We found a small book store within a room off a dry goods store.
On the other side of the street was a candie store.
Traffic was light so I waited for the right moment then stepped out into the middle of the street for these next two shots. Here's what the street looked like in one direction...
Here it is in the other direction.
There were many, many historic looking homes.
There were a couple originals like this log home.
But most homes were made of this hewn stone. Notice this unusual picket fence.
Here's another example of the stone. I think it's standstone.
Here's a house for sale if you're interested. We didn't check the price.
The picture of this swollen stream doesn't give as much of an indication of the rushing water from snow melt as I would have liked. So there's a video attached if you care to watch it. Just click the picture below or right-click, select "Save Target As" and save the video to your desktop for viewing. It's nearly 4 megabytes so it may take a while to download.
This old stone home was two-story.
We never did figure out what the purpose of these stars was. Thanks to a friend who told me decorative stars were used on 18th and 19th century barns, I'm sure that must be the purpose of these stars.
I got several shots of this old chapel turned into a barn. Or maybe it was a barn to begin with, don't know.
It didn't seem to matter what angle we shot this thing from, it was obscured.
If it wasn't the trees it was the high wall that obscured it.
We drove around the block taking photos from every angle but these are the best we could do.
This pic is over-enhanced but I wanted to show the writing which says it's a marker for the original fort built to protect them from Indian attacks. They were invited to come to this area by the Ute chief but there were hostiles in the are who killed many whites before peace was established.
The marker says the walls of the fort were 12 feet high and 2 feet thick.
This is the old bishop's storehouse in Manti.
Nowadays, a bishop's storehouse is for distributing groceries and other necessities to the poor members of the church. In former times, when they attempted to live an united order, it was for collecting tithes and other goods for payment on everything from taking care of the poor to paying off workers for public works projects.
I enhanced this photo so you could read the stone marker better.
Here was maintained a dugout like the original first homes in the area.
A closer look.
This marker says, "At the invitation of Wakara, Chief of the Ute Indian Nation... Brigham Young sent Isaac Morely with 224 pioneers to make the [Sanpete] Valley their home..." They survived 3 feet of snow the first winter by digging into this hillside. Half their cattle froze or starved. Next spring they were overrun by rattlesnakes from the ledges above.
"Pioneer journal entries record that the settlers killed hundreds of snakes, yet miraculously not a single person was bitten."
Here's the cliffs above referred to by the marker. Looks like they may have used this cliffs to quarry some of the stone used for the houses in town.
Before we left town we drove up on top of temple hill for Linda to get a shot of the valley with her camera.
This is facing west across the road which runs north-south.
This looks back up the road (between the trees) toward the north.
Another view looking west.
After a few photos we were off back down the hill toward the highway and home.
As we departed, we noticed this sweet little dove keeping a vigil over the place.
