Virtual Tour of
1999 Monument
Erected in 1999, this monument honors those who died in the
Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.
This site is on the National
Historic Register.
History Of The Grave Sites:
1857:
The Arkansas Emigrants buried the
bodies of ten men killed during
the five-day siege somewhere
within the circled wagons of the
encampment located west of the
current (1999) monument in the
valley.
1859:
Brevet Major James H. Carleton, commanding some
eighty soldiers of the First Dragoons from Fort Tejon, California, gathered
scattered bones representing the partial remains of thirty-six of the emigrants,
interred them near the wagon camp, and erected a stone cairn at the site.
The STONE CAIRN was topped with a cedar cross and a small granite marker was set
against the north side of the cairn and dated 20 May 1859.
(Before Carleton’s arrival, Captains Reuben
T. Campbell and Charles Brewer along with 207 men from Camp Floyd, Utah,
collected and buried the remains of twenty-six emigrants in three different
graves on the west side of the California Road about one and one-half miles
north of the original encampment. Brewer reported that “the remains of [an
additional] 18 were buried in one grave, 12 in another and 6 in another.”
Most of the Arkansas Emigrants died at various
locations northeast of the 1859 memorial.)
1932: The Utah Trails and Landmarks Association built a protective stone wall
around the 1859 grave site in September 1932, and installed a
BRONZE MARKER. This Association’s president was
George Albert Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and later President of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1999: Under
the direction of President Gordon B. Hinckley and with the cooperation of the
Mountain Meadows Association and others, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints replaced the 1932 wall and installed the present Grave Site Memorial.
"In the course of preparing
to put that new monument there, we made every effort in the [Mountain Meadows]
Association to discover where the remains were because we knew that cairn had
migrated a bit over the years -- farmers had knocked it down, vandals had
carried off rocks and so forth. Brigham Young ordered it knocked down once
according to Dudley Leavitt, he was there with a party in the 1860s and they
came up to it and he ordered it destroyed."
Gene Sessions
On August 3rd, 1999,
workers excavating for the wall around the new monument accidently uncovered the
1859 Carleton grave. On September 10th,
1999, the remains recovered from that grave were re-interred in a burial
vault inside the new wall, during a private ceremony.
The monument was dedicated the following day,
September 11, 1999.
The victims: The names of the Arkansas
Emigrants who died on
September 11th, 1857,
along with the
names of the children who
survived and were returned to
their relatives in 1859, are engraved on the
1990 Monument.