The Burial Sites. The Baker-Fancher emigrants buried the bodies of ten men killed during the siege somewhere within the circled wagons of the encampment located west of the current monument in the valley. Most of the Baker-Fancher party died at various locations northeast of the encampment. In May, 1859, Brevet Major James H. Carleton, commanding some eighty soldiers of the First Dragoons from Ft. Tejon, California, gathered scattered bones representing partial remains of thirty-six of the emigrants, interred them near the wagon camp, and erected a stone cairn at the site. Before Carleton’s arrival, Captains Reuben T. Campbell and Charles Brewer along with 207 men from Camp Floyd, Utah, collected and buried the remains of twenty-six emigrants in three different graves on the west side of the California road, about one and one-half miles north of the original encampment. Brewer reported “the remains of (an additional) 18 were buried in one grave, 12 in another, and 6 in another.”
Since the erection of the memorial by Major Carleton, several local families, including the Platts, Lyltes, and Burgesses, have preserved and protected the graves of this area from being desecrated by souvenir hunters, land developers, curiosity seeks, and other intruders. In 1999, the Mountain Meadows Association collaborated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in erecting the new monument over the spot of the original 1859 graves. On August 3, 1999, workers excavating for the footings for a wall around the new monument accidentally uncovered the Carleton grave. On September 10, 1999, the remains recovered from the grave were reinterred in a burial vault inside the new wall. This monument was dedicated the following day, September 11, 1999.
Here lie twenty-nine victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, reinterred on 10 September 1999 by their descendants.

Led by Captains John T. Baker and Alexander Fancher, a California-bound wagon train from Arkansas camped in this valley. In the late summer of 1857 during the time of the so-called Utah War. In the early morning hours of September 7th, a party of local Mormon settlers and Indians attacked and laid siege to the encampment. For reasons not fully understood, a contingent of territorial militia joined the attackers. This Iron County Militia consisted of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) acting on orders from their locate religious leaders and military commanders headquartered thirty-five miles to the northeast in Cedar City. Complex animosities and political issues intertwined with religious beliefs motivated the Mormons, but, the exact causes and circumstances fostering the sad events that ensued over the next five days at Mountain Meadows still defy any clear or simple explanation.
During the siege, fifteen emigrants men were killed in the fighting or while trying to escape. Then late Friday afternoon, September 11th, the emigrants were persuaded to give up their weapons and leave their corralled wagons in exchange for a promise of safe passage to Cedar City. Under heavy guard, they made their way out of the encampment. When they were all out of the corral and some more than a mile up the valley, they were suddenly and without warning attacked by their supposed benefactors. The local Indians joined in the slaughter, and in a matter of minute’s fourteen male emigrants, twelve women, and thirty-five children were struck down. Nine hired hands driving cattle were also killed along with at least thirty-five other unknown victims. At least 120 souls died in what became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Seventeen children under the age of seven survived the ordeal and were eventually returned to Arkansas. One or more other children may have remained in Utah.

Sign leading to Memorial site