The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers are working to preserve a piece of Spanish Fork's history in the town's first cemetery.

The cemetery was used mainly in the 1850s and 1860s, until a new one was built -- the same cemetery the city uses now. After the old cemetery was no longer used, Baadsgaard said it was no longer well cared for, and headstones were destroyed by grazing cattle.

"The pioneer cemetery just gradually went into disrepair," she said.

Over the last century, various Boy Scout and church groups have tried to fix up the cemetery from time to time, but no one felt obligated to maintain it continually. After each effort, the cemetery was again left alone to the elements.

"Since no one felt ultimately responsible, it would just go back to weeds," Baadsgaard said.

Now that the owner of the land surrounding the cemetery is planning to develop, Baadsgaard said several groups felt it was the right time to repair the cemetery for good.

Spanish Fork Parks and Recreation Director Dale Robinson said the city is working together with the DUP and the developer, Clark Mitchell, to clean up the cemetery with new landscaping, walkways and benches. The DUP will also be constructing storyboards telling the history of the settlers buried there.

"We're basically turning it into a little memorial garden," he said.

Robinson said Mitchell's mother is a member of DUP, so he was interested in preserving the history as well. The developer contributed $50,000 to the project, which Spanish Fork City has matched.

Robinson said one restoration project in the 1940s was a memorial using some of the headstones from the cemetery. The city has had some trouble preserving the headstones because they are difficult to remove from the memorial.

"We found that the stone itself was more brittle than the concrete [mortar]," he said.

Robinson said some headstones are damaged, and they are impossible to match with graves because they contain only initials. The city is working to preserve the cemetery itself, while Robinson said the DUP has been researching the history and trying to learn who was buried there.

Several names have been found, and Robinson said the city will re-mark the graves with the names of those thought to be buried there. "There's a lot of good history that's coming out of this project," Robinson said.

Baadsgaard said searching for the names of the buried was not her initial plan, and it hasn't been easy. Only about 15 to 20 names were on the monument, and it did not include one of her ancestors who she knew was buried there. If her ancestor's name was not there, Baadsgaard said, she knew many other names would be missing as well. After searching through Internet family history sites and getting names from various descendants of the cemetery's buried, Baadsgaard said she has come up with more than 100 names.

"It's been a much bigger project than I thought it would be," she said.

Besides just the names of the deceased, Baadsgaard said she has learned a lot about the settlers and their history. Each of the people buried in the cemetery has a story about how they sacrificed to come to Utah and try to survive.

The settlers worried daily about being killed by Indians. Their crops were destroyed by crickets and they barely had money to eat and build a home. Many of the settlers lived in "dugouts" carved into the hill below the cemetery, and one baby buried in the cemetery froze in the middle of the night in such a dugout. The cemetery had no sexton, just a volunteer sexton who built fires through the night during the winter just to be able to dig into the frozen ground for a new grave. Baadsgaard said she also found the names of three African-Americans buried there.

"We have just really poignant stories about how people lived at the time and how they died," she said.

The DUP is also raising money for a life-size sculpture for the cemetery, crafted by Erasmo and Alex Fuentes. Erasmo Fuentes said the sculpture will be of a pioneer family with two small children, a 4-year-old girl and a toddler. Fuentes said the sculpture will be a realistic depiction of a struggling pioneer family, strong and determined.

Fuentes said the sculpture had new meaning for him after hearing the stories of the Spanish Fork settlers. It is hard to know the struggles of the people until hearing the stories firsthand, and he is glad to be able to have a part in the project, he said.

"It's nice to be able to put in your two cents to honor the people that created this place," he said.

The DUP is still raising money to pay for the $40,000 sculpture, and they need $8,000 more. Baadsgaard said the group will be selling handmade quilts and cookbooks at the 24th of July celebration. To contribute to the fund, send donations to DUP Cemetery Fund, P.O. Box 37, Spanish Fork, Utah 84660. Checks should be made payable to "Cemetery Fund -- DUP Ut. So. Ctr. Co."