The barren territory of the American West may be a far cry from the gentle green slopes of the Malvern Hills, but the founding of a major religious organisation connects the two places.

A total of 80,000 people from the United Kingdom, including nearly 2,000 from the Malvern area, joined the Mormons, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, in the mid-1800s.

And the scores of converted folk trekked, many on foot, with the church's second leader, Brigham Young, to build the Mormons' headquarters in the promised land of Salt Lake City, Utah.

They pulled handcarts containing items such as food, blankets, shelter, pots and pans, fishing equipment, hunting tools and seeds thousands of miles through the American midwest.

Many endured great hardships as they travelled over the Rocky Mountains to establish their new homes.

Now the Cheltenham branch of Mormons, known as a "stake" - which includes groups in Stroud, Worcester and Hereford - is re-enacting the mammoth journey at 11am on Saturday, when 12 Wild West-style handcarts are pushed and pulled from Belle Vue Terrace, along St Ann's Road, up the Malvern Hills to the Worcestershire Beacon.

The event is being held to mark the 175th anniversary of the foundation of the Mormons by Joseph Smith in New York in 1830, and about 200 members dressed in period costume are expected to

take part.

At 3pm that day, a new heritage centre will be launched at Gadfield Elm chapel, near Staunton, an integral building in the history of the Mormons in the area, where stories of all of the people who emigrated to America will be contained.

"It's really exciting because this is re-enacting their journey, although they walked thousands of miles and we're only going to walk a few," said Sister Mitchell, of the Cheltenham stake of the Mormons.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was organised on April 6 1830 and Malvern's association with the Mormons began in 1840 when an apostle, Wilford Woodruff, came to preach in Staffordshire.

"He suddenly had this inspiration he didn't need to be there and should go south but he didn't know why," said

Sister Mitchell.

Elder Woodruff was eventually drawn to the Malvern area as he had baptised a William Benbow, whose brother John lived in Castle Frome in Herefordshire so the two decided to go together to visit him.

It was here he came into contact with a breakaway group from the Methodist Church, who had a chapel called Gadfield Elm, near Staunton, and almost all of them joined the Mormons.

Elder Woodruff was only in the area for about nine months but he travelled miles by foot, preaching to and baptising thousands of people.

He mentioned Malvern in a journal he kept and also went up the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Beacons to meditate with other apostles from the church.

It was there the decision was made to publish the first Book of Mormon - the cornerstone of the sect's beliefs.

About 1,800 people from the Malvern area joined the church, most of them settling in Nauvo, Illinois, a city founded by the Mormons in 1840.

However, mobs drove them out, setting fire to their homes and forcing them to flee.

It was then they made the trek across the Wild West, across the Rocky Mountains into Salt Lake valley, founding Salt Lake City.

And William Carter, one of the people from the Malvern area, was the first person to enter the Salt Lake valley, ploughing the first furrow there and pioneering irrigation as he broke the banks of the river to soften the soil.

"His story is absolutely amazing and there are many other individuals who came from the Malvern area and made a marked impression on not just the church but American society," said Sister Mitchell.

"There was so much persecution of the church at the time that men were being killed, and it wasn't able to grow, so the hundreds of people who went from here really underpinned it and gave it the strength to expand.

"Without them it would have been difficult for them to grow as it did."