Manti is the county seat of Sanpete County, Utah. Manti, Utah, has a population in 1992 of approximately 2,000 people. It is situated in the Sanpete Valley of central Utah, at an elevation of slightly over 5,500 feet.

Manti was settled in late November 1849 by 224 men, women, and children. The group left the Valley of the Great Salt Lake on October 28. This, the first settlement south of Provo, Utah, resulted from a personal invitation from the Ute chief Walker in June 1849. He invited President Brigham Young of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) to send a colony of his people to join the encampments of Chief Sanpeetch's people already in the valley. Chief Walker and Brigham Young together are considered to be the founders of Manti.

The name "Sanpeetch" is uninterpreted. It may have meant or implied something to do with "red earth," but the meaning as far as it can be interpreted today has been lost. The river that drains the valley is still called "Sanpitch," but the name of the valley and the county has been modified to "Sanpete," spelled in one word with the stress on the first syllable.

Brigham Young named the site "Manti" in the summer of 1850, at the request of the local patriarch Isaac Morley. The name was derived from that section of the "Book of Mormon" called Alma. Jesse W. Fox surveyed the plat for the "city" in the same summer, and Manti was incorporated in February 1851. The first mayor was Dan Jones, the so-called "Welsh prophet," who was a native of Merthyr Tydvil, Glamorganshire, Wales.

A sizeable contingent of Danish converts to Mormonism arrived at Manti in 1853, to become the second largest ethnic group to settle central Utah.

The Walker War in the 1850s is believed to have been `pought about because of Chief Walker's anger that the Ute trade in Piute children with the Spanish traders from New Mexico was terminated by the territorial government. This followed the interception and arrest of a party of Spanish slave traders at the mouth of Salt Creek by a posse from Manti. A preliminary hearing was conducted at Manti, but the decision was made in the First District Court in Salt Lake City.

Three forts were constructed at Manti. The Little Stone Fort occupied the northwest quarter of block 64. The Log Fort was added to it on block 77, the block on which the Sanpete County Courthouse now stands. The Big Fort enclosed nine square blocks, which included the Little Stone Fort. It was erected in 1854. The center block of this fort was number 56.

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