Mary Fielding Smith House

Widowed when her husband Hyrum Smith was killed at Carthage, Mary Fielding Smith came west and made a choice most pioneer women were not free to make: rather than take the city lot assigned to her, she moved her children, stepchildren, and hired help to a remote forty-acre farm in the Millcreek foothills and worked it herself. She ran it successfully and independently until her death in 1852. Her farmhouse now sits, fittingly apart, within This Is the Place Heritage Park, its seclusion echoing the distance she once chose.

What the plaque says

The relative seclusion of this home within the Park is to symbolize its original location several miles southeast of Salt Lake City. After spending the winter of 1848, in a Salt Lake Valley fort, Mary Fielding Smith, widow of LDS Church leader Hyrum Smith, decided to live on a farm rather than her assigned city plot. She moved her children, stepchildren, and hired hands to a remote 40 acre farm in the Millcreek area, where they built this home. Mary's children helped her maintain a successful farm and independent lifestyle until her death in 1852.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• This Is The Place Heritage Park — steps away
  A living history village at the mouth of Emigration Canyon
• Natural History Museum of Utah — 0.8 mi
  A world-class museum built into the foothills above Salt Lake City
• Red Butte Garden — 1.1 mi
  A 100-acre botanical garden with panoramic valley views
• Emigration Canyon — 1.7 mi
  The final stretch of trail the Mormon pioneers took into the valley

More markers nearby

• This is the Place Restored Monument — steps away
• Carpenter's Shop — steps away
• Milo Andrus Home — steps away
• Eyes Westward Statue — steps away