Wight's Fort Cemetery

Long before suburban neighborhoods surrounded this quiet cemetery, the landscape west of the Jordan River was an agricultural frontier where pioneer families established farms along streams flowing from the Oquirrh Mountains. Among these settlers were members of the Wight family and other families who would eventually build a small defensive settlement known as Wight's Fort. The cemetery's story appears to have begun even before construction of the fort itself. According to the historical markers at the site, around 1853 an unidentified Native American infant was buried on a small knoll in this area. The circumstances of the child's death and identity are not preserved in the marker's account, but the grave became the starting point around which later burials were placed. Soon afterward, tragedy struck the family of Lyman Wight and Harriet Bateman Wight. Their firstborn son died and was buried beside the Native infant. Historical accounts remember him as the first pioneer child in the West Jordan settlement to die. These two small graves became the beginning of Wight's Fort Cemetery. Another early settler, John Irving, later buried a son here. As additional deaths occurred among the pioneer families living nearby, the knoll gradually became their community burial ground. Meanwhile, insecurity associated with the Walker War prompted settlers throughout Utah Territory to gather into fortified settlements. Brigham Young encouraged scattered families to "fort up" rather than remain isolated on individual farms. In the fall of 1854, settlers began constructing Wight's Fort approximately 100 yards northwest of the cemetery. The fort was named for Lewis and Nancy Wight and their family. Construction continued through the winter under difficult pioneer conditions. The completed fort enclosed approximately two and one-half acres. Its defensive walls were built from stone, mud, and logs and stood approximately twelve feet high. Within the enclosure were seven log cabins, several additional buildings, and part of Bingham Creek, which supplied the residents with flowing water. Among the men associated with constructing the fort were members of the Wight family along with John Irving, Joseph Stacy, J. H. Murdock, John Loveless, John Elmer Cutler, and Sheldon Cutler. By the spring of 1855, the fort was completed and occupied. The cemetery just southeast of the fort continued to serve local families. Among those remembered there are members of families deeply connected with the early settlement of the western Salt Lake Valley, including the Bennion, Wight, Bateman, Irving, Stacy, Murdock, Loveless, and Cutler families. Early residents attempted to protect and beautify the burial ground by planting trees and shrubs. Vegetation helped provide shade while also reducing the drifting sand that could sweep across the exposed cemetery. Time nevertheless took a heavy toll. Many early grave markers were made from native sandstone. Exposure to wind, precipitation, freezing temperatures, and more than a century of weathering caused inscriptions to fade and some stones to deteriorate severely. Other early graves were never permanently marked. As a result, the cemetery contains graves whose identities are no longer known. A 1960 compilation of Wight's Fort burials acknowledged that no complete sexton's record survived for the earliest period and that researchers had to reconstruct burial information from descendants and other available sources. Unlike Wight's Fort itself, which disappeared from the landscape, the cemetery survived. Preservation efforts have helped tell the fort's story as well. An interpretive monument describing Wight's Fort was originally created through an Eagle Scout project by Jason and Scott Goudie and was restored in 2015 by the Jordan River Temple Chapter of the Sons of Utah Pioneers. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers later established Historical Marker #580 at Wight's Fort Cemetery, preserving additional information about the people buried here and the cemetery's beginnings. Today Wight's Fort Cemetery remains recognized by West Jordan City as an active municipal cemetery. Modern burials share the grounds with weathered pioneer stones and unmarked graves dating to the earliest years of settlement. The fort that gave the cemetery its name is gone, but this small burial ground remains one of the most tangible surviving connections to the families who established communities west of the Jordan River during the 1850s.

Settlement west of the Jordan River expanded during the early 1850s as Latter-day Saint pioneers established farms throughout the western Salt Lake Valley. Waterways such as Bingham Creek helped make agriculture possible in an otherwise dry environment. These settlers entered a landscape already used and inhabited by Native peoples. Increasing settlement throughout Utah Territory contributed to competition over land, water, livestock, and other resources and intensified tensions between settlers and Native communities. Those tensions erupted into the Walker War in 1853. Although much of the fighting occurred farther south, fear of raids and violence affected settlements throughout Utah Territory. Brigham Young and other territorial leaders encouraged scattered settlers to consolidate into defensive forts. Wight's Fort was one of numerous fortified settlements constructed during this period. Construction began in the fall of 1854. The fort's approximately twelve-foot walls enclosed two and one-half acres and incorporated homes, other buildings, livestock space, and access to Bingham Creek. The cemetery had already begun nearby. Historical tradition dates its first burial to around 1853, when an unidentified Native American infant was buried on the small knoll. The burial of the Wight family's infant son nearby established the location as a pioneer burial ground. Wight's Fort eventually disappeared as the need for defensive settlements diminished and families established more permanent farms and communities. The cemetery, however, continued in use. Its survival provides an unusually tangible connection between modern West Jordan and the brief period when settlers lived within fortified communities along the western edge of the Salt Lake Valley.