McCaela Michas (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Allison, James (Family, home, and Social Sciences; Anthropology)
In 1849, settlers from the Salt Lake Valley ventured south to erect Fort Utah, Provo's first settlement. However, records from this time are scarce, and thus its exact position along the Provo River has since been lost through time. Efforts in the late 1930s and 1970s to establish the location of the fort were inconclusive. In the late 1990s, archaeologists from Brigham Young University and members of the Utah State Archaeological Society dug a series of test trenches near I-15 along the Provo River in hopes of finding tangible evidence of the fort and its location. Artifacts from this excavation include fragments of fauna bone, glass, ceramics, and metal, as well as pieces of brick, chalk, concrete, charcoal and a marble. While these artifacts appear to be historical and possibly connected to the fort, they had not yet been thoroughly analyzed until now. This paper will discuss the recent analysis of these artifacts to determine if the location of Fort Utah has finally been found.