After taking
lumber out of Pleasant Creek Canyon in late 1851, a band of Mormon colonists
from Manti led by Madison D. Hambleton returned in the spring of 1852
to establish the Hambleton Settlement near the present site of Mt. Pleasant.
During the Walkara (Walker) Indian War, the small group of settlers
relocated to Spring Town (Spring City) and later to Manti for protection.
The old settlement was burned down by local Native Americans, so when
a large colonizing party from Ephraim and Manti returned to the area
in 1859, a new, permanent townsite was laid out in its present location--one
hundred miles south of Salt Lake City and twenty-two miles northeast
of Manti.
Among the founding
settlers were Mormon converts from Scandinavia, the British Isles, and
the eastern United States. By 1880, at which time Mt. Pleasant was the
county's largest city, with a population of 2,000, more than 72 percent
of its married adults were foreign born. This ethnic diversity had an
important impact on village life during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. For decades, five languages were commonly spoken in town,
creating confusing and sometimes amusing communication problems.