Johnson's Fort, and the spring that came before it.

Joel Hills Johnson, who came through southern Utah with Parley Pratt's exploration in 1849 and returned in May 1851 to run cattle at the spring. The settlement took his name as Johnson's Springs and then Fort Johnson. Seven families left the site in 1853 and it was reoccupied in 1854, when the settlers built the fort. Johnson is better known elsewhere as a hymn writer and an inventor of roofing equipment, and he lived until 1882.

Several things. The spring itself appears on Old Spanish Trail maps as Ojo de San Jose, the San Jose spring, and it has also been recorded as St. Joseph's Spring and Elkhorn Springs. Once Joel Hills Johnson settled it in 1851 it became Johnson's Spring, Johnson's Springs and Fort Johnson. The name Enoch came later, with the post office, and the settlements of Grimshawville, Stevensville and Williamsville existed separately until 1966.

Because the name Johnson was already taken. When a post office came to the settlement the name it had been using was assigned elsewhere in the territory, so the settlers chose Enoch, after the city of Enoch that Latter-day Saints hold up as a model of a united community. The change came in 1890, once the mix-up with the other Johnson settlement had to be sorted out.

Yes. The spring the town grew around sits on the northern route of the Old Spanish Trail, the pack and trade corridor between New Mexico and California, and it appears on trail maps as Ojo de San Jose. The route is now a National Historic Trail. A marker placed in Enoch in 1948 by the Spanish Trail Association records the first wagon over the trail into Iron County, on 15 May 1848, and fifty wagons following that autumn.

You can visit the ground and the marker, but there is no reconstructed fort, no walls and no visitor center. Enoch City keeps a map and an article about the fort at its office at 900 East Midvalley Road and will show them to you at the counter, and the Old School Library holds the city's interpretive exhibits. Treat it as a reading visit of twenty minutes at the marker and an hour with the exhibits, both free.

On 10 January 1966, when four separate settlements, Grimshawville, Enoch, Stevensville and Williamsville, incorporated together with about 102 people spread across the valley. The reason was water: Enoch incorporated to build a municipal water system, not for zoning or roads or a police force.

Very fast, and almost all of it recently. The census counted 58 people here in 1900, 202 in 1950 and 120 in 1970. Then 678 in 1980, 1,947 in 1990, 3,467 in 2000, 5,803 in 2010 and 7,374 in 2020, with the city hub putting the current figure near eight thousand. That is a sixtyfold increase in fifty years, essentially all of it through subdivision, and it explains why so few buildings here predate 1970.

Twenty five men returning from California under Captain Henry G. Boyle, piloted by Porter Rockwell and James Shaw. The marker records their crossing on 15 May 1848 as the first wagon over the Old Spanish Trail into Iron County, and their route converted the western half of the old pack trail into a road that fifty wagons used going west that autumn. It is the event that made settlement of this valley practical.

The nearest thing to one is the Southern Utah chapter of the Spanish Trail Association, which Enoch residents incorporated in 2007. The parent association was organized in 1946 by William R. Palmer of Cedar City and it is the body behind the 1948 marker. Between that chapter, the interpretive exhibits at the Old School Library and the material Enoch City keeps at its office, that is where the town's history is held.