The Mormon church, which expressed "profound regret" for the massacre in 2007, owns the 800-plus acres of land where the incident occurred and erected a monument in 1990 to the victims. The property owned by the church was also believed to house the two grave sites.
Phil Bolinger, Mountain Meadows Massacre Foundation president, said the church had told the foundation that there would not be much left of the erected graves on the property due to damage and erosion over the years.
“We never actually believed that,” Bolinger said. “We knew that the military built a sepulcher or cairn and that they were still out there.”
Using the Army records, Bassett was able to locate the California/Old Spanish Trail, which led him to a piece of private property that is not owned by the church. Bassett said the massacre site is correct but after comparing the historic records to the Mormon church-owned property, he realized the burial locations were marked in the wrong places.
“I was looking around and realized I was actually standing on top of this massive pile of rocks down in this ravine,” Bassett said. “The measurements taken by the Army were so accurate that when I followed the map using surveying equipment I was like 2 feet from it.”
The first grave site Bassett located was for the murdered men and boys. He found the grave for the women and children about 357 yards to the north of the first site. Both graves are made of granite stones piled about 30 feet across and about 6 feet tall to form rectangular sepulchers, Bassett said.
Though the graves will have to be exhumed to confirm their authenticity, Bassett is positive the locations are correct.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre Foundation is trying to come to an agreement with the land owner for conservation of the sites and wants to give them national monument status.The Mormon church-owned site was designated as a national historic landmark in 2011.
“It’s the highest order of federal protection out there and that has been our goal from the beginning,” Bolinger said. “We want to honor and respect those that were lost at Mountain Meadows in one of the worst tragedies in the westward expansion."
Contributing: David DeMille reprint in USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/20/mountain-meadows-massacre-site/72525842/
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