Mendon, Utah is located in northern Utah’s beautiful Cache Valley, nestled tightly against the base of the magnificent "Wellsville Mountains" or the "Mendon Mountains" as we lovingly know them, along the western flank of Cache Valley. A small group of Mormon colonists, mostly from the Mill Creek and the Big and Little Cottonwood areas of Salt Lake County settled this quiet little community in the early spring of 1859. The first of a series of new cities established in this year of renewed expansion and colonization, following the peaceful conclusion of the 1858 "Utah War," Mendon was the second settlement established in the recently created (1856) Cache County, in what was still then the Territory of Utah.

Mendon was referred to as the 'North Settlement', until December 19th, 1859 when Apostle Ezra T. Benson, as part of a group organizing the new towns in the Cache Valley, into the Cache Stake, had the honor of christening the newly formed ward and city -— Mendon. It is thought that this was in honor of his hometown of Mendon, Worcester County, Massachusetts, which is located in the Blackstone Valley.

Mendon, her geographical location being pressed tightly between the mountains and the Little Bear River (Muddy River), did not have access to enough farm and grazing land to provide a living for the first settlers’ children and their subsequent generations. As a result, an export other than the standard farming fare became the communities largest and dearest. This peaceful little rural farming village in the Cache Valley has always been very proud of her most important crop, her People. The results of this condition forced the little city of Mendon, Utah to provided the founding nucleus for many of southern Idaho’s early communities.