Pioneer Cemetery

Some cemeteries are abandoned but not emptied. Spanish Fork's earliest pioneers were buried on this ground between 1851 and 1866, when the town closed the plot and buried its dead elsewhere — but the graves already here were left where they lay. Roughly fifty people remain in the ground: the Redd family, the Paces, the Bowens, a long roll of children among them, and some thirty-five others whose names the marker keeps. No headstones stand over most of them now. The dead of the town's first years rest here still.

What the plaque says

Pioneers were buried here between 1851 and 1866 when this cemetery was abandoned, James Higinson was sexton. The bodies of those who remain here are Sarah Holt Tindral, John Hardison Redd, Elizabeth Hancock Redd, Mary Gardner Sweeten, Helen Whytock McKell, and the following children, Mary Catherine Redd, John Holt Redd, Mary Moriah Pace, Mary Ann Pace, Lucy Ann Bowen, Julia Susanah Bowen, Mary King, Phoebe Justin Darger, Oran Thomas, infant son Raymond, and about thirty-five others.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Thistle Landslide — 9.0 mi
  The ruins of a town destroyed by a massive landslide in 1983
• Payson Lakes — 12 mi
  Three alpine lakes in the pines, twelve miles up Payson Canyon
• Nebo Loop Summit — 17 mi
  The byway's 9,300-foot high point, with Utah Valley spread out below
• Bridal Veil Falls — 17 mi
  A dramatic double waterfall cascading 607 feet into Provo Canyon

More markers nearby

• First Settlement of Icelanders of US — 1.5 mi
• Old Fort — 2.1 mi
• Old Academy — 2.5 mi
• Leland Historical Monument — 2.9 mi