Payson, Utah
Near Provo, Utah
Payson carries a small debt of gratitude across a thousand miles of American geography. Sixteen Mormon pioneers settled along Peteetneet Creek in October of eighteen fifty, naming the spot after the town of Payson, Illinois. That Illinois town had taken in Brigham Young and his family in the winter of eighteen thirty-nine, after a mob drove the Mormon community out of Missouri at gunpoint.
Young never forgot that hospitality, and when he organized this Utah settlement, he passed the name westward as a kind of thank-you note written in geography. The creek retained its Ute name, Peteetneet. The town incorporated in eighteen fifty-three, and eventually became one of the larger communities in Utah Valley.
A century and a half later, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a temple here. The cycle of naming and honoring continued in stone.
