Trees Fall Every Way But None in Camp: A Night Storm Scatters Everything Except the Mormon Battalion (July 30, 1846)

On the night of July 30, 1846, as the Mormon Battalion camped at a site Hancock would name 'Hurricane Hill,' a violent storm struck.

The chaplain, Levi Ward Hancock, recorded what happened in his journal:

'About five o'clock, a storm arose. The wind blew with hail that pelted my right foot that had no shoe on, until it was sore... This storm continued for about an hour. Every tent was blown loose from the bottoms and we had to lay hold of the standards with all our might.'

Then he added this:

'The trees fell every way from us, but none in the camp. One ox was killed out of camp by a limb.'

Every tent: blown down. Trees all around the camp: felled. One ox killed — outside the camp perimeter. But within the camp itself, among the nearly 500 soldiers: no one killed, no one struck by a falling tree.

Hancock named the camp 'Hurricane Hill' and moved on, but the detail he recorded has lingered for generations. The pattern of the damage — trees falling all around the camp's circumference, yet none falling within it — was not lost on him or the soldiers who witnessed it.

It was early in the march. The men had barely been in uniform for ten days. They had already been counseled by their chaplain to keep their covenants, to stop swearing, to trust in God. And on Hurricane Hill, the trees fell away from them while they held on to their tent stakes.