On July 19, 1850, William H. Adams, John
Mercer and Philo T. Farnsworth, Mormon pioneers,
sent by Brigham Young, arrived at the area now
known as Pleasant Grove and staked out farms in
what is now the southwest corner of the city. A
small community was established September 13,
1850, consisting of George S. Clark and his
wife, Susannah Dalley Clark, Richard and Ann
Elizabeth Sheffer Clark, John Greenleaf Holman
and Nancy Clark Holman, Lewis Harvey and his
wife Lucinda Clark Harvey, Johnathan Harvey and
Sarah Herbert Harvey, Charles Price and wife and
child, Widow Harriet Marler and children, John
Wilson, Ezekiel Holman, and possibly one or two
others, relatives of those mentioned. Pleasant
Grove was officially incorporated as a town
January 18, 1855, by which time the settlement
had grown 623 people.
The original name of the city was Battle
Creek, Utah. It was named for a battle which
took place there in 1849 between Mormon settlers
and a small band of Ute Indians. The settlers
later decided they needed a more uplifting name
and began calling their town Pleasant Grove
after a grove of cottonwood trees located
between Battle Creek and Grove Creek, near the
current-day intersection of Locust Avenue and
Battle Creek Drive. A monument with a plaque
describing this battle is located at Kiwanis
Park, at the mouth of Battle Creek Canyon.
During the Walker Indian War in the 1850s,
citizens built a fort with walls two or three
feet thick and six feet tall that occupied an
area the size of sixteen city blocks. The
settlers in the area at the time built homes
inside the fort. While the fort no longer
stands, memorial cornerstones were erected by
local historians. The northeast monument was
erected near the intersection of 100 North and
300 East Streets. The northwest monument was
erected four blocks west of that point at 100
West Street and the southeast monument erected
four blocks south at 300 South Street. The
southwest monument would have been located near
300 South 100 West, the area is now occupied by
a large parking lot and retail store