In late November 1849, a vanguard of pioneers arrived in the Sanpete Valley seeking religious freedom and hoping to help build Zion near the designated Gray Hill where the Manti Temple now stands. Additional pioneers, including many from foreign lands, followed and joined in building what was remembered as a great inland empire, leaving a legacy of faith, sacrifice, family principles of truth, and personal testimony. Building bridges was a routine necessity for pioneer settlers in the Great Basin West because late spring snowmelt, heavy rains, and flash floods could disrupt roads. In early April 1859, Sanpete County resident George Peacock noted that two substantial arched stone bridges were being erected, the first he had seen in the Territory, and these structures were unusual not only in Utah but anywhere in the West at that time. One bridge, known as the River Bridge, stood on the San Pitch River directly east of the River Knoll, and remnants of its cobblestone structure were still evident in the 1960s. The second crossed Manti's City Creek on Union Street between Main Street and First East and remained into the 1890s. Among the skilled stoneworkers associated with bridge building in Sanpete were master mason Artemus Millet, who had worked on arched stone bridges in Canada and later oversaw construction on the Kirtland Temple in Ohio, along with Hans Denison, Richard Hall, Welcome Chapman, and Mormon Battalion veteran Augustus "Gus" Dodge, who recalled helping turn the large arches across City Creek on the east side. Sanpete also became a center of stonemasonry, as shown by cemetery headstones and by work on the Manti Temple, where many masons labored under master mason Edward Lloyd Parry, whose family remained active longest in extracting, shaping, and marketing native oolite stone.