Item Detail
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19960
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0
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0
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English
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Police work On the Mormon Trail, 1846-1847
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Long Beach, California
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California State University, Long Beach
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124
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Masters Thesis
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During the years 1846-1848, thousands of Latter-day Saints on their way to the Salt Lake Valley temporarily resided at a settlement west of the Missouri River called Winter Quarters. In an effort to keep the community safe and civilized, civic and ecclesiastical leaders at Winter Quarters organized a functional police force. The purpose of this study was to determine the need for the police force at Winter Quarters, and to analyze how it emerged and the various duties that it performed. Western histories and United States police histories have ignored the existence and contribution of this unique overland police force. The results of this study indicated that the police force established at Winter Quarters was the only law enforcement entity to serve a community actively engaged in an overland migration. As such, they helped transport legal practices from the east to the west prior to the Gold Rush. They emerged as one of many self-defensive organizations established by Latter-day Saints as a result of violent persecution experienced during the 1830s and 1840s. The police at Winter Quarters evolved during the same period as other professional police units in major U.S. cities, and helped set the stage for the establishment of the legal system in Salt Lake City prior to the forty-niners. [Author's abstract]