The Forest of Mormon was a wooded place beside a fountain of pure water in the borders of the land of Lehi-Nephi, where Alma1, after fleeing the servants of King Noah3, hid by day and gathered those who believed his teaching of the words of Abinadi (Mosiah 18:5-6). At the waters of Mormon he baptized about 204 people and organized them as the church of God, or church of Christ, around 147 B.C. (Mosiah 18:13-30). When Noah3 learned of the movement and sent his army, Alma1 and his people, by then about 450, took their families and departed into the wilderness (Mosiah 18:34-35). The land of Mormon later gave the prophet-historian Mormon his name. Decades afterward Alma2 recalled the baptisms at the waters of Mormon when he preached to the people at Zarahemla (Alma 5:3-13). The record calls the place, the waters, and the forest of Mormon “beautiful to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer” (Mosiah 18:30).