Mt. Pleasant, a small town at the foot of the mountains in Sanpete County near the geographic center of Utah, was settled early in 1859. During June the men tended their crops and built a fort, twenty-six rods by twenty-six rods, enclosing about five and one-half acres between Main Street and First North and State Street and First East. The wall was twelve feet high, four feet wide at the bottom and tapering to two feet at the top, built of native rock laid with lime mortar according to specific instructions. Sixteen feet of the wall was allotted for each cabin built inside, and each cabin had one porthole about seven feet from the ground. Water came from Pleasant Creek, which passed almost parallel east and west through the center of the fort, and corrals for all the livestock stood just outside the north side with a roadway between. Completed on July 18, 1859, it was considered the finest fort in Sanpete County. The first break in the wall came in 1878 to make room for a new enlarged ZCMI store in the southwest corner, and although the town had grown from about 800 to 1,200 people, only a few families still lived inside the fort, then called the Tithing Yard.