Parents and grandparents watched kids enjoy the tug-of-war, hoop wheeling and handcart pulling at William S. Robinson Park, and expressed their appreciation for the pioneers who walked across the continent to find a new home in the Great Basin.

“I celebrate the pioneers because they traveled from England or the east coast to Utah, and they made it, and then they got to live their faith unfettered and raise their families to worship God the way they wanted,” said Ashley Spears, a Lehi resident and mother.

“It’s heritage,” added James Walsh, of North Carolina, who was celebrating Pioneer Day with his Utah grandchildren. “Trying to remember the sacrifices that those that first came here went through.”

The Pioneer Day celebration was hosted by Daughters of Utah Pioneers, which set up the activities and offered tours of the American Fork Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum.

Daughters of Utah Pioneers member Christina Allman, of American Fork, showed kids how the pioneers did laundry. She said her volunteer efforts are her way to honor her ancestors.

“They had to leave their family, friends, their home,” Allman said. “Sometimes it caused a rift in their family, and they went anyway. They left everything they knew for something that they didn’t know.”

According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, approximately 70,000 pioneers traveled west in pursuit of “Zion,” with many of them taking the 1,300 mile trail from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley.

Walsh, who said he grew up working on his grandpa’s 76-acre farm with cows and hogs and sometimes did not have access to running water, believes even he couldn’t have handled the trek west in arid and desolate conditions.

“I couldn’t imagine when I was in good shape walking from Nauvoo all the way out here and pulling a handcart or riding the wagon and coming across these mountains,” Walsh said. “There weren’t any roads. Nothing was paved. They didn’t even have a road, and they came anyway.”

Walsh said he wants his grandchildren to recognize the sacrifices made to create a community in Utah, and catch a small glimpse of what the pioneers endured.

“I hope all of the kids growing up now have a chance to be exposed to that way of life,” he said.