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Show - the Mormon Church in the following year. Walker's War, as it was called by the Mormons, slowed but did not halt Mormon growth and expansion in the valley. A new, larger stone fort was erected at Manti during the summer of 1854 and in this year Reuben Allred and fifteen families reoccupied Behunnin's farm on Pine Creek, calling it Ephraim, again, after a city in the Book of Mormon. Many of the Scandinavian Saints who had earlier been driven from Allred's Settlement moved from their cramped quarters in the Manti fort to Ephraim. Here they were joined in the fall by another large company from Denmark, making Ephraim the most Scandinavian of the Sanpete communities. One visitor commented in 1856 that "there are about 80 families here, and 50 of that number speak the Danish language, the remainder being American, English and Welsh. 1112 A small fort was hastily erected in 1854 and a larger one in 1855. The generally peaceful conditions that prevailed following the cessation of the Walker War stimulated further expansion northward. In 1859, James Allred returned to Canal Creek and began there the task of rebuilding the town that now came to be called Spring City. Other Saints moved to establish permanently the town of Mount Pleasant at the site of Hamilton's old sawmill on Pleasant Creek. Here, one pioneer recalled, "the settlers built a fort enclosing about five-and-a-half acres of ground where they lived. native rock and laid with mortar. It was built of The wall was about 12 feet high and the inside of the wall was used for the back wall of the houses, sixteen feet square, with one port hole in each house. 1113 The year 1859 also saw townsites founded at Fountain Green and Moroni, thus completing the northward-running chain of settlements through the valley that had 65 |
