The day before the ceremony that would officially transfer ownership of the cabin to the park, Evelyn and her siblings gathered here and let the memories settle on them. "It feels like Daddy," someone said. "Wouldn't he be pleased?"

That night, Evelyn sneaked back for one more visit to the cabin while the place was still theirs, just to stir the memories again. She found her sister Joanne already there, doing the same thing.

"Even now, when we go up there, there is a very sweet spirit that is there," she says. "It's not just another place. I like to touch the logs."

Thanks to family journals, Evelyn knows the story of her grandparents, who lived in this cabin, and hence part of her father's story, and hers.

Richard came across the plains with the Hunt Company in the winter. His wife and baby died on the plains. Mary Goble, who was 13, came across the plains with her family in the same company; her father helped Richard bury his loved ones. Then he buried his own.

A sister died. A brother died. A baby born on the trek died at birth of starvation because the mother was too malnourished to nurse it. She never recovered. As they entered the valley, the body of Mary's mother lay frozen in the wagon. Brigham Young himself met their party with a doctor. Mary's toes were frozen and had to be amputated; it would be months before she walked again. She had a limp the rest of her life.

The Gobles and Pays settled in the Nephi area, and three years later Richard married Mary and moved into the tiny cabin in nearby Leamington in which Evelyn's father was born.

These are some of the things Evelyn ponders as she sits here in her father's and grandfather's house on this summer afternoon. "I can tell my father was here," she says, smiling.

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Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesday. Please send e-mail to drob@desnews.com.