Provo’s Two Oldest Existing Homes Are Neighbors in Pioneer Village.

Two pioneer neighbors, John W. Turner’s log cabin and James W. Loveless’ adobe home, stand near each other in Provo’s Pioneer Village in North Park, which was once the site of Provo’s second fort, Fort Provo.

The two homes offer a fine example of an architectural change that was taking place in Provo in the early 1850s. Builders were switching from using logs as a building materiel to using sun dried brick called adobe.

John W. turner helped settle Provo in 1849. In 1853, men hauled logs to the settlement from the Wasatch Mountain, and Turner built a small log cabin for his young bride. It stood on what is now the southeast corner of the intersection of 100 West and 100 North. The couple’s first child was born in this cabin, but the family soon moved. At least two other inhabitants lived in the structure after the Turners left.

Eventually the Collins family moved the cabin to 700 West between 100 and 200 North, where it was often used as a schoolhouse. In 1931, Provo City gave David H. Loveless, an artifact collector and member of the Sons of Utah Pioneers, permission to create a pioneer village in North Park. He bought the Turner cabin and moved it to the park as a part of the original village.

James W. Loveless and his family settled in Provo in 1851, and he built a one-room adobe house near the corner of 900 West and 600 South. Because of the Walker War, he moved inside what would soon become Provo’s third fort and built a two-room adobe at what is now 677 West 200 South. While Loveless, who was the father of David Loveless, lived in this small house, he married two additional wives.

James moved to a larger house in 1861. The small adobe house miraculously survived on its original lot until 2014 when the Sons of Utah Pioneers moved it to their Pioneer Village. The little log cabin and the small adobe home can now be seen free of charge in Provo’s North Park.

This marker is located in Rock Canyon Park in Provo, for other markers in this series click here.