Driving along 500 West in Bountiful, there’s an interesting sight that may go unnoticed by many. Surrounded by fast food joints, strip malls, parking lots and businesses, is a small plot of green grass, bordered by a rod iron fence. Inside this enclosure are several weather-worn gravestones, marking the final resting place of some of the earliest settlers of Davis County. This is the Daniel Wood Cemetery. 

Daniel Wood is the namesake for Woods Cross and was born in Duchess Co., New York in the year 1800. He and his family moved to what would later be Ontario, Canada when Daniel was only three years old, and it was there that the future settler would grow up. It was also there that Wood met, and married Mary Snyder, in or around 1822. The couple would have been married 11 years when they were baptized members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel Wood was baptized by future President of the Church and governor of Utah, Brigham Young.  

Wood was a faithful member of this church, and in 1835 had been appointed to church leadership as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. Wood and his family would follow the membership of the church as headquarters moved from Kirtland Ohio, to Missouri, to Illinois, and then, finally, the Salt Lake Valley in 1848. On that journey, Wood was entrusted as a company captain, in charge of 50 different wagons, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in September of that year.

When he was 50, Wood built a two-story adobe house, and not long after, the first public hall in what would become Davis County. This building played host to church meetings, choir practices, school, public assembly and more for years. When the railroad crossed through Davis County, it passed right through Wood’s homestead, and earned the region the title “Woods Crossing,” later, Woods Cross. 

The cemetery sits on its original plot, dedicated by Daniel Wood in 1858, and is the resting place for much of the Wood family. One of the important lessons it can still teach today is of the advances of modern medicine, and infant care. The first graves, for example, are that of two of Wood’s grandchildren who passed shortly after birth. They were buried on that very plot underneath an apple tree which has since been removed. 

The Daniel Wood cemetery also shows an important dedication on the part of the county, and cities to preserve this history. Shops and restaurants have sprouted up around it, but a solemn, quiet spot remains, dedicated to the memory of an intrepid pioneer and his family. The cemetery could have been moved – it’s been done before, and very respectfully, but this way, the memory of this family is not tucked away on some obscure private plot, but out in the open on a main thoroughfare, in a place where thousands of people will see it regularly. 

For many, it may simply be a curiosity, but now, hopefully, a few more people will know the family that resides there and the hard work they did to build this community.