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MANTI — Crews in Manti are cleaning up the city's cemetery after a weekend windstorm uprooted several trees.
Four trees with sentimental value crashed down during the intense storm Saturday evening. No headstones were seriously damaged, but the trees took a lot of history with them.
"Our north gateway into the city is that you come by the cemetery first before the temple. It is an old historic part of town, one of the oldest cemeteries in the state of Utah," said Manti City Manager Kent Barton.
Four of the cemetery's tall pine trees hit the ground hard. Monday city crews got right to work, cutting up the downed trees and hauling the branches away.
"I think the biggest part is that they are just getting old," said A.J. Mower, the cemetery's supervisor. "Pine trees don't have the root system that a lot of trees have. I think the wind just got the best of them."
For longtime Manti residents like Clyde Nielson, the loss of the trees in the cemetery is sad to see. "The pioneers planted them probably about the time they built the temple. The temple was dedicated in 1888, so some of these trees might be that old," he said.
In fact, city employees started counting the rings on the trees and discovered one had 140 rings, suggesting it was planted in the 1880s.
A few headstones were uprooted with the sod when the trees fell, but the only damage to a headstone was to one concrete base. City crews said it will be easy to repair as they work over the next couple of weeks to get the cemetery ready for visitors during Memorial Day weekend.
"It is always busy for our cemetery as a lot of people come back to town to pay their respects to loved ones," Barton explained. "It has been said our cemetery is one of the most beautiful in the state during Memorial Day, so we have been getting ready for that, and now we have a little bit more to do." Crews expect to have the trees cleaned up and the damage repaired this week.
The windstorm also caused several trees similar in size and age to those in the cemetery to topple at the nearby temple grounds.
