Mt. Pleasant Fort

In 1859, settlers at the foot of the Sanpete mountains spent the summer raising crops and a fort in the same breath. To exact instructions they laid a rock-and-lime wall twenty-six rods on a side — twelve feet tall, four feet thick at the base — around five and a half acres, with a rifle porthole cut for each cabin built against the inside. Pleasant Creek ran through the middle for water; the corrals sat just outside. The walls are long gone, but the marker fixes the square that grew into Mt. Pleasant.

What the plaque says

Mt. Pleasant, a small town nestled at the foot of the mountains in Sanpete County near the geographic center of Utah, was settled early in 1859. During June the men kept busy tending their crops and building a fort, twenty-six rods by twenty-six rods, enclosing about five and one-half acres of grounds between Main Street and First North and State Street and First East. The wall was twelve feet high, four feet wide at the bottom tapering to two feet at the top, and constructed of native rock laid with lime mortar, according to specific instructions. Sixteen feet of the fort wall was allowed for each cabin built inside the fort; each had one porthole about seven feet from the ground. Water was obtained from Pleasant Creek, which passed almost parallel east and west through the center of the fort. Corrals for all the livestock were built to the north, just outside the fort, leaving a roadway between. Completed on July 18, 1859, the fort had the distinction of being the finest in Sanpete County. The first break in the fort wall was made in 1878 to make room for the new, enlarged ZCMI store to be built in the southwest corner of the fort. The town had grown from about 800 to 1,200, but only a few families still lived inside the fort, then called the Tithing Yard.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Pleasant — steps away
  A National Register Main Street and Utah's oldest boarding school
• Spring City — 5.0 mi
  An entire pioneer town preserved on the National Register
• Fairview — 5.7 mi
  The north gate of the Heritage Highway, home to a near-complete Ice Age mammoth
• Skyline Drive — 9.5 mi
  A hundred miles of dirt along the 10,000-foot crest of the Wasatch Plateau

More markers nearby

• Spirit of the American Doughboy Monument (WWI) — steps away
• Memorial Hall Recreation Center — steps away
• Hub City — steps away
• The Liberal Hall — steps away