In the 1970s, the Mormon Church purchased 2 1/2 acres of that mountain meadow that included the original cairn and the mass grave.

The church built a monument in 1990 that listed the names of many of those thought to have died in the massacre. It had two inscriptions.

One read: "In the valley below, between September 7 and 11, 1857, a company of more than 120 Arkansas emigrants led by Captain John T. Baker and Captain Alexander Fancher was attacked while en route to California. This event is known in history as the Mountain Meadows Massacre."

Trent Nelson © Salt Lake Tribune Above: Skeletal biologist Shannon Novak examines a 100-year-old skull, found near St. George, Utah, similar to the ones uncovered from the mass grave at the nearby Mountain Meadows Massacre site.

In the fall of 1998, Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, proposed a new memorial.

The old cairn was crumbling, and Hinckley wanted to build a wall around it to stabilize the marker above the mass grave.

Archeologists used ground-penetrating radar to look beneath the surface. They drilled soil samples. And they approved the construction after concluding that the grave would not be disturbed.

On Aug. 3, 1999, a construction crew went to work. But something had gone terribly wrong in the planning.

One pass of the tractor's steel digging blade ripped open the grave, pulling out a mix of bones.

Someone called Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith. It was late morning as he made the 45-mile drive to the valley.

As he looked, he saw something that he would remember for a long time. The bones of a youngster.

"I don't think you can look at the remains of a small child and not have that touch you," he said. "It was a very solemn experience for me."

Within a day, Shane Baker, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University who was on the scene when the discovery was made, notified state archaeologist Kevin Jones.

Jones determined that the discovery fell under the state's antiquities law, which required a study of the remains. A permit was issued, and the bones were taken to the BYU lab.

"We were under pressure from the very beginning to get done what we needed to do very quickly," Jones said.

Members of the Mountain Meadows Association -- an organization of victims' descendants and area residents, many of them Mormon -- wanted the bones reburied right away.

MISSING LINK TO MASSACRE? A clue found last month in southern Utah could link Mormon leader Brigham Young to the Mountain Meadows Massacre of some 120 Arkansas immigrants in 1857. FULL STORY » Transcript of text on the lead sheet » List of victims »

Jones negotiated a compromise: The long bones would be reburied in time for the Sept. 11 dedication of the new memorial. The skull fragments would be left in Novak's care to study.

Novak thought the work would take perhaps six months.

"We had a very clear plan on what we wanted to do," she said.

But on the night of Sept. 8, Novak's phone rang. On the other end was Baker, the BYU archaeologist.

The antiquities permit, he said, was being rewritten. She would have to surrender all of the skull fragments by the end of the next day.

Novak balked. She told Baker that he could have the bones back on the morning of Sept. 10.

Then she picked up the telephone again.

"I called in all my favors," she said.

She arranged for a photographer to come to her lab the next day. She tried to find someone to X-ray the bones, without luck.

Then Novak and her research assistant, Derrina Kopp, headed into the laboratory at 5 a.m. on Sept. 9.

In one marathon, 25-hour session, they sorted the remains of 18 individuals, partially reconstructing the skulls and making observations about gunshot wounds and fractures that showed some of the victims were beaten to death.

They sealed each set of bones in a plastic bag and labeled it.

Then, at 6 a.m. on Sept. 10 -- six hours before the remains were to be reburied at the massacre site 322 miles away -- Novak handed the bones to Baker.