Many traveled to Far West by water. Steamboats regularly ran up and down the Ohio and Missouri rivers. Many new arrivals by water disembarked at Lexington or Liberty landings.
The Globe states that information has been received at the Engineer Department, from the Superintendentof the Improvement of the Missouri river, that the steam snag-boat Heliopolis had worked 280 miles up frm the mouth, and removed all the most dangerous snages from the main channel. The river is represented as being much changed in ist appearance, and the navigation so much improved, that up to the point reached by the snag-boat, steamers are now encabled to run in the night, whch was not attempted by any of them previous to the commencement of the work. [New-York American, (18 June 1839).]
Other travelers came by land cross country from the east.
The earliest roads “connected Richmond with Far West, while small roads connected Far West with the Lyon's Brother Settlement, or Guymon's Horse Mill (Salem), and on to Haun's Mill.” Roads quickly developed to outlying Mormon settlements ringing Far West, such as what became Plumb Creek to the west, and northward through Seth into Daviess County.
W.W. Phelps wrote, ". . . There was a steam boat sunk last week between Liberty and Lexington landings. . ." [W.W. Phelps, letter to Sally Phelps, Far West (Mo.) May 1, 1839, LDS Archives].
A large party of émigrés known as Kirtland Camp arrived 25 July 1838. They first camped on the Public Square, south of the Temple site. Some families made their homes at Far West, while others were instructed to continue their journey to Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Helen Mar Kimball Whitney
Helen Mar Whitney, daughter of Heber C. and Violate Kimball, remembered, "Brother and Sister Patten were the first to welcome us [our family] to their house in Far West, where we stayed a few days to recuperate as our bodies were weakened by sickness, in consequence of the arduous journey from Kirtland." [ Jeni Broberg Holzapfel & Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, A woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997), 100, citing Woman's Exponent 10 (15 June 1881): 9; 4 citing Woman's Exponent, 8 (15 May 1880):188-89.