Inside front cover: In this American bicentennial year, the Ensign features paintings telling the Mormon story. This month’s painting is Building a Sod Hut at Winter Quarters, by Lynn Fausett. It hangs in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Inside back cover: The photographer and date this picture was taken are unknown. It may have been taken in 1879 when the president, then age seventy-two, was in San Francisco, or in the middle to late 1880s in Salt Lake City, a few years prior to being sustained as President of the Church.