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The Freeport suffered a recession from 1980 to 1983 when it lost a lot of distribution companies that have since been replaced by manufacturers.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