A Death in the Black Hawk War

This marker remembers William Washington Thorpe, killed near this spot on the seventeenth of October, eighteen sixty-five, while trying to recover stolen cattle.

That autumn day was one of the worst in Ephraim's history. The Ute leader known as Black Hawk led his warriors down out of the canyon and swept away the town's entire herd. When settlers rode out to stop them, the raid turned deadly. Several Ephraim residents were killed, among them women working in the fields, and Thorpe died near a rise the locals called Guard Knoll.

This violence was part of the Black Hawk War, the longest and most destructive conflict between Mormon settlers and Native people in Utah's history. It grew from broken treaties, vanishing game, and hungry families on both sides, and it left graves like this one scattered across the valley floor.