Congress will hear testimony Thursday on a bill that would direct the Interior Department to transfer title of a historic site on the Mormon Trail to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The bill has been fraught with controversy, including the recent decision by Wyoming Rep. Barb Cubin to vote against the bill, accusations by the bill's sponsor that opponents are anti-Mormon bigots, and a 2-year-old National Park Service report criticizing the church's management of Martin's Cove.

What is at stake is who will own Martin's Cove, a cleft in sheer walls of pink granite where the Rocky Mountains taper down to the prairie of central Wyoming.

It is at the point where migrants on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails were able to cross the mountains on their way West.

During an 1856 snowstorm, a group of handcart-pushing pioneers on the Mormon trail took shelter in the cove. About 150 members of Martin's Company died in the blizzard, and Mormons have revered the cove ever since.

The land is publicly owned and has been managed by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, often in cooperation with the Mormon church, which built a walking trail and converted a onetime ranch house nearby into a visitor's center.

Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, chairman of the House Resources Committee, introduced a bill earlier this year which would have BLM give the Mormon church 1,640 acres, land which Hansen has said makes up Martin's Cove.

Opponents claim the cove doesn't take up all 1,640 acres outlined in the legislation. Noting that Mormons weren't the only pioneers to cross through Wyoming, some critics question whether the Mormon church will protect Indian relics or evidence of non-Mormon migrants.

"The history could very well be altered in this spot if it were going into private hands," said Liz Howell, a field organizer with the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club.

But supporters of the bill point out that, until five years ago, when the Mormon church bought nearby land and converted the abandoned Sun Ranch house into a visitor's center, few if anyone cared about Martin's Cove.

"The Church has no peer in its track record for restoring and preserving historic sites," Hansen has said. "They spare no expense. They overlook no detail."

However, a 2000 assessment by the National Park Service of what the Mormon church has done to the Sun Ranch takes issue with several changes that the agency says are "compromising the historic integrity of the scene."

For example, the church built a Mormon chapel alongside historic buildings. The Park Service examined the Sun Ranch because it is a National Historic Landmark.

Marnie Funk, a Hansen spokeswoman, defended the changes at what has since been renamed "The Handcart Ranch."

"Anyone visiting the Sun Ranch now would get a better sense of what ranching in the late 1800s was like than they would have gotten by visiting the working ranch 15 years ago," Funk said.

Hansen, who is Mormon, drafted the Martin's Cove legislation after attempts by the church failed to get the cove through a land swap with BLM.

Officials with the Interior Department have testified that the agency generally supports the goal of Hansen's bill, but want Congress to add a conservation easement that would protect any historic sites or relics that weren't left by Mormon pioneers.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)