Mormon Battalion - Historic Sites and Monuments

Historic Sites and Monuments

Historic sites associated with the battalion include:

• Mormon Battalion Historic Site, a visitor center in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, San Diego.
• Box Canyon historical site, in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, San Diego County, on Highway S-2, approximately 8.7 miles south of Highway 78 (Scissors Crossing). (GPS location: N33.0152,W116.4429) Here in 1847, the Battalion cut a road into the rocky side of a canyon which was otherwise impassable to wagons. Remnants of the road cut into the rock wall are still visible.
• Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, the largest bas-relief military monument in the United States, on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles, dedicated in 1958 at the site of historic Fort Moore built by the Mormon Battalion in 1847, decommissioned in 1853.
• Mormon Battalion Mountain, a low-lying mountain within San Bernardino County's Glen Helen Regional Park at the mouth of Cajon Canyon, where in April 1847 a detachment of the Mormon Battalion arrived from Los Angeles with the assignment to set up camp, build a fort or redoubt and guard the pass from any Indian raids. A historic marker within the park commemorates this event.
• Mormon Rocks, northwest of San Bernardino, California, in the Cajon Pass, just west of Interstate 15 on State Route 138. Near Mormon Rocks, the first wagon road was blazed through the Cajon Pass in 1848 by 25 veteran Battalion soldiers, with the wagon of Captain Daniel C. Davis, wife Susan and son Danny in their journey to the Salt Lake Valley.
• The Mormon Battalion Monument at the Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• The Mormon Battalion Memorial in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, Point Loma, San Diego, erected in 1998.
• A sculpture of an infantryman of the battalion by Edward J. Fraughton erected in 1969 at Presidio Park, San Diego, which is pictured above.

Monuments relating to the battalion are also located in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, and trail markers have been placed on segments of the battalion route between Mt. Pisgah (Iowa) and San Diego.

• The community of Binghampton in Tucson, Arizona, was established in 1916 but it was first settled by Erastus Bingham, Jr. in 1893. He had come through Tucson in 1846 as part of the Mormon Battalion. In 2003 it was placed on the NRHP as a Rural Historic Landmark to save what was left of the rural area. Today it includes the Brandi Fenton Memorial Park and once again has people enjoying it. It is next to the Rillito Riverpark which runs along the banks of the Rillito River and gets quite a few walkers and bicyclists.