The Honeymoon Trail

The Honeymoon Trail is the popular name for the rugged overland route that Latter-day Saint couples from Arizona traveled to reach the St. George Utah Temple for their temple sealings. Before the Mesa Arizona Temple was dedicated in 1927, the St. George Temple — over 400 miles away — was the nearest temple to the scattered settlements of Arizona Territory. Couples who wished to have their marriages sealed for eternity faced a round trip of nearly three weeks through some of the most unforgiving terrain in the American West.

The trail stretched from communities in the Salt River Valley and the Little Colorado River settlements northward through the Painted Desert, across the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, and up through the Arizona Strip to St. George. Travelers contended with extreme heat, flash floods, deep sand, scarce water, and the sheer isolation of the landscape. Despite these hardships, hundreds of couples made the journey, many of them newlyweds who had been civilly married and were traveling to have their unions solemnized in the temple.

The trail became so well-worn and widely known that it entered the folk vocabulary of the region. The name "Honeymoon Trail" was both affectionate and wryly humorous — the journey was anything but a romantic holiday. Yet for the couples who made it, the trail represented an act of deep faith and commitment, a willingness to sacrifice comfort for covenants. When the Mesa Temple was dedicated, the practical need for the trail disappeared, but its legacy endured as one of the great pioneer stories of the American Southwest.