DAVIS County has one bear of a spelling problem in one of its larger canyons. Signs, histories, newspaper articles - just about everything - still spell the canyon's name incorrectly. It isn't BAER, it's BAIR. Pioneer records prove that. Some have even misspelled the name as Bear.
Georgia W. Memmott of Bountiful, a descendant of the original namesake - John Bair - said she's been concerned over the many such misspellings in recent years. The last major misspelling took place in a Davis County hiking overview article, published in the Deseret News on Oct. 12.Her biggest gripe, though, is the major sign located at the mouth of Bair Canyon in Fruit Heights that reads: "Baer Creek Trail."
The newest United States Geological Survey Maps are finally using the correct family spelling of Bair. However, lots of older maps with the wrong spelling are still in use.
Maps began misspelling the name "Baer" because Davis County records had apparently spelled the name that way.
The "Bear" misspelling likely came because bears were once a prominent resident in the canyon, which is two narrow valleys north of Farmington Canyon. Bears ate corn left out for oxen at the canyon's original sawmill. When people heard "Bair," they likely thought of the animal.
The family's original German spelling was "Bahr," making things perhaps even more confusing.
The water flowing out of Bair Canyon is also the Bair stream.
John Bair was born in 1810 in Somerset, Pa. He was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1834, possibly by the Prophet Joseph Smith. He was also later bodyguard for Smith and then for Brigham Young. Bair came to Utah in 1850 with an ox team company.
Bair settled in the Kays Creek area of Davis County in 1853. He built the first sawmill in Davis County, near the mouth of the Fruit Heights Canyon in 1855 that's named in his honor. He made his cabin on the canyon mouth's south side and the sawmill on the north.
Indians were said to have greatly respected Bair because he knew their language well. Many Indians called him "Chief Bear John." Like Joseph Smith, Bair liked to wrestle and apparently won some Indian respect through that sport.
By 1859 he had sold the sawmill and moved to Richmond, Cache County. Bair was also known for operating the first ferry boat in Utah, during 1852, on the Bear River.
During his lifetime, Bair worked as a shoemaker, lawyer (the first in Davis County), farmer, soldier, land management agent, marshal, grist mill operator, interpreter, stock raiser, frontiersman, colonizer and pioneer.
He died at age 74 on Oct. 11, 1884, in Richmond, Cache County. He didn't accumulate wealth, but he had numerous descendants and most live in Cache County today, though there are some scattered about in Davis County - Sunset, Layton and Bountiful.
-There also used to be a dam at the bottom of Bair Canyon. This pioneer era reservoir existed until July of 1926.
According to the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper of July 8, 1926, a series of summer storms wiped out the dam. The story stated that the north wing of the dam at the mouth of Bair's Canyon went out during the first storm. By the third rain storm, the reservoir was completely destroyed "and lodged a large amount of debris along the highways and electric lines along the foothills of the Wasatch."
Note that the story did have the canyon's correct spelling as Bair.
(-Portions of this were originally published in the Deseret News on Dec. 29, 1995.)
