Lehi - First Landing

"While we think of South America as individual countries today, in 600 BC., the area along the western strip, usually referred to as the Andean area, was one continuous, unbroken wilderness (uninhabited), with tall cliffs along the Pacific shore with only a few areas suitable for landing a group of people from a deep-sea, ocean-going vessel. That area is today called the Bay of Coquimbo, which is situated exactly along the 30º south latitude, in what is today the country of Chile. Several things work for this area being the landing site of the Lehi Colony."





Coastal view of Chile.


"There is impressive evidence that Joseph Smith identified the coast of Chile at about 30 degrees south latitude as the place where Lehi's group made landfall in the New World.11 From this southern extreme the Nephites and Lamanites eventually ranged at least 6,000 miles north to New York State, where Smith located the "Hill Cumorah," site of the epic Nephite-Lamanite battle of extinction, near his boyhood home of Palmyra, New York. LDS apostle Joseph Fielding Smith (latter 10th President of the LDS Church) affirmed that the location of Cumorah in Palmyra, New York was the unquestioned teaching of Joseph Smith and successive Mormon presidents and apostles."

"LEHI'S TRAVELS — Revelation to Joseph the Seer. The course that Lehi and his company traveled from Jerusalem to the place of their destination: They traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia, then sailed in a southeast direction, and landed on the continent of South America, in Chili [sic], thirty degrees south latitude."