Provo Mayor Lewis K. Billings, writing in the foreword of the book “Founding Fort Utah,” said author D. Robert Carter “sets new standards for accuracy and depth. Few communities can claim to have a text documenting their earliest settlement that has been so well prepared.” Carter is also the author of “Utah Lake: Legacy,” a history of Utah Lake.

The city has ordered 250 copies, which it will distribute to its employees as Christmas gifts, said Provo city spokesman Mike Mower. The city also will distribute copies to local libraries. A limited number will be for sale to the public and can be purchased at The Read Leaf in Springville, Pioneer and Heritage bookstores in Provo, The BYU Bookstore or by calling that author at 489-8256.

“It is a wonderful historical record that should give all Provo residents an even greater appreciation for those who established this community,” Mower said.

Carter said his book, “Founding Fort Utah,” is the first in-depth history of the first year of settlement in Provo. While doing research on the text, Carter discovered several historic sketches of areas in Utah Valley, including a sketch of Rock Canyon that is believed to date to 1849 or 1850, and is the earliest such image known to exist.

Records from the time period list the abundance of fish and pasture land as the reason for wanting to settle Utah Valley, he said. On March 13, 1849, 29 men filled the office of then LDS Church president Brigham Young to volunteer to form a new colony near Utah Lake.

Two weeks later, the men left Salt Lake City with provisions. They arrived on April 1 and began constructing Fort Utah on April 3, also called Utau Settlement. The settlement was later officially named Provo.

Carter joked that the book came about because he and his wife, Lyndia, have big mouths. At a meeting to prepare for Provo’s sesquicentennial celebration several years ago, Billings mentioned the importance of putting a marker at the site of Fort Utah, the first permanent structure built by settlers in what is now Provo city limits.

“We shot off our mouths and said we didn’t think it was where an earlier monument was,” Carter said, referring to himself and his wife. “The city and the committee hired us to find the fort.”

After searching state, local and LDS Church archives, Carter found not only the location of the fort, but a map drawn two months after the fort was erected that detailed site and who owned the land around the fort.

Carter said he was working in the LDS Church archives when an archivist handed his wife the map, which had never been labeled, and asked the Carters if they could identify what it was.

“The archivist said ‘Do these names on this map mean anything to you,’ ” Carter said. “It was the first hand-drawn map of the Provo River and Fort Utah.”

Eventually Carter was able to locate the Fort Utah site between the Provo River and 200 North and between 1700 and 1900 West — several blocks away from where earlier historians had thought the fort was built. Archeological work in the area confirmed the site and in 1999 the city installed a monument at the site as part of its sesquicentennial celebrations.

In the process of finding the fort, Carter had collected many original documents about the first year of settlement in Provo. He asked the city if they would commission a book on the subject, and Billings agreed.

“I thought how nice it would be to concentrate on a very brief window and see what actually happened during that first year,” he said. “This is much, much more in depth than anything we’ve seen before.”

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.