Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley (1855), edited by James Linforth and illustrated by Frederick Hawkins Piercy, is a richly illustrated travel and emigration account documenting the journey of Latter-day Saint converts from England to the American West. Published in Liverpool by Franklin D. Richards, the volume combines narrative description with steel engravings and wood cuts based on Piercy’s sketches made during his 1853 journey with an emigrant company. Intended both as a practical guide and a promotional work, it traces the route from Liverpool across the Atlantic, up the Mississippi River, over the plains, and into the Great Salt Lake Valley.
In addition to landscapes, settlements, and prominent Latter-day Saint figures, the work includes visual and textual references to American Indian peoples encountered along the route, reflecting mid-nineteenth-century frontier perspectives. Notably, Piercy depicts Chief Walkara (Walker), a prominent Ute leader influential in central Utah during the 1840s and 1850s. These representations provide insight into early Mormon–Indigenous relations and contemporary attitudes toward Native peoples during westward migration, though they must be read within the cultural and ideological context of their time.
Often regarded as one of the most elaborately illustrated Western travel books of the period, Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley remains an important visual and historical source for the study of Mormon migration, frontier travel, and early depictions of Indigenous leaders and communities in the Intermountain West.
