Most of the families who first farmed the land around Vineyard were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their faith brought them to Utah, and their wards held their community together for generations.
The journey west
In the 1830s and 1840s, Latter-day Saints were driven from their homes in Missouri and then Illinois. Their leader, Brigham Young, led them west, far from the towns that had turned them away. The first wagon company reached the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, and thousands more followed, many walking beside their wagons and some pulling handcarts.
In March 1849 Brigham Young sent settlers south to the Provo River, where they built Fort Utah. In 1855 families spread to Lake View, at the mouth of the river, right next to what is now Vineyard. Among them were Mads Jorgensen, Lars Jacobsen, Stephen Bunnell, Peter Johnson, Peter Madsen and Thomas Gammon.
A Sunday School of their own
Church in those days meant a trip to Provo, and the river stood in the way. So on July 17, 1877, the Lake View families started a Sunday School of their own, with Peter Madsen in charge. Within a few months it became a ward, a local congregation, and Madsen served as its bishop for the next fifteen years.
For farm families, the ward was more than a Sunday meeting. It was where neighbors met, where news traveled and where help came from when someone needed it. Vineyard grew up with its own ward, and the ward appears again and again in the local paper's Vineyard column.
The boys of Vineyard ward who are serving in the army or navy.Voice of Sharon, December 1941
The ward in wartime
In December 1941, as war came, the Sunday School sent books to "the boys of Vineyard ward who are serving in the army or navy." Through the war years the column kept track of those young men, where they were stationed and when they came home.
At Christmas 1946, with the war over and the new steel mill running next door, carols played from a loudspeaker at the mill's Number 2 gate. The paper reported that the music was greatly appreciated by members of Vineyard ward.
A family of faith
Faith ran through the Gammon family's story too. In 2004, when Rulon Gammon, Vineyard's first mayor, sold the dairy farm where he was born, he planned to step down as mayor so that he and his wife could serve a church mission.
Today Vineyard is home to people of many backgrounds and beliefs, most of them newcomers. But the pattern the first families set, neighbors gathering, looking after each other and building something together on the shore of the lake, is still part of the town's character.
