Monday, July 11, 2011

FHE Idea - Ensign Peak

    In this great month of July when we commemorate the pioneers coming into the Salt Lake Valley, hiking Ensign Peak is a great Family Home Evening Activity or family day activity. The hike is short and fairly easy. There is one drop off area near the peak, so hang on to your little people.  At the top take time to look over the valley and read an historic account of Ensign Peak's significance.

Here is an account given by Elder Holland in the last General Conference:

"Before leaving Nauvoo in the winter of 1846, President Brigham Young had a dream in which he saw an angel standing on a cone-shaped hill somewhere in the West pointing to a valley below. When he entered the Salt Lake Valley some 18 months later, he saw just above the location where we are now gathered the same hillside prominence he had seen in vision.

As has often been told from this pulpit, Brother Brigham led a handful of leaders to the summit of that hill and proclaimed it Ensign Peak, a name filled with religious meaning for these modern Israelites. Twenty-five hundred years earlier the prophet Isaiah had declared that in the last days “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains,” and there “he shall set up an ensign for the nations.” 1

Seeing their moment in history as partial fulfillment of that prophecy, the Brethren wished to fly a banner of some kind to make the idea of “an ensign for the nations” literal. Elder Heber C. Kimball produced a yellow bandanna. Brother Brigham tied it to a walking stick carried by Elder Willard Richards and then planted the makeshift flag, declaring the valley of the Great Salt Lake and the mountains surrounding it as that prophesied place from which the word of the Lord would go forth in the latter days."
 - Elder Jeffery R. Holland, "An Ensign to the Nations," Ensign, May 2011, p. 111.

Here is another link for information about the history of Ensign Peak

Ensign Peak is on the North end of the Salt Lake Valley. 
The entrance to the hike and the historic park is located at :  

147 Ensign Vista Dr, Salt Lake City, UT 84103-2261

To Map Quest directions  from your home to the park and trail head go to: