From their earliest days on the American frontier through their growth into a worldwide church, the spatially expansive Mormons made maps to help them create idealized communities, migrate to and colonize large parts of the American West, visualize the stories in their sacred texts, and spread their message internationally through a well-organized missionary system. This book identifies many Mormon mapmakers who played an important but heretofore unsung role in charting the course of Latter-day Saint history. For Mormons, maps had and continue to have both practical and spiritual significance. In addition to using maps to help build their new Zion and to explore the Intermountain West, Latter-day Saint mapmakers used them to depict locations and events described in the Book of Mormon.
Richard Francaviglia, Professor Emeritus of History and Geography at the University of Texas at Arlington, has been interested in maps since childhood. His diverse publications include the recent Go East, Young Man: Imagining the American West as the Orient. He lives in Oregon where he teaches courses in religious studies at Willamette University.
