OCR Text |
Show ' May 12, 1982 6-M- I t 5E FOCUS in the Heber Valley October of 1858. On the strength of the completed road 11 Provo families committed themselves to moving up to the high Wasatch Valleys in the spring of 1859. When the men finally set out they found the road submerged under massive snowslides. Nevertheless, they persisted and according to John Crooks journal, arrived to find two families already inhabiting the valley. According to Crook, the first inhabitants of the Heber Valley were the members of the William Davidson family. The men chose their . farmlands and then went about setting up a townsite with more permanent dwellings for their families. In case of attack by. hostile Indians the settlers built their first homes close together in a fort, 80 rods square. As it turned out the " i jt ar W . settlers were not attacked and so after the first winter they moved out of the fort According to the Wasatch County Recorders records, the boundaries of the original fort ran from 300 to 600 North and from 1st to 300 West. Those are the boundaries Bryan Provost decided to adher to though there were conflicting reports from some old timers who remembered things differently. Dan Bates believes the' confusion might lie in the fact that the original fort was later expanded to include a schoolhouse and a stage. This summer as you walk across the streets of Northwestern Heber City amid new brick houses and one block west of a thriving Main Street, look for four small' cornerstones and think about what it must have been like in the winter of 1859. . - ' . Vk a Bryan Provost on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout. This building, now located at the Homestead, may be one of the buildings from the original fort. MAP THE OLD FORT HEBER CITY AND THE FAMILIES LIVING WITHIN IT IN THE WINTER OF 1899-6- 0 CALC- - tf |