Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial
Personal Notes
This page presents our personal notes on our visit to the Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial in Utah.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial is another of those "minor" locations that we've driven by several times, but never found the time to stop. So on this trip we made a point of visiting this site on our way to the St. George area. I won't go into the history of the site here (see Related Sites for that), but let's just say what occurred here was a tragedy and should have a memorial to encourage those of a righteous bent to avoid such barbaric behavior in the future.
2:18 p.m.
First we stopped at the Mountain Meadow Memorial overlook. The intersection to the turn off to Mountain Meadows along Highway 18 is at Map Coordinates (NAD83): 37 28.705N; 113 37.671W. There is a paved parking area and a paved walk that leads up the side of a hill to a memorial displaying a short description of the events that took place here and a list of the known victims. There are other informational plaques and views of the narrow valley below, where the massacre took place.
After spending a few minutes at the overlook, we drove back toward the highway. There is a graded dirt road leading off of the paved road, to the south, down a wash. This road leads to the grave site down in the valley.
There is a large dirt parking area. A paved pathway leads down to the bottom of a narrow creek bed, crosses a solid foot bridge, then climbs back up the far side to the grave site memorial. This is a fenced area, but the gate is open and we entered and looked around. Most of the area is well maintained and seems to be in good shape.
There is no drinking water at this location, but there is a single vault toilet.
Again, this is one of those side trips that is worth taking at least once.
2:57 p.m.
As we left the site it was mostly sunny, with almost no clouds. The temperature was 69 degrees.
