The cabin
Originally located in Coalville, Utah, this cabin was the home of Ira Hinckley and his family. Here they lived a life of simple devotion that included family prayer and scripture reading. While living in this cabin in April of 1867, Ira received a letter from Brigham Young asking him to leave Coalville in order to supervise the construction of a fort at Cove Creek. He was advised to leave his family in this home while the fort was being built. He then moved his family to the newly completed fort where he managed the forts operations for the next decade. It is not known whether Ira built the cabin himself.
Between April and November 1867, quarrymen, stonemasons and carpenters from central Utah settlements labored together to construct the Fort. Built of black volcanic rock and dark limestone quarried nearby, the walls are one hundred feet long and eighteen feet high. Lumber, mostly cedar and pine, was used for the roof, twelve interior rooms and the massive doors at the east and west ends of the fort.
For years the Fort bustled with activity. News of the great, growing West throbbed over the lines into the telegraph office at the Fort and postal riders delivered the news of the new western empire to the post office. Daily, two stage coaches with a variety of weary travelers rumbled up to the Fort. Travelers unhitched their teams from their heavily loaded wagons and led the horses to the barn. Cowboys tended the tithing herds and a blacksmith fashioned metal into horseshoes with his hammer. Evening conversation was lively around the long table where each night a new variety of visitors joined the Hinckley family for dinner.
For more than twenty years the Fort served an important function, but as times changed so did the need for the Fort. By 1890 the Church leased out the Fort and after the turn of the century, sold it to the Otto Kesler family. Nearly one hundred years later in 1988, the Hinckley family purchased the Fort from the Keslers and made a gift of it to the Church as a historic site. Shortly afterward, efforts to restore the Fort to its original condition were begun, and on 21 May 1994 President Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor in the First Presidency, dedicated the Historic Cove Fort Complex.
“It is our hope that Cove Fort will serve as a modern way station—not as a shelter from physical fatigue or protection from the elements,” said Elder Stephen D. Nadauld of the Second Quorum of the Seventy who also spoke at the dedication. “Rather we hope it will serve as a spiritual way station where we can be reminded of the faith of our forefathers, where we can refresh our sense of sacrifice and obedience and our dedication to duty, where we can be reminded of the values of work, provident living, self-sufficiency and family unity.”
