On April 24, 1846 the Mormons settled Garden Grove to form a stopover settlement for thousands of Mormons moving west. Their cemetery, 1/4 mile west of town, was no doubt the first in Garden Grove Township. According to an account from the book, Discovering Historic Iowa, 1975 edition by the Iowa Dept. of Public Instruction, the cemetery contained 6 graves and the 16 foot square area was surrounded by a picket fence until about 1910. After that the cemetery was neglected and the grave markers disappeared. The Mormons left in 1852.



There are no stones now, although 2 small lot markers with initials "E" and "C" were located. There is no fence, but one man remembered it being enclosed by a barbed wire fence. Another reported that there might have been up to 100 burials made here.



There are several reports on what happened to the tombstones that were once located here. Some of the stories are as follows:



• That about 1925, two men in a car with Utah license plates loaded a stone into their car and drove away -- supposedly it was the marker for a sister who was 7 or 8 years old when she died.



•That markers were put in a ditch north of the water tower on the east side of the present mile-line road.



• That tombstones were moved to line a cave in Wayne County.



• Other stones used to build a basement for a house in Leon on the west side of Highway 69.



According to the Mormon Trek West by Joseph E. Brown, 1980, "The dead were buried in a small wooded cemetery at Garden Grove; the funeral ceremonies were brief, because the pioneers worked long days in preparing their wagons for the continued march ahead."



This cemetery land was made into a Trailside Historical Park, April, 1968 and was dedicated by the Mormons and the Decatur County Conservation Board July 15, 1973 when the Mormons erected a large granite memorial stone which reads:



"The Latter-Day Saints at Garden Grove."



It now has a small shelter house and picnic table and a breath-taking view from this hill in all directions.



Additional information received from Karla GUNZENHAUSER, Garden Grove, Iowa: "The Mormon Cemetery west of Garden Grove probably contained about 140 graves. This information is based on using "wires" to find areas of disturbed ground. The Mormons left Garden Grove in May, 1851. This is probably due to the fact they had made rope out of hemp, and were called west with the rope to prepare ferries for the greater calling to the west of all Mormons still in Iowa in 1852."



The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) feature ID for the cemetery is 1969696 (Mormon Cemetery).