About a mile and a half west of the Mormon Pioneer Trails Center and the Winter Quarters Temple in present-day Omaha, Nebraska, is the intersection of Mormon Bridge Road and Young Street. On the northeast corner of that intersection is a historical marker identifying the site once known as Cutler’s Park.
This short-lived settlement was named after Alpheus Cutler, who led a group of 2,500 Saints to this site in 1846. Cutler was a master stonemason who worked on the Nauvoo Temple.
Street signs mark the intersection where the historical marker at Cutler's Park is located. | Kenneth Mays
The settlement of Cutler’s Park makes the claim of being the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two months and Nebraska’s first city. This second claim refers to the fact that it was the first Nebraska city to be planned and laid out by non-Native Americans. There were no buildings, just tents and wagons. But each street was laid out parallel or perpendicular to the others with a town square in the center. There was a mayor and town council, town ordinances and official law officers for the short duration of the town’s existence.
It was not long after the establishment of Cutler’s Park that they moved east several miles to the banks of the Missouri River at what became Winter Quarters (see "Sacred Places, Vol. 5," edited by William Hartley and Gary Anderson).
Cutler served in many capacities in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He became disaffected and was subsequently excommunicated from the church in 1851. Two years later he established The Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite). He died and was buried at Manti, Fremont County, Iowa, in 1860.