American Fork, Utah

American Fork at the foot of Mount Timpanogos was settled in eighteen fifty by Mormon pioneers and incorporated two years later as Lake City, for the Utah Lake visible to the northwest. The name changed in eighteen sixty to American Fork, after the river running through town, partly to avoid confusion with Salt Lake City.

The early community made a small claim on educational history: by the eighteen sixties, American Fork had established a public school that was the first in all of Utah Territory to offer public education. In the eighteen seventies the town became a rail access point for silver mines up American Fork Canyon. The ore is long gone, but the canyon is still there, and so is Timpanogos Cave National Monument above town. Today American Fork is a city of over thirty-three thousand in the Provo-Orem metro, one of the fastest-growing corners of the state.