Before this Dam, Mountain Valley

Lyman Wight led about 150 followers to Texas in 1845 after refusing to accept Brigham Young's leadership, and Mountain Valley was the last of several camps, after stops near Austin, at Zodiac on the Pedernales and on Hamilton Creek. In March 1858 he resolved to take his people north ahead of the coming war. He died on the road eight miles from San Antonio and was buried at Zodiac, and the colony scattered. Three of his sons fought for the Confederacy. The camp lies under Medina Lake, and the plaque is on a dam on private land.

What the plaque says

Before this Dam, Mountain Valley Before this dam was built there existed above this site a settlement known as Mountain Valley. Established in 1854 by 16 families of Mormons under the leadership of Lyman Wight (1796-1858). They abandoned their homes and mills in 1858 as the result of Indian depredations. Their lands are now beneath the waters of Medina Lake. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.
• Frontier Times Museum — 15 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 27 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — 27 mi
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.

More markers nearby

• Haby Settlement — 7.1 mi
• Bethlehem Lutheran Church — 12 mi
• Town of Quihi — 12 mi
• Ranch Home of Charles De Montel — 12 mi