Land held by the city

A crooked 25-acre tract passed into city hands

You're standing on 860 East in American Fork, on open city-owned land near the Utah State Training School grounds. There's no single building marking this spot. The land itself has a short paper trail. In 1997, the state's Division of Facilities Construction and Management handed this ground to American Fork City by deed. The county plotted its boundaries the next year, a crooked 25-acre tract running south from the section corner in a dozen short, angled lines. Utility rights lingered a while longer. In 2010, Questar Gas Company signed a quitclaim deed giving up whatever interest it still held here, clearing the title for the city alone.

A few hundred feet northwest, the old Training School's amphitheater and stone wall still stand, a reminder of the institution that once shaped this corner of town.

Before the Walker War, there were killings at Battle Creek and Fort Utah, in Utah County near American Fork. Ute warriors and Mormon settlers clashed in their respective territories at both sites between 1849 and 1850. These attacks foreshadowed the larger Walker War that broke out in 1853.

Mormon settlement of the Utah Lake Valley, including the American Fork area, brought wider displacement and violence from 1847 into the 1860s. Mormons took Ute land without regard for Ute rights, displaced Indians, drove away game, and replaced natural vegetation. Utes retaliated by taking cattle and horses and raiding Mormon communities. Militias were sent against them, and many Indians were killed.

Ute hunting ground became a settlers' town

Before this parcel had a deed or a survey line, this stretch of ground near American Fork, Utah County, sat inside Ute hunting and fishing territory at the north end of Utah Lake. Mormon settlers founded American Fork in 1850 and incorporated it two years later as Lake City. By the mid-1850s, tension between the new settlers and the Ute people living here had turned sharp.

A fort rose here as war with the Utes broke out

In 1853, General Daniel H. Wells ordered the settlers of American Fork to build a defensive fort. Eighty-five families crowded inside a 37-acre enclosure meant to be ringed by a 12-foot wall. Workers only managed to raise parts of it to eight feet before stopping. That same year, a settler killed a Ute man and wounded two others. The killing set off the Walker War / Wakara's War, a ten-month conflict led by the Ute leader Wakara and his brother Arapeen. Raids and reprisals swept across central Utah. Roughly twenty white settlers died, along with a larger number of Utes, before the outnumbered Utes were pushed out of their own territory.

That wider campaign, later called the Black Hawk War (Timpanogos extermination conflict), ran from 1849 to 1873 across Utah County and beyond. No treaty between the Mormon settlers and Utah's Native peoples was ever ratified by Congress. None of this happened on this exact parcel, but it shaped the valley the city later platted around it.

The state signed the land over to the city

In October 1997, the state's Division of Facilities Construction and Management signed the land over to American Fork City by deed. It simply moved the ground from state hands into the city's.

The county mapped the parcel's dozen angled lines

The following year, Utah County formally mapped the parcel. Its boundary runs in a dozen short, angled lines, starting at the southeast corner of Section 12 and jogging northwest, west, and south in turns of a few dozen feet at a time until it closes on itself at just over 25.28 acres. The county gave it parcel number 12:064:0033, and it carries no recorded building and no assessed structure to this day.

A gas company gave up its last claim

In April 2010, Questar Gas Company filed a quitclaim deed on the same land, giving up any lingering claim or easement it held across the parcel. That cleared the way for American Fork City to hold the ground outright, free of utility company interest.

The city still holds the open ground

American Fork City still owns the parcel. The land remains open ground a few streets from downtown. Utah County issued disaster declarations over the years, including a 2023 flood and fires in 2020 and 2026 that reached the county at large, though neither touched this spot directly.

In 2020, the Ether Hollow Fire brought a disaster declaration to Utah County at large.

In 2023, flooding brought a disaster declaration to Utah County at large.

In 2026, the Iron Fire brought a disaster declaration to Utah County at large.