A Brief History of the Freeport Center, originally The U.S. Naval Supply Depot

 

         A morning train coming off the Union Pacific mainline heads west into the Freeport Center.

THE Freeport Center was originally a vast U.S. Navy supply depot, commissioned April 10, 1943, to replace large tomato fields and pastures.

A largely untold story is that some homes on the site had to be relocated. Harris Adams, a longtime Layton resident and historian said his parent’s home was lifted up and moved to Layton, as they had no choice but to accept the government’s purchase offer. The family received fair market value for their farm.

This southeast Clearfield location was chosen because it was inland and more safe from any enemy attacks, a big concern in World War II. It was also near Hill Air Force Base and had excellent highway and railroad access. Trucks could move any product from the West Coast to the then U.S. Naval Depot within two days.

Construction took almost 11 months and $25.5 million in 1942-43. Buildings were built in a uniform size and design on a grid pattern. In fact, most buildings have railroad access on one side and truck delivery access on the other side.

 At one time it was the largest supply depot in the world.

The Navy Supply Depot closed in 1962. But it wasn’t idle for very long, when it became privatized.

In 1963, the Freeport and its 6 million square feet were sold to private industry. Freeport Center Associates, purchased the center in 1972. 

The Freeport suffered a recession from 1980 to 1983 when it lost a lot of distribution companies that have since been replaced by manufacturers.

Today the Freeport Center has its own post office and is home to about 70 companies and employs a workforce of about 7,000.

The "Ogden" Hot Springs that were actually in Pleasant View

THE Utah Hot Springs (also originally called Ogden Hot Springs) was actually in Pleasant View and closed in about 1970, after more than 80 years of operation.

 Native Americans had used the hot springs, probably for hundreds of years before the pioneers, in the late 1840s, came to the area.

  The 180-acre resort began in the late 1884, founded by Rason H. Slater, a “horse doctor,” who lived in Salt Lake City. He paid the U.S. Government $400 for the title to the hot springs. His motto for the resort was “The greatest cure of the West,” as he believed its hot mineral waters offered cures for pain and even disease.  (Some people called the hot spring water, “medicated fluid.” The spring waters were naturally heated to as much as 130 degrees.

  Slater also secured endorsements on the water’s health benefits from several Ogden area doctors.

  Located about 8 miles northwest of Ogden, the resort had railroad service in 1892 by the Oregon Short Line and Ogden Rapid Transit Railways, for 30 cents a trip, usually about 30 minutes long. However, at unpredictable times, herds of sheep in the area would delay trains for long periods of time.

  A fire in the early 1900s completely destroyed the original resort, but it was quickly rebuilt. On September 12, 1914, it suffered a transformer fire too.

  The resort changed ownership several times in the late 1920s, selling for $30,000 the first time and $40,000 the second time.

 

                  Old story in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on the resort's history.

By the 1930s, the resort scaled back in acreage, but offered a 40-room hotel, café, dance hall and saloon, with beer 5 cents a glass – besides the hot springs experience. Gambling for nearby horse races also centered around the resort.

  There were even bicycle races staged from downtown Ogden City to the Hot Springs, in the 1920s and 1930s. The hot springs attracted bathers from not just Utah, but Idaho and Nevada too.

  Ironically, few residents of Pleasant View or North Ogden visited the resort during its first 50 years, perhaps because of its gambling and saloon. It was outsiders who kept the resort in business.

 By the 1950s, the resort boasted both and indoor and outdoor swimming pool and the latter featured a tall slippery slide. In that later era, the resort was more of a swimming resort, than a hot springs and patrons came by automobile.

  What seemed to doom the resort were efforts by government officials to want to chlorinate the mineral waters. That liability, plus a downturn in the public wanting to use such hot pools, eventually caused the hot springs to permanently close.

                         Some of today's greenhouses on the old hot springs property.

   Soon after, the hot springs were used to heat greenhouses year-round. By the late 1990s, there were 40 or more greenhouses on the property. (However, the mineral water is so salty, that plastic pipe is used in the greenhouses, instead of metal.)

   A railroad line is still operated on the east side of the old hot springs and some of the heated waters sometimes overrun in the spring, near those tracks.

  Note that some newspaper reports of old confused this hot spring with the hot springs near the mouth of Ogden Canyon (today owned by Rainbow Gardens). Ironically, Rainbow Gardens also operated indoor and outdoor swimming pools and they closed permanently within a few years of those at the Utah Hot Springs.

 

Hot spring water sometimes overflows by the railroad tracks on the old hot springs property.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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"Club Foot" -- One of the first Grizzly Bear sheep killers to be shot in Northern Utah -- and before Old Ephraim

                                                                  A stuffed bear in a Utah store.
 

OLD Ephraim was NOT the first, or the only legendary grizzly Bear to stalk the Wasatch Mountains of Northern Utah. 

One of the first, was “Club Foot,” who was killed in 1910, more than a decade ahead of Old Ephraim – and this grizzly was not in Cache County (like Old Eph), but rather in Davis County.

 “’Club Foot’ will kill no more sheep,” was an August 23, 1910 headline in the Salt Lake Herald Republican newspaper. Charles Jacobs, a bear hunter and a sheep herder, had his flocks about 12 miles south of Ogden, in the Davis County portion of the Wasatch Mountains.

He finally shot and killed the large grizzly, who had murdered countless sheep, starting in 1905. Jacobs encountered the grizzly at close range in Bair Canyon, just east of Fruit Heights/Kaysville and shot him, felling the bruin, who landed at Jacob’s feet.

Bair Canyon, looking down, westward from the top.

Ogden's Hinckley Airport isn't the Area's Original Airport

 

An aerial view of the Ogden Airport in 2006.             Photo from Wikipedia Commons   

MOST people would believe that the current Ogden Airport, in Roy/Riverdale is the area’s original airport.

But that is not the case. There was an earlier airport, located approximately where today’s Ogden Regional Hospital is.

Ogden dedicated that original airport on July 1, 1928.

“Ogden is entertaining one of the largest crowds of visitors in its history,” the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper reported on Jul 1, 1928. “The occasion is celebrating marking the dedication of the municipal airport. Streets were lined this morning by throngs viewing the parade in which the history of transportation was depicted.”

  This original airport had three runways, all gravel, but was located on a hillside above Ogden City, and near Weber Canyon, where winds kept fog away most of the time.

But within a decade, the airport location was not deemed large enough for the future and plans were made for a new airport. Ther War Department (today’s Department of Defense) approved $795,000 for a new Ogden airport in the fall of 1940. This airport was to be located in what was then known as the Fairmont District and Ogden City already had secured half of the 655 acres needed, according to the Salt Lake Telegram of October 23, 1940.

  The original airport also suffered a significant fire on October 26, 1941, that damaged several shops and two airplanes. Notwithstanding, the Army Air Force sometimes utilized the gravel runways during part of World War II.

The new airport was dedicated on October 3, 1943 and featured a concert by the Union Pacific Band and a Hill Field Band, the Telegram of October 2, 1943 stated.

Today the airport is a regional airport, named the Ogden-Hinckley Airport, in honor of Robert H. Hinckley, a man who helped train thousands of pilots during World War II and who helped develop aviation infrastructure across the nation. He was also a member of the Civil Aeronautics Authority.

 

                                  Robert H. Hinckley,  photo from Wikipedia Commons

Layton's Gentile Street is not Unique -- There's a Gentile Valley Road in Southeast Idaho

 

                                                     Gentile Street sign in Layton, Utah.

For those familiar with Layton, Utah, the City’s most unusual road name is Gentile Street. Like most people -- even most historians-- they believe it was so named because some non-Mormons (“Gentiles”) lived on that street when it was only a west Layton road. 

However, I’ve come to believe it was the waystation for travelers on the connecting Bluff Road emigration trail, where its name came from, because that is where the only non-Mormons in the early community were, as they operated the station. (The early residents who lived on west Gentile Street were actually LDS Church members, but simply inactive, or called “Jack Mormons” back in the day.)

                         Gentile Valley Road sign in Thatcher, Idaho, near the Bear River.

Notwithstanding the name’s origin, it is not a unique feature, as over the weekend I found another “Gentile” street, this one in southeast Idaho. This road is near the Bear River, in Thatcher, Idaho (west of Niter and southwest of Grace.) Where did this “Gentile Valley” road name come from? Grace, Idaho, and today’s Gem Valley, was settled by non-Mormons in 1865 and after Brigham Young sent church members to settle there in the 1870s, tensions grew. The Bear River became a boundary of sorts then. If you were Mormon, you were supposed to live on the east side of the Bear River; and non-Mormons the west side. In those days, the Grace valley was called the "Gentile Valley." It was not renamed Gem Valley until the early 20^th Century, when religious tensions finally eased.

And, then there’s nearby Soda Springs, about 11 miles away and northeast of Grace. But, where is the actual Soda Spring? I mean, the Soda water springs? There's a Hooper Springs, north of town, but no Soda. Is it the geyser in town? No. Soda Springs, a spring, is now located under Alexander reservoir, which backs up the Bear River. Also, "Soda Springs" was not that water source's original name either. "Beer Springs" was what trappers first called it. Mormon settlers obviously changed the name later.

 

 

1948: When a West Davis Highway in northern Utah was first proposed

MANY may erroneously believe that a West Davis Highway corridor was first proposed by Utah Governor Mike Leavitt back in 1996, almost exactly 21 years before the Utah Department of Transportation announced their specific corridor for such a major highway.

However, “Davis urges wider road, Inter-regional highway” was a Dec. 3, 1948 headline in the Davis County Clipper newspaper.

Thus, some 48 years earlier than Gov. Leavitt was when this regional highway was first proposed.

That Davis Clipper story stated that such a road should cross Farmington Bay, before “skirting Davis County towns to the west.”

In northern Davis County, the story said the road would follow the old Mormon Pioneer trail corridor – the Bluff Road (essentially where UDOT’s current plan is to build the four-lane highway).

“Purpose of this highway will be to rid the incorporated towns of Davis County of nuisance traffic, such as through traffic,” the 1948 story stated. 

At the time, it was stated that the road would tie into Salt Lake City’s Seventh West Street. On the north end, it would connect with Ogden’s 24^th Street viaduct.

It was noted that the road would add three to four miles to the overall distance between Salt Lake and Ogden with the looping westward. Yet, it was believed that could be a bargain in future years when development slows the speed limits on Highway 91, then the main corridor through Davis County. (I-15 didn’t come along until the mid-1960s.)

Purchasing the necessary right-of-way as soon as possible was stressed as the key to making the highway affordable.

Of course, the road never happened and was off the radar for nearly another half century.

The Clipper story also mentioned that a “scenic highway” Should be built from Farmington to Bountiful, along the mountainside.
UDOT did another study on a possible "West Davis Highway" in the early 1960s, but no other action was taken.
-It was on July 16, 1996 when Gov. Leavitt announced his “Legacy Project” – the Western Transportation Corridor – at a press conference in West Haven.

The Deseret News of July 17, 1996 reported:

“This proposed highway would eventually stretch more than 130 miles, from North Ogden to Nephi, spanning five counties. ‘We have not determined the exact route for most of this,’ Gov. Leavitt said, though he specifically said it would run in the vicinity of 5600 South in Salt Lake County. It would definitely parallel I-15 from Farmington to Centerville and could run either side of Lake Mountain in Utah County. The map the Utah Department of Transportation presented at the conferences had no specific roadway identified - only a wide corridor,” the 1996 article concluded.

-It was July 6, 2017 when UDOT announced the specific route for its 19-mile section of West Davis Highway after many years of debate with the cities and counties it passes through.

The Deseret News of July 6, 2017 reported:

“The route from Farmington to West Point would connect with I-15 and Legacy Parkway at Glovers Lane on the south end, and at state Route 37, or 1800 North, at approximately 4000 West on the north end.”

From Syracuse northward, it would follow the Bluff Road corridor, a section that West Point and Clinton have preserved very well from development over the last two decades. 

1898: When 75 percent of Park City was destroyed by a 'Fiery furnace'

                                Park City's Main Street.

IT was likely the largest city fire ever in Utah.

"Destroyed!; (Park) City practically wiped out; a raging conflagration; scene of ruin and despair," was a Deseret News headline on June 20, 1898.

A fire on Sunday, June 19, 1898, just after 4 a.m., all but destroyed the prosperous mining town. There were no lives lost, but many narrow escapes and many animals killed.

"Park City, Utah's proud and prosperous mining camp, has practically been wiped out of existence, being visited yesterday by the most disastrous conflagration in the history of Utah," the Deseret News reported. "It may be that the city will be rebuilt and rise again from the ruins that now cover the canyon where it once stood, but it will be years before it can fully recover - if recovery is at all possible under the circumstances - from the terrible visitation. The loss, it is conservatively estimated, will aggregate more than a million dollars. The actual insurance will not reach much more than a tenth of that amount."

The cause of the fire, also described as a “fiery furnace,” was never determined.

The speculation was that it began in the kitchen of the American Hotel. However, the proprietor, Harry Freeman believed that an oil lamp had been dropped in a room or simply that a candle had been left unattended.

“Park City laid in ashes yesterday. Great cap suffers a loss of over half a million dollars. Insurance will not be much over one hundred thousand …” was a June 20, 1898 headline in the Salt Lake Herald.

This newspaper story cited the historic town’s bad luck – first the economic downturn in 1893; then the main Park city bank failed; next a reduction in the wages of miner’s and millmen; and now the giant fire.

The story referred to the fire as “demon flame” and stated that “the hope for the future is small.”

The four existing fire hoses had little effect on the blaze. Buildings were soon dynamited, but all this did was slow the fire, not stop it.

                         Walking Park City's Main Street.

Firemen came from Coalville, Salt Lake and Ogden – mostly by train. But they did not arrive until midmorning when it was too late to do much but watch. It was not until noon that the fire was contained.

In the end, at least 120 businesses and 140 homes were wiped out – or some 75 percent of the town. At least 500 people were homeless.

A January 7, 1996 story in the Deseret News by Twila Van Leer stated that the disastrous fire made national headlines and even superseded the Spanish-American war as the top story in some U.S. newspapers.

What happened after the fire? The majority of the residents remained and rebuilt. (There had been a much smaller downtown Park City Fire in 1890.)

Salt Lake City gave $2,500 to Park City’s rebuilding. The City of Mount Pleasant gave $102.40 and many Utahns donated or helped in the rebuilding effort.

 Thirty-four miners were killed in a 1902 explosion at a Park City mine as another tragedy unfolded there.

Ultimately, Park City’s mining prospects diminished greatly and the town suffered a big downturn. However, thanks to skiing (2 area resorts) and the annual Sundance Film Festival, the town reinvented itself as a tourist mecca by the 1980s and 1990s.

Park City was also famed world-wide during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

-Although Park City, like Moab, is often pegged as a “Gentile” or largely a non-Mormon town, its name originated from an LDS Church Apostle, Parley P. Pratt. Elder Pratt built a toll road through Parley’s Canyon. Settlers at the top of the road called it “Parley’s Park City.” However, by the early 20^th Century the name was shortened to simply “Park City.”