Local city information for Spanish Fork, UT

Spanish Fork is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Provo–Orem, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 20,246 at the 2000 census.

SPANISH FORK

Spanish Fork, Utah County, is located about fifty-nine miles south of Salt Lake City, and is built upon three distinct alluvial fans formed by the Spanish Fork River. It received its name from the fact that Catholic Fathers Dominguez and Escalante entered Utah Valley along the Spanish Fork River in September 1776 on their exploratory journey.

Enoch Reece took up about three hundred ninety-nine acres of land in the Spanish Fork River bottoms area in 1850 and was the first man to locate a home there. He was soon followed by other settlers, including John Holt, John H. Reed, and William Pace.

During the fall of 1854, a fort, called Fort Saint Luke, was built on the present site of Spanish Fork. This was occupied by nineteen families from the settlement of Palmyra, about two and three quarters miles west. The fort was built as protection from the Indians. In 1855 the territorial legislature granted the city of Spanish Fork a charter and boundaries were established. After Palmyra was abandoned in 1856 and its citizens, numbering about three hundred ninety-six, moved to Spanish Fork, the charter was amended to also include that area.

As a result of the United States Army coming into the Salt Lake Valley in 1858, Spanish Fork became the temporary home of about four hundred families who had fled from their homes in northern settlements. Many of the refugees remained in Spanish Fork. The first commercial industry, a sawmill, was established in 1858 and was owned by Archibald Gardner. He also built the first flour mill, which began operation in 1859. The Spanish Fork Foundry, established in 1884, turned out great quantities of iron and brass castings. While the principal industry of Spanish Fork has always been agriculture, the city has also become a primary livestock center. The canning industry was also important; in 1925, the Utah Packing Corporation established a factory and began to contract with local farmers for the growing of peas, beans, and tomatoes.

As the population increased and more land was brought under cultivation, the waters of Spanish Fork River became inadequate to supply irrigation needs. After lengthy negotiations and contracts with the federal government, Spanish Fork secured the delivery of water from the newly completed Strawberry Reservoir. Water was first received through the tunnel on 27 June 1915.

Teleflex Defense Systems is currently Spanish Fork's largest private employer with over 212 employees. Seven other businesses employ one hundred or more workers: Longview Fibre Company, Natures Sunshine Products, Trojan Corporation, Valley Asphalt, Inc., Shopko, K Mart, and Mountain Country Foods.

Although Spanish Fork is predominantly Mormon, the Presbyterian Church established a church and mission day school in 1882. The school functioned until the state school system was inaugurated in the early part of the twentieth century. Today there are three elementary schools, one intermediate, and one high school. An Icelandic Lutheran Church was also built on the east bench of Spanish Fork and served a congregation for many years. There is also the Faith Baptist Church, as well as twenty-six LDS wards in four stakes. The population of Spanish Fork was 11,279 in 1990, well over a one hundred percent increase from the 5,239 residents in 1950.

See: Elisha Warner, The History of Spanish Fork (1930).

Spanish Fork was settled by Mormon pioneers in 1851. Its name derives from a visit to the area by two Franciscan Friars, Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez in 1776, who followed the stream down Spanish Fork canyon with the objective of opening a new trail from Santa Fe, New Mexico to the Spanish missions in California, along a route later followed by fur trappers. They described the area inhabited by native Americans as having "spreading meadows, where there is sufficient irrigable land for two good settlements. Over and above these finest of advantages, it has plenty of firewood and timber in the adjacent sierra which surrounds its many sheltered spots, waters, and pasturages, for raising cattle and sheep and horses."

In 1851 some settlers led by William Pace set up scattered farms in the Spanish Fork bottom lands and called the area the Upper Settlement. However a larger group congregated at what became known as the Lower Settlement just over a mile north-west of the present center of Spanish Fork along the Spanish Fork River. In December 1851 Stephen Markham became the branch president of the Mormon settlers at this location.

In 1852 Latter-Day Saints founded a settlement called Palmyra west of the historic center of Spanish Fork. George A. Smith supervised the laying out of a townsite, including a temple square in that year. A fort was built at this site. A school was built at Palmyra in 1852. With the on set of the Walker War in 1853 most of the farmers in the region who were not yet in the fort moved in. Some of the people did not like this site and so moved to a site at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon where they built a structure they called "Fort St. Luke". Also in 1854 there was a fort founded about two miles (3 km) south of the center of Spanish Fork that latter was known as the "Old Fort".

In 1856 the Brigham Young advised leaving the Palmyra site because of its swampiness and the high alkali content of the soil. At this time the settlers relocated to Spanish Fork and began to build its current center at that time. John L. Butler became the first bishop of the Spanish Fork Ward at this time.

Between 1855 and 1860, the arrival of pioneers from Iceland made Spanish Fork into the first permanent Icelandic settlement in the United States. The city also lent its name to the 1865 Treaty of Spanish Fork, where the Utes were forced by an Executive Order of President Abraham Lincoln to relocate to the Uintah Basin.

In 1891 the Spanish Fork ward was divided into two wards. By 1930 there were five Spanish Fork Wards plus the Palmyra Ward which had been established at the location of the old settlement in 1901.

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