Fort Cedar

The men who came to make iron had first to survive the winter. Thirty-five of them arrived from Parowan in November 1851 and threw together a shelter of wagon boxes and sagebrush to get through the cold. By 1853 they had walled themselves properly in: a fort a hundred rods on a side, its earthen walls nine feet tall and three feet thick at the base, enclosing sixty-three acres and a platted town of a hundred and twenty lots. Cedar City grew up inside those walls, and this marker stands at the fort's southwest corner.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brian Head — 13 mi
  Utah's highest town — a ski-and-bike base camp at the top of Parowan Canyon
• Parowan Gap Petroglyphs — 13 mi
  An ancient rock art gallery hidden in a desert canyon
• Cedar Breaks National Monument — 13 mi
  A 2,000-foot-deep amphitheater of vivid orange and red rock
• Kolob Canyons — 17 mi
  The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park

More markers nearby

• The Old Iron Foundry — 1.1 mi
• Iron Pioneers Flag Pole — 1.1 mi
• Old Spanish Trail — 6.6 mi
• Pine Valley — 31 mi