Brigham Young Family Cemetery
The Brigham Young Family Cemetery reopened in October 2022 after major renovations and rededication.
Besides being the final resting place for President Brigham Young who died on August 29, 1877, the Brigham Young Family Cemetery includes marked gravesites for wives Mary Ann Angell, Lucy Ann Decker, Emeline Free, Mary Van Cott, and Eliza R. Snow, and children Joseph Angell Young and Alice Young Clawson. The majority of the 40-plus gravesites are unmarked graves. During the restoration, ground-penetrating radar technology, known as GPR, was used to mark the precise locations of burial places.
A statue in the center of the cemetery/park honors the 6,000 Latter-day Saint pioneers who lost their lives while crossing the western plains of the United States to present-day Utah. Other monuments in the cemetery honor the life of Brigham Young and early Latter-day Saints.
On June 1, 1974 — the 173rd anniversary of Brigham Young’s birth — The Brigham Young Family Ceremony was dedicated as the Mormon Pioneer Memorial Monument on June 1, 1974, the 173rd anniversary of Brigham Young’s birth.
Planning for the family cemetery’s renovation began in April 2020. Multiple departments of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worked together with meticulous care to preserve the historical integrity of the site.
Located one block east of Temple Square, the Young family and others used the family cemetery on the property — which had previously been the Youngs’ strawberry patch — rather than burial places in the larger, city-owned cemetery. “The Young family buried here gave their all to this vision of community because of their unflinching belief in the eternal nature of the human soul and the eternal nature of the human family,” said Emily Utt, historic sites curator with the Church History Department. “They worked out together on this very land the things that would make their family eternal.” Elder Kevin W. Pearson, a General Authority Seventy who is president of the Church’s Utah Area, presided at the October 22 services and offered the rededicatory prayer. He praised the sacrifices of early pioneers, who settled the Salt Lake Valley and beyond under the leadership and direction of Brigham Young.
