Fort Ephraim

Fort Ephraim. There were two forts on this site in 1854-55. The settlers referred to the first structure as Little Fort. Mormon pioneers sent men from other Central Utah settlements on February 7, 1854 to start work on the small fort that would cover about one-and-one-half acres and have a single gate on the west side. These twenty-five men used stone quarried from nearby canyons to build the forts walls 7 feet high and two feet thick. Inside the fortress they built adobe and rock homes and a meeting house/school. The fort completed March 1 of the same year, accommodated the thirty-nine original settlers who mostly came from Manti. Some of these settlers had lived in Ephraim earlier but moved to Manti to seek safety from the Native Americans whose traditional hunting grounds they had settled. An account by these early Mormon settlers notes that the Native Americans moved wickiups close to the small fort and were often in the fort and homes. The settlers gave food and clothing to the Native Americans, some of whom worked for the Mormon settlers. , So many settlers arrived in Fort Ephraim in 1854 that the same year Little Fort was completed, they began construction of a larger fort that would enclose the the smaller one. The new arrivals were mostly Mormon converts from Denmark who immigrated to Salt Lake City and were then sent by Brigham Young to “Little Denmark” as Ephraim became known. When finished in 1855, “Big Fort” enclosed “Little Fort” and the block north. It included the entire block east of Main Street and north to First North making it a rectangle. With 4 foot thick walls 14 feet high on the North side and 7 feet high on the remaining perimeter, the fort had both an east and west gate. Besides a perimeter of houses inside the fort, there was a tannery, sawmill, tithing house, bowery, and post office. Officially named Fort Ephraim, the fort covered seven and one half acres at a cost of $12,000. Even though the only extant map shows a square fort, the street names mark the correct location.