Appearance of Honeydew Manna in Utah
Published October 13, 2026 at 5:25 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
During the early years of pioneer settlement in Utah, when sugar was rare and costly, a sweet white substance like hoar frost appeared on cottonwood trees at night and dripped off them by morning. The settlers gathered this substance, which they called 'manna,' by soaking the branches in water and boiling it down to a syrup.
In August 1855, the people of Provo, Utah, experienced this phenomenon when a hard, white sweet substance appeared on cottonwood leaves. According to Bishop Elias H. Blackburn, the Saints gathered between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds of the substance, which they boiled into a sugar similar in color to common brown sugar. Blackburn recorded that he brought 333 pounds of this sugar to the general tithing office in Salt Lake City, where Brigham Young, upon hearing the explanation, declared it to be 'sugar from the Lord.' Other settlers, including Emmeline Baldwin and George Washington Adair, also confirmed gathering the substance along the Provo River bottoms.
In Their Own Words
“In August, 1855 , a memorable blessing was given to the people of Provo in the shape of a hard, white substance found upon the leaves of young cottonwood trees. We shook this substance, which was very sweet, into tubs of water and boiled it down without process, when it congealed into sugar about the color of our common brown sugar. The Saints in Provo made between three and four thousand pounds of this kind of sugar. I told the Saints that it was a direct gift from the Lord and they freely paid their tithing on it. — Elias H. Blackburn, in John Heinerman, Joseph Smith and Natural Foods, pp. 147–149”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 4 September 1902 (Vol. 64, No. 36). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1902-09-04_64_36 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Additional sources (periodical research): John Heinerman, Joseph Smith and Natural Foods (Springville, UT: Bonneville Books), 147–149. http://donna-connections.blogspot.com/2010/03/manna-miracle-in-utah-valley.html
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