Existing comment:
THE BURIAL SITES
The Baker-Fancher emigrants buried the bodies of ten men killed during the five-day 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 1859 memorial. In May 1859, Brevet Major James H. Carleton, commanding some eighty soldiers of the First Dragoons from Ft. Tejon, California, gathered scattered bones representing the 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 that "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, Lytles, and Burgesses, have preserved and protected the graves in this area from being desecrated by souvenir hunters, land developers, curiosity seekers, 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 grave. On August 3rd, 1999, workers excavating for the wall around the new monument accidentally uncovered the Carleton grave. On September 10th, 1999, the remains recovered from that grave were re-interred in a burial vault inside the new wall. The monument was dedicated the following day, September 11th, 1999. |