Provo’s capital building, a cemetery, an LDS Temple, Provo City Park. The property where BYU now sits was once considered to be the ideal nesting ground for many landmarks with a few of them becoming a reality.
Since the early days of Provo, many people considered the property where BYU abides to be a special and chosen spot.
“There are many interesting facts about this hill,” said Robert Carter, a history correspondent for the Daily Herald.
Soon after the pioneers came to Provo, the hill where BYU’s Maeser Building is now located was given the name “Temple Hill” because it was considered to be the ideal spot for a Latter-Day Saint temple to stand, Carter said.
Many other individuals believed it was a perfect place for the capital building, he said.
Although the hill did not fulfill its purpose of housing a temple or the capital, it does still provide an interesting past.
In the mid 1800’s, Temple hill became known as one of the three burying grounds located in the Provo area.
During the years of 1851 to 1853, Temple Hill became the popular place to bury the dead. Many believed this was a great place for a cemetery because it would one day be where the temple of the Lord would dwell. It was also a beautiful area that overlooked the city.
It did not take long for the pioneers to realize Temple Hill was not the ideal place for a cemetery. According to the book titled History of Early Provo Cemeteries Moved, by Emma McDowell Jacobson, the hill was sandy and not suitable for graves.
It was in 1853 when Provo councilmen decided to find a better place for a cemetery. They decided to make a Provo City cemetery on the old Springville road, which is still used as the cemetery today.
With a new location for a cemetery, individuals were required to remove their relatives buried bodies from their previous locations and move them to the new burying grounds.
People found removing the dead bodies was not an easy task. Many of the wooden boxes, which held the bodies, had rotted and some of the graves did not have headstones.
Jacobson records a story in her book about a mother from England who was buried at Temple Hill. When it came time to move her body to the new cemetery her children thought they would be able to identify her body because she was wearing white gloves when she was buried. They found four other ladies buried with white gloves in the same area. Not knowing which grave was their mother’s, the children decided to bury the mother and the four other unrecognized ladies in one big grave in the new cemetery.
With many graves not having headstones, there are people who think there could possibly be bodies still buried on the BYU grounds.
“I’m sure there are still bodies up there, Carter said. “I just don’t know how they could have required every body.”
With pioneers moving frequently in the early days, some of the families who buried their loved ones have moved on and were not around to move their relative’s bodies, Carter said.
It also would not surprise Cathy Jackson, the division office assistant for Provo Cemetery, if there were still bodies up on Temple Hill
“This is the wide open west,” Jackson said. “There are bodies everywhere, under favorite cherry trees, up in the mountains, anywhere they wanted to be buried.”
It was in the early 1900’s when B YU purchased 10 acres of land on Temple Hill, said Carrie Jenkins the public relations director at BYU, but she said she was unaware a cemetery once rested under BYU until now.
