There have been several remembrances of the Mountain Meadows Massacre including commemorative observances, the building of monuments and markers, and the creation of associations and other groups to help promote the massacre's history and ensure protection of the massacre site and grave sites.
Markers and monuments
In the State of Utah
1859
Southern/siege gravesite
In May 1859, Major James H. Carleton, of the U.S. Army, and Cavalry arrived at Mountain Meadows with orders to bury the bones of the massacre's victims. After searching the area, the remains of 34 victims were buried on the northern side of a ditch. (This ditch was a defensive trench dug by the emigrants to protect themselves from their attackers.) Around and above this grave a rude monument was built of loose granite stones, creating a cairn. It was conical in form, fifty feet in circumference at the base, twelve feet in height and supported a cross hewn from red cedar wood. From the ground to the top of the cross was twenty-four feet. On the transverse part of the cross, facing towards the north, was an inscription carved in the wood:
On a crude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the northern base of the monument were cut the following words:
During a tour of southern Utah Brigham Young, along with some 60 church members visited the massacre site in May 1861. After viewing the inscription on the cross, Wilford Woodruff recorded President Young as saying "it should be vengeance is mine and I have taken a little." The cross was then torn down and the rocks of the cairn were dismantled, leaving little of the original marker.
Later reconstructions
In May 1864, Captain George F. Price and a company of Cavalry found the 1859 memorial and grave had been desecrated. The monument had been torn down, the cross taken away and the stones forming the monument scattered on the valley floor; while the mass-grave underneath had been defaced.
Captain Price and the Cavalry immediately proceeded to repair the grave and rebuild the monument. The structure erected was of stone, creating a new cairn, measuring twelve feet square at the base and four feet high, compactly filled in with loose stone and earth. From the square rose a pyramidal column seven feet high. The center of column supported a cedar pole with a horizontal member attached representing the Christian Cross and making the height of the monument fourteen feet. On the side of the cross facing east were inscribed the words:
On the opposite side were the words:
The grave was repaired by filling it with earth, rounding it on the surface and covering it with a layer of protective stones.
Lorenzo Brown, recorded that when passing through Mountain Meadows, on July 1, 1864, he noticed someone had carved "Remember Haun's Mill and Carthage Jail" just below the biblical passage on the cross.
Following its reconstruction, the monument continued to face vandalism and was torn down at least one more time in 1870, only to be rebuilt soon after.
Northern gravesites
Prior to the construction of Major Carleton's monument, while waiting to rendezvous with the major at Mountain Meadows in 1859, assistant surgeon Charles Brewer was placed in charge of a burial detail by Captain Reuben T. Campbell of Camp Floyd. Brewer gathered the remains of 26 victims, burying them in three mass graves (located one and one-half miles north of where Carleton would construct his monument). Each of these gravesites were marked by a mound of stones. Unlike the southern gravesite, the exact location of these graves was lost throughout time.
In 2014, archaeologist Everett Bassett discovered rock piles he believes mark the location of these northern graves. The locations of the possible graves are on private land and not at any of the monument sites owned by the LDS Church. The Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation has expressed their desire that the sites are conserved and given national monument status. Other descendant groups have been more hesitant in accepting the sites as legitimate graves.
1932
Because the cairn had been vandalized, destroyed and rebuilt several times over the 70 years since its original construction, the citizens of southern Utah decided that something more needed to be done. On August 20, 1932, 73 men began work on a new wall which would surround the remains of the 1859 cairn. This wall enclosed an area of about 30 X and averaged high. A small set of steps on the western side allowed access into the enclosed area so visitors could view the remains of the cairn. The Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmarks Association installed a bronze plaque near the steps on which was written: