American Fork residents have a new way to see the area involved in the city's beginnings, with a map showing the location of the original settlement and the fort which contained it.

Darrell Conder, a former American Fork resident, has donated a copy of a historical map to the city, complete with an overlay of the fort's location. It is hanging in the city administrative offices and may be moved to the historic City Hall.

When Conder, 73, was a second-grader in American Fork, his teacher took his class for a walk, showing them a slab of concrete purported to be the only remains of the fort built by the pioneers who settled the city.

The memory of that day stuck, eventually spurring Conder to locate his great-grandfather's homestead site, a process that took years. Edward Conder had come across the plains and lived in the fort for a time with other American Fork settlers seeking to avoid trouble with American Indians.

In his quest to discover his family history, Conder found a copy of an 1890 insurance map of the city, and a copy of an 1858 hand-drawn map of the original fort settlement. He took the maps to an engineering firm, had the 1858 map scaled to the size of the 1890 map, and then overlaid them by matching known landmarks on both maps to show where the original 37-acre fort had been located. The superimposed maps not only revealed his great-grandfather's homestead site, but also the original location of the settlement fort.

Last week, Conder visited his great-grandfather's original homestead site, less than a block from City Hall, with members of his family. Then they headed to an American Fork City Council meeting, where he donated the superimposed maps, now professionally framed, as a gift to the city.

Both Conder and Juel Belmont, chairwoman of the city's Historic Preservation Commission, said the maps prove the old fort had been located two blocks away from where many had believed it to be. Conder said the slab of concrete shown to him by his second-grade teacher turned out, upon examination, to be a much later attempt to shore up a canal wall next to a road -- and not part of the fort at all, which was really two blocks away.

"I could tell exactly where the walls of the fort were laid out," Conder said of the superimposed maps. "It was an eye-opener for me."

The fort walls contained space for each settler's family, and enclosed a large common area used to protect and pasture cattle, he said. That pasture is still common land, belonging to the city, now occupied by the police station and fire station, and other municipal buildings. The streets bordering the fort came to define what is now the historic downtown.

Belmont said the maps were first displayed in the city library during the statehood centennial.

"It was the most talked about thing we did that year," she said of the maps being displayed. "Everyone was fascinated with it. What a generous thing to give it to us."

At the time, Conder offered to donate them if the city would buy a frame for them, an offer that apparently fell through the cracks. Conder said he recently decided to get the maps framed himself and donate them. Two days after they were framed, Belmont called unexpectedly, asking if he would consider his earlier offer again, only to find Conder was a step ahead.

Condor said he moved from American Fork in 1959 and now lives in Midvale, but he was the fourth generation of his family to be born in American Fork and wanted to honor his heritage with his gift. His great-grandfather, Edward Conder, married Sarah Shelley, also an original settler who lived in the fort. Shelley's father, James Boyer Shelley, and another relative, Agnes Cunningham, were also original pioneers of the city.

"I have been a genealogy buff for years and just hungered to see where these people lived and how they lived," Conder said. "This is just my roots. It is really a part of me."