Army National Guard history

The charter was annulled by the Illinois government in 1845, allowing mobs to drive the members of the Church from the state.

The battalion marched some 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, arriving in San Diego, California, in January, 1847, in what has been called the longest infantry march in history.

Many veterans of the Mormon Battalion would go on to be leaders in Utah’s first militia, organized in 1852 by the Provisional State of Deseret and the Territory of Utah law.

The Nauvoo Legion was disbanded by the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887.

Mormon Battalion survivors’ 50-year reunion, 1896, Utah.

In 1898, almost 800 Utahans, most of them Guard members, volunteer for service in the Philippines during the Spanish American War and saw extensive combat in campaigns around Manila.

The militia, called the National Guard since 1916, has served community, state, and nation for nearly 400 years, and citizen-soldiers have fought in every major American conflict from 1637 to present day operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Guard doubled the size of the Regular Army when it was mobilized in 1940, more than a year before Pearl Harbor, and contributed 19 divisions to that war, as well as numerous other units including Guard aviation squadrons.

By 1942, about 2,600 Utah Guard members had seen action in World War II. The 204th Field Artillery Battalion fought in Europe with Patton's 3rd Army.

The Berlin crisis in 1961 saw 1,600 Guard members mobilized.

Utah Air Guard crews were among the first to volunteer for airlift support of the United States military buildup in Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.