Scotts Bluff County providing $2,100 to help move a pioneer woman’s grave

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. — Scotts Bluff County Board members have approved the use of $2,100 in keno revenue to help move historical markers and the grave of a pioneer woman who died along what became known as the Mormon Trail.

The donation will serve as matching funds for a grant from the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation, which helps memorialize sites that are important to the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Rebecca Winters was among thousands of pioneers in the 1800s to die from disease while migrating west in search of religious freedom. She died of cholera in 1852.

Her gravesite was discovered along railroad tracks and her body was initially moved a short distance away, for safety reasons, in the 1990s. Her descendants have asked that the grave be relocated to a spot at the Legacy of the Plains Museum in Gering.

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