A grave marker upended in Provo this month by heavy equipment working on the Interstate 15 reconstruction project apparently commemorates a boy buried three counties away in 1904.

A Provo River Constructors track hoe operator turned up the stone Aug. 12, and she told the Provo Daily Herald that a supervisor removed it and resumed work without further investigating the site for graves.

"When that happens, they're supposed to shut the job down and bring archaeologists in," Yvonne Carlsen told the Herald. "They didn't dig. They didn't even come ask me where it was at."

Carlsen has since left her job with the road contractor.

Utah Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Thompson said Tuesday a member of the department's environmental team did stop work and determined there were no graves in the area, near the southwest corner of the Provo Center Street interchange. Crews were adding temporary lanes in the area at the time, Thompson said.

The name of the deceased was obscured by chipping, Thompson said, but his parents' initials were clear. By searching state archives, UDOT soon learned that the stone commemorated Marion C. Dillman, who died at age 17 on Oct. 24, 1904, and was buried at Rock Point Cemetery near Vernal. Another larger stone now adorns his grave there. After learning of the replacement stone, Thompson said, the road crew crushed and disposed of the one found in Provo.

"Nobody quite knows, how does a thing like that get hundreds of miles away?" Thompson asked.

Or perhaps it never traveled the distance at all. Utah State Archaeologist Kevin Jones said it's common nationwide to find caches of headstones that carvers buried after rejecting them because of cracks or other blemishes.

"Surprisingly, it's not that uncommon to uncover something like a headstone and have it not be associated with a graveyard," Jones said. It happened a couple of years ago in Logan, he said, when somebody found a rejected headstone in his backyard.

Jones said UDOT has a cultural resources staff and is well-schooled in dealing with relics because of its enormous construction program. He trusts that officials acted properly.

"UDOT, probably more than any other state agency around here, recognizes their responsibilities," Jones said. Those responsibilities wouldn't require calling in the state archaeologist unless there were bones on site, he said.