'Epidemic of Runaway Couples' in 1907 Ogden

By Lynn Arave

"Epidemic of Runaway Couples: Six young people from Salt Lake married; They like Ogden's way of doing things -- Surprise for the folks at home" was a June 24, 1907 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.
The article mentioned how Ogden's pastors must be more accommodating than Salt Lake City's and hence why so many young couples were eloping some 36 miles north to Ogden fo

r a quick and less-questions-asked marriage.
The story stated that "the number of runway couples that come from Zion to be married in Ogden is steadily on the increase."
The also stated that two "supposedly confirmed bachelors, widely known to the businessmen of Salt Lake" traveled to the Hermitage in Ogden Canyon for their honeymoon, as they ended "their state of single blessedness."
"Salt Lake Girls run away to get married in Ogden" was a June 21, 1922 headline in the Standard-Examiner, and so this trend of runaway couples coming to Ogden for a quick marriage continued, at least for more than a decade.

                                 The old Ogden City Hall.