Commissioned by the State Legislature in 1915, the Utah Mormon Battalion Monument was designed by the sculptor Gilbert P. Riswold (1881-1938). Riswold was the son of Norwegian immigrants, pioneers on the South Dakota plains. Riswold was sent to South Dakota State College to learn to be a blacksmith, but his true talent led him to pursue his training under the famed sculptor Lorado Taft (1860-1936) at the Chicago Art Institute. According to the L.A. Times (March 17, 1938), Riswold "was opposed bitterly to the so-called modern art declaring that he believed it an insult to people's intelligence."

Riswold had a noted reputation before he signed the contract to develop the Utah Mormon Battalion Monument in 1919. He sculpted the bust of Oscar Turner (Paducah, Kentucky) in 1915, and the statue of Stephen Douglas (Chicago, Illinois) in 1918. In 1922 Riswold moved from his Chicago home of 20 years to Salt Lake City, his studio at 440 West 300 North.

The Utah Mormon Battalion Monument, which sits on the southeast lawn of the State Capitol grounds, commemorates the 500 Mormon pioneer volunteers who joined the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, many of whom separated from families who were en route to Salt Lake City. The cornerstone to the rose granite and bronze monument was laid in 1925 and dedicated in 1927. The monument is in the shape of a triangle and features three dominant figures: On the Western Face stands The Battalion Man, who faces West where he served in California, Columbia rising above him. (The model for Columbia was Annie Beatrice Jones Lloyd, a descendant of two members of the battalion.) On the Eastern Face a Native American woman carrying an infant on her back stands in for The Vanishing Race. A series of four scenes are depicted in high and bas relief: The Enlistment, The March, The Discovery of Gold in California, and The Arrival of the Pueblo Detachment. The monument cost approximately $200,000 and is his most ambitious work.

While in Utah Riswold also sculpted the sphynxes at the entrance to the Masonic temple in Salt Lake City, the columns at the entry gate of Memory Grove Park in Salt Lake City, a bust of Charles R. Savage, and the Frank Steunenberg statue at the capitol building in Boise, Idaho. Riswold's other sculptures include a bust of Theodore Roosevelt (Chicago, Illinois), the World War Memorial (Oak Park, Illinois), Noguchi (Tokyo, Japan), Ibanez (Madrid, Spain), the Mother Sherrard Memorial (South Dakota), a bust of Abraham Lincoln (South Dakota), and Joan Crawford (privately owned, Florida).

Hoping the climate would improve his health, Riswold moved from Salt Lake City to Hollywood, California in 1931, where he died seven years later from a cerebral hemorrhage.