FAIRFIELD -- Dozens of bodies were located at Camp Floyd State Park on Saturday -- in the historic cemetery, where historians hoped they would be.

Using a grant, Camp Floyd hired experts to employ ground penetrating radar to pinpoint the exact locations of the 40 or so burials here. Modern tombstones were placed in the cemetery years ago to commemorate those buried here whose names were known. The placement of the gravestones was merely decorative because no one knew for sure where the bodies had been buried.

Now, thanks to the $7,000 project, for the first time in a century, markers will be able to mark the burial sites, even if it won't be clear exactly which body belonged to which buried pioneer soldier.

"We found a cluster of burials in the southwest corner of the cemetery," said Jennie Sturm, founder of TAG Research, a company which maps buried features without digging them up. "Preliminarily it looks like about a half-dozen."

Established in 1858, Camp Floyd was the largest military installation then in the United States. The army was sent to Utah to put down a Mormon Rebellion, which never took place. The army was recalled in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War. The historic cemetery marks the location where soldiers were buried. Camp Floyd staff said that once the precise burial locations are mapped, the graves will be marked.

"It's like mowing a lawn really precisely," said Sarah Lowry of TAG Research, using a modified baby jogger stroller equipped with radar, scanning up and down the cemetery in carefully measured sections.

"It's neat to help tell a story [of a person] who can't tell their own story anymore," Sturm said. "It's a non-destructive method, and we like to pay respect to those buried here."

Both Lowry and Sturm have master's degrees in geophysical archeology. Once the radar scanning is complete, 70 percent of the work is done in the lab, analyzing the data, according to Sturm. A map of the burials will be given to Camp Floyd officials in about two weeks.

The work in Fairfield has been particularly nice because it involves running radar over mowed grass. More often, the company is employed to scan wildland areas, where the task can be considerably more difficult.

For information on using ground penetrating radar to map cemeteries or other sites, visit www.tagrsi.com.