This trail entered Nebraska about three miles east of the southwest corner of Jefferson County, and followed a ridge down to Rose Creek Valley, where they built a crude log bridge across this stream, about half a mile below the present town of Reynolds. The early settlers of Rose Creek Valley found the pilings of this bridge still in position when they came in 1862, and they used this trail in going to Waterville, Blue Rapids and points on the Missouri River for supplies. Old settlers also allege that the Mormons sometimes crossed the Kansas River near Manhattan, and struck this trail near Waterville; also that there was another Mormon Trail, that followed up the Republican River on the north side from their upper crossing at Junction City or "Whisky Point" past the present towns of Clay Center, Clyde, Scandia, and Republic City, leaving the stream when it bent to the west in the State of Nebraska, going northward across the prairies of Nuckolls County to the Little Blue river, in Adams County, where it converged with the old Oregon Trail.

The main branch, after crossing Rose Creek, kept on to the north and west, entering Thayer County, joining the old Oregon Trail in the vicinity of Hebron, on the Little Blue River.

The Mormons from Atchison, Kansas and St. Joseph, Missouri in the later days, generally used the regular trails from these points connecting with the old Oregon Trail. A few miles out from the present-day city of Atchison was a camping place of popular use called "The Mormon Grove." During the 1850's and 60's thousands of Mormons paused for a brief rest before starting on their trip across what was then known as the "Great American Desert," now as the "Kingdoms of Alfalfa and Agriculture" -- Kansas and Nebraska.

The few Mormons that crossed the Missouri River at Brownville and Nebraska City followed the trails that other travelers had established over the prairies, the lower one joining the Oregon Trail, on the Big Sandy River, in Jefferson County, and the Nebraska City Trail joining it a few miles east of Fort Kearny. While these Mormon Trails have not been definitely located, the above is probably correct enough for the purposes of need for the recording of their existence. To accurately trace them would be a stupendous task, perhaps impossible, for nearly all of the rutted and scarred evidences of their travel have been effaced by nature and agriculture, and only here and there, can be found some unmistakable old-time road descending or ascending some hill, pasture, or meadow lands, that have not been disturbed by the plow.

Many of these marks, especially across the smooth prairies or bottom lands, had been effaced even at the time that the country was surveyed in the late 1850's and early 1860's. On the original surveys of many of the counties of Kansas and Nebraska, through which these trails were alleged to have passed, there appear marks and notations of such roads, being designated as "Mormon Trail," but they are disconnected and somewhat confusing.