1914: When South Hooper, Clinton and South Weber sought to join Weber County

DAVIS County is by far the smallest of Utah's 29 counties. However, there was a failed proposal in 1914 that sought to put South Hooper, Clinton and South Weber into Weber County.
According to the Weekly Reflex newspaper of Kaysville on Jan. 29, 1914, petitions were circulating to make this proposal a reality.
"The principal reason given for the proposal change is the fact that all the residents of the three precincts named regard Ogden as their trading point and they therefore desire to transact all of their business there," the newspaper story stated.
At the time, this land was considered when one of the richest agricultural sections in the area. Also, West Point was not yet a named community, it primarily being called "South Hooper" at the time.

A portion of South Hooper and all of South Weber had actually at one time been located in Weber County, not Davis.
According to Utah historian Glen M. Leonard in the book, "A History of Davis County," an ecclesiastical disagreement resulted in the southeastern boundary of Davis County moving about one mile north of where it originally was established.

The county line moved south to the Weber River at the east end of Davis County. This meant that the Weber town of Uintah (previously called “East Weber”) was created to define what settlement remained on the north side of the Weber River.

The new Davis County town had also already favored the name “South Weber,” even though it was now in a different county, but at least it was indeed on the south side of the Weber River.

Jump ahead to 1877 and a related boundary change was made. 

(Perhaps someone looked at a map of Davis or Weber County and saw the unusual zag in the county line... created in the 1855 change.)

 This time instead of keeping the twist in Davis County’s border beyond South Weber, created by the 1855 change, the county line out west was now moved north about a mile to parallel the change made 22 years earlier in the South Weber section. This now made the Davis-Weber boundary line fairly straight from leaving the Weber River until it reached the marshes of the Great Salt Lake.

(Besides a crooked boundary, one other factor in favor of moving more Weber County land into Davis County -- by moving the Davis line northward on its west side -- was that Davis County was clearly still the state's smallest county of all. Legislators in 1877 may have felt the tiny county could use a little more land.)

The most significant effect this related boundary change created was that Hooper, originally known as “Muskrat Springs” and established in 1852, was now split.

This created “South Hooper” on the Davis County side and it was originally huge, going all the way south to today’s 1700 South (Antelope Drive), before the days of a West Point, Clinton and Syracuse. Over the decades as those three cities were established, “South Hooper” shrunk dramatically and only the section of unincorporated Davis County there is today was left. 

The South Hooper name also faded as the rural area only stretched from West Point at about 5000 West and State Road 37 (“Pig Corner”) about a mile north to the county line.

Yet, today some of these rural residents still consider themselves “Hooperites,” even though they reside in a different county.

Back when a human life in Utah was ‘worth’ only $2.66 and when 41 head of cattle drowned in the Great Salt Lake

                                              A modern day traffic accident in Layton City.

 “ONE human life -- $2.66. That is the price placed upon life per individual in Utah by those changed with enforcement of the state’s traffic laws,” the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper of Nov. 19, 1943 reported.

The Telegram’s headline was “Utah’s 84 traffic deaths this year emphasize trivial cost of killing.”

The story continued: “On the basis of 84 persons killed in Utah traffic (accidents) to date this year, the average fine paid to fix responsibility for each fatal mishap totaled only $2.66. There were no jail sentences imposed. In only three cases have manslaughter charges been filed. In only six of the 12 fatalities in Salt Lake City have any kind of charges been filed.

The story reported that the $2.66 is the average Utah fine assessed for the blame in a fatal accident. The fine averaged $5.76 in Salt Lake and only $1.95 elsewhere in Utah.

The lengthy story then listed a summary of all 84 accidents.

This report, given during the middle of World War II, obviously sought to reduce traffic fatalities and was a precursor to safety campaigns by the Utah Highway Patrol.

(Note that $2.66 in 1943 monetary value is equal to $38.80 in today’s dollar values.)

                        The Great Salt Lake north of Fremont Island.

-“Herd of stampeded cattle meet death in the Lake” was an April 12, 1900 headline in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper.

Some 200 head of cattle were grazing in a pasture between Hooper and Syracuse. Then, Joseph Manning of Hooper reported that a great storm arose and the herd stampeded to the west and even the Great Salt Lake didn’t stop them.

Ultimately the cattle ended up more than a dozen miles to the northwest, near Little Mountain.

“Many of them were swamped in the mud and perished,” the story reported. “Others waded out till they became exhausted, and still others swam for miles. Some were found eighteen miles from shore. In all, 41 perished. Four were extricated from the mud alive.”

The animals belonged to a variety of ranchers in Davis and Weber counties.

In its report of the cattle drowning, the Davis County Clipper newspaper stated that old time residents of the area said that the strong east canyon winds also used to drive cattle from the Farmington area way out west to Antelope Island.

-The first newspaper mention of fog in Utah territory was in the Deseret News of Dec. 15, 1853.

The report described the fog in Salt Lake City as very deep and dark, very much like the English fogs of fall, winter and spring.

          The Little Mountain area, as viewed from the north end of Fremont Island.

-Here’s how some Utah residents of 1881 helped the poor: “Tomorrow morning Mr. A. Greenwell and a party of nimrods are going to the Little Mountain (west of Ogden), in quest of rabbits. They say they will return in the evening, with 400 and distribute them to the hungry free gratis, on Fourth Street (of Ogden).” From the Ogden Herald, Nov. 8, 1881.

-Back in 1910, the early days of the automobile, travel was slow, particularly on rough and out-of-the-way roads. For example, the Ogden Standard newspaper of Feb. 28, 1910 reported that it took residents of Hooper some three hours to travel to Ogden. J.H. Fowles, a Hooper resident, said it ought to only take an hour to travel that distance. (Note it takes approximately 15-20 minutes to travel from Hooper to Ogden today.)

-The Salt Lake Tribune of Sept. 6, 1896 was a report of the Little Mountain area. It stated that the Native American settlers before the pioneers used Little Mountain as a chosen spot. They came to the spot to bury some of their dead.

                                                   The Kit Carson Cross on Fremont Island.


However, the same Tribune story displayed total ignorance over where the cross carved in stone on Fremont Island came from. This report stated the cross was already there when John C. Fremont and company arrived on the Isle in 1843. (In fact, team member Kit Carson himself carved that cross during their 1843 visit).

So, this newspaper report speculated that some earlier Christians – perhaps even Spanish missionaries must have visited the Island and carved that cross.

From Muskrat Springs to Hooperville to Hooper

By Lynn Arave

Mention “Muskrat Springs” today and you’re likely to only cause bewilderment, as that title for today’s Hooper City was replaced more than a century ago.

Notwithstanding, there’s still a somewhat obscure pioneer monument to be found to that unusual moniker and even a ward of the LDS Church in town titled that.

Hooper was an early herd ground for pioneers. A fresh water source for area became known as Muskrat springs, presumably, because some of those critters were originally found there. The springs formed a large pond of water in the 19^th Century. There were several other springs in southwest Weber County, but this was the most famous.

It was 1853 when William H. Hooper built a herd house in the area. Other settlers followed and by 1869, there were 22 families living in Hooper.

The Muskrat Springs name was popular enough that resident John Thompson wrote a song titled “The Muskrat Springs” in 1869. It was even sung more than five decades later in the summer of 1927 during a city pioneer celebration.

A Deseret News correspondent, known only as “G.C.L.” wrote this on Dec. 14, 1870:

“I was particularly pleased with the appearance of the settlement formerly known as “Muskrat Springs” but lately renamed in honor of our respected delegate Hooper city. It is situated on the Weber range midway between the Weber River and Kaysville and near the shore of the lake. It is a thrifty and well organized young settlement containing a number of good frame houses. The soil there is of a warm sandy nature and well adapted to fruit growing and the settlement will without doubt in a few years become one of the best in the territory. I have visited nearly all parts of the territory and as a suitable place for starting a new farm, I consider it the most desirable locality I have yet seen. The canal by which the water is conveyed to it is to be enlarged the coming winter and much more land will then be brought under cultivation.”

The name “Hooperville” for the community was prevalent from the 1880s until the early 1900s. “Fair at Hooperville was an Aug. 26, 1890 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. But “Hooper” as a name took over for good in the 20th Century.

Hooper’s original boundaries went far south into Davis County, including part of today’s Syracuse City. It also went east into today’s Roy City and was for decades the only notable Weber County settlement southwest of Ogden.

Incorporation of Hooper City finally took place on Nov. 30, 2000.

-The Muskrat Springs monument is found near where the original springs was. That’s approximately at today’s 5300 South (that’s “Pingree Lane” to veteran Hooperites) and 5550 West. This metal marker is also near today’s Hooper Canal and was dedicated on Nov. 7, 1977 by Daughters of Utah Pioneers. 

(-Originally published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on March 28, 2016.)

A 1914 proposal to disband Davis County

WHAT if Davis County didn’t exist today?

Just over a century ago, there was a strong proposal to do away with it.

“Davis County may be wiped off the map” was a May 7, 1914 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

“G.W. Palmer of Farmington threw a small bomb into the state board of education meeting  yesterday afternoon by asserting that Davis County should be split in two, half added to Salt Lake County and half to Weber County,” the report stated.

“Geographically there is no excuse for the county and socially it is no county,” Palmer argued “Half of the residents  look to Salt Lake as their principal city and the other half to Ogden.”

Many at the meeting said they were too loyal to Davis County to permit any such arrangement. Palmer argued that this was “false patriotism” and that his proposal was a logical move.

Part of the controversy also centered around whether the small high schools in Bountiful, Kaysville and Syracuse should continue, or establish one large, strong county high school instead.

-In other historical tidbits:

-“No boxing in the town of Hooper” was an Aug. 10, 1910 Standard headline.

Weber County Sheriff Wilson had canceled the August 15^th twenty-round boxing match scheduled between Joe Harbertson and Kid Williams. He said that was not only because so many Hooper residents opposed it, but also because its existence would mean that Weber County communities would be claiming prize fights too.

Also, “every boy in the county that felt he was ‘scientific with the gloves’ would be putting in his time training for a boxing contest.”

J.D. Hooper was the local chairman of the committee who opposed the boxing match on the “grounds the morals of the community were in danger.”

Notwithstanding, a previous boxing match had been held in Hooper on July 24^th of that year, though residents felt that illustrated the dangers of the sport.

-“State Highway to be constructed to Hooper” was a June 1, 1917 Standard headline.

This road was constructed from West Ogden through Kanesville. The report stated the present highway to Hooper was in poor condition.

“… With heavy travel from this populous farming district, southwest of Ogden, there is need for the road being built at once,” the Standard reported.

The same story also stated that the other great highway need in Weber County was a road through Liberty to the top of the divide, to connect Weber and Cache counties.

(-Originally published on-line and in print in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on January 14-15, 2015 by Lynn Arave.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

The Roots of ‘Peach Days,’ ‘Tomato Days’

                         The Brigham City LDS Temple.


“PEACH Days,” the premier annual celebration by Brigham City, is set for Sept. 3-6 this year (2014).The first Peach Days event was held in 1904,to celebrate "an abundance of the best peaches in Utah."“Peach Day crowds at Brigham” was a Sept. 20, 1911 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. By then, the event had hit its stride, when some 400 people boarded the Oregon Short Line Train at Ogden to travel to Brigham City for the festivities. In all, some 1,500 people were riding the rails from the south to Box Elder County’s largest city.Events held for the two-day event back in 1911 (Wednesday-Thursday timeline) included: a parade, balloon ascension, a baseball game, wrestling match, musical concert, moving pictures exhibition, dancing and horticultural judging.A highlight of the festivities were free peaches and other fruit – available in abundance – to visitors at the city park and various stores in town.By 1912, Peach Days had welcomed the automobile age and many Weber County visitors traveled north by car. However, there were also at least five traffic accidents reported en route to Peach Days, between Brigham City and Ogden.According to the Standard of Sept. 18, 1913, at least 10,000 people attended Peach Days.“A delegation of Commercial Club members met the first train at the station and escorted the visitors to the city park,” the Standard reported of the celebration 101 years ago. “Huge piles of luscious peaches, with a score of pretty girls to serve them, awaited the visitors.”300 barrels of free peaches were given out that year. Besides baseball games in 1913, there were also various horse races. Festivities ended with a dance.

-Switching to another historical celebration:Hooper City’s annual Farm Bureau Day/Tomato Days, dates back to 1926.About 2,000 people were reported to have attended the premiere event, 88 years ago.George Parker headed the committee to organize the first celebration, which included a lecture on feeding beef and dairy cattle, chariot races and other pulling and riding competitions.A free melon bust was also featured and “Visit Hooper on Labor Day” was the slogan organizers wanted the public to remember. Team pulling contests and horseshoe pitching competitions highlighted events at Hooper on Sept. 5, 1927, in its second annual celebrationCecil Newey, Robert Purdy and John Wilson, some of Utah’s best horseshoe pitchers, gave a demonstration of their skill at the event.Horse races, foot races, a tug-of-war, dance and various agricultural judging were other events held.(“Tomato Days” this year is Saturday, Aug. 30 and Monday, Sept. 1, with a rodeo, farmers market, 5K run/walk, parade, craft fair and more.)

-Also, earlier in 1926, the Hooper Farm Bureau had staged a very unusual “Mock Wedding Party Feature,” according to a headline in the Standard of Feb. 26 that year.A mock marriage between “Joshua Farmer” (played by Mrs. Dale Russell) and “Madelda Farm Bureau” (portrayed by Les Stoddard) was the highlight of the banquet/dance, attended by 75 couples.John Belnap impersonated a minister, with a wedding march after the “ceremony.”James K. Widdison was the toastmaster of the evening and old time dances followed the banquet.

                The center of Hooper today, looking north along 5900 West.

(-Originally published by Lynn Arave on August 29, 2014 in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

Hooper, Utah: Pioneer Settlement, from Muskrat Springs to Incorporation

                        Welcome sign from the Davis County side of Hooper.

HOOPER, Weber County, Utah, has been the brunt of many a joke over the years.

Hooper, correctly pronounced: "Hup-er," NOT "Hoop-er," was one of the key settlements in early Northern Utah.

For decades after the Mormon Pioneers settled in Utah, you went from Ogden west to Hooper and there was nothing in between.

All the other cities in between came later.

Fur trappers probably visited the Hooper area as early as 1826, but the first verifiable visit was by explorers John C. Fremont, Kit Carson and others on their way to the Great Salt Lake. 

In September 1843, Fremont and company passed down the Weber River in a boat, through what is now the Ogden Bay Bird Refuge and into the lake, en route to Fremont Island.

In pioneer days the area was known as Muskrat Springs, for an artesian well where the critters were plentiful. It was also used by Capt. William H. Hooper and others as part of the "Weber Herd Ground." Hooper had cattle there, and his herdsmen built Hooper's first house, a two-story abode, in 1854.

Today's community is named after Hooper, Utah's first delegate to Congress, though he probably only visited the area occasionally. Hooper was also the original director of ZCMI and later its second president, succeeding Brigham Young. 

(Many places around the Soda Springs, Idaho, area were also named after Mr. Hooper because he used that area for his summer home site.)

James Hale started Hooper's first business in 1863 when he built two dugouts on the shores of the Great Salt Lake and gathered salt to sell in evaporated sloughs (except when rising lake water forced him to temporarily move out).

By 1876 several settlers had moved in, most of whom have descendants who still live in Hooper - Belnap, Hull, Read, Parker and Cox. These new settlers petitioned to have many of the cattle moved out, so Hooper moved his cattle to the Skull Valley, west of Grantsville.

The area was subsequently known briefly as "Hooperville," until that name was shortened to Hooper.

Sugar cane and corn were Hooper's first crops. Alfalfa and fruit trees also soon became important crops.

By 1877, Hooper ranked second only to Ogden in land area and population (about 100 families) in the Weber-North Davis area.

Hooper became an incorporated city in Weber County on Nov. 30, 2000. Its boundaries technically go west across the Great Salt Lake and include Fremont Island.

Some of "Hooper" (as defined by tradition) includes a section in Davis County towards West Point City. However, all of that land will surely one day end up as part of West Point City, since no one else can annex it.

-(Expanded from a Deseret News article by Lynn Arave on May 3, 1989.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

South Weber, Hooper changed forever by an ecclesiastical disagreement

  

        South Weber City, 2013.                Photo by Whitney Arave.

By Lynn Arave

WHY is South Weber located in Davis County, 

when its very name is synonymous with 

neighboring Weber County?

WHY is it that about one-fourth of what some still 

consider Hooper territory, actually not in Weber 

County, but in Davis County?

The answer to both these perplexing identity 

queries relate to a significant county boundary 

change, made almost 160 years ago, back in 1855.

South Weber was indeed originally in Weber County and why it jumped counties is an ecclesiastical tale as much as it was a government decision.

According to Utah historian Glen M. Leonard in the book, "A History of Davis County," an ecclesiastical disagreement resulted in the boundary of Davis County moving about one mile north of where it originally was established.

President Brigham Young visited the South Weber area in October 1853 and declared that a fort should be established there. Kington Fort, named after the area's first bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Thomas *Kington (his name is misspelled "Kingston" in many, many other histories), was then created.
(A listing in the March 8, 1855 Deseret News lists South Weber as being in Weber County, more proof the community switched counties.)

However, soon Kington and Lorin Farr, Weber LDS Stake president in Ogden, had some sort of serious disagreement, though what it was about was never recorded. (Leonard suspects it might have simply been a boundary-related issue.) 

Lee D. Bell, author of “South Weber,” called the dispute "a falling out" in his history book of the community.

And, he believes the fact that the Utah Territorial Legislators intervened in the argument proves how serious a disagreement it must have been.

The book “East of Antelope Island” simply mentions that “there was some difference between President Farr and Bishop Kington, so it (South Weber) was annexed to Davis County by the legislature.”

Territorial legislators in 1855 redefined the Davis-Weber county line, because of prompting from Kington.  (Perhaps he was one of the state’s first lobbyists …) The legislature moved the Davis County line northward. This essentially put Kington’s Ward in Davis County and meant that President Farr no longer had any jurisdiction over the congregation – they were under Davis County’s stake president.

The county line moved south to the Weber River at the east end of Davis County. This meant that the Weber town of Uintah (previously called “East Weber”) was created to define what settlement remained on the north side of the Weber River.

The new Davis County town had also already favored the name “South Weber,” even though it was now in a different county, but at least it was indeed on the south side of the Weber River.

Now, Jump ahead to 1877 and a related boundary change was made. 

(Perhaps someone looked at a map of Davis or Weber County and saw the unusual zag in the county line... created in the 1855 change.)

 This time instead of keeping the twist south in Davis County’s border beyond South Weber, created by the 1855 change, the county line out west was now moved north about a mile to parallel the change made 22 years earlier in the South Weber section. This now made the Davis-Weber boundary line fairly straight from leaving the Weber River until it reached the marshes of the Great Salt Lake.

(Besides a crooked boundary, one other factor in favor of moving more Weber County land into Davis County -- by moving the Davis line northward on its west side -- was that Davis County was clearly still the state's smallest county of all. Legislators in 1877 may have felt the tiny county could use a little more land.)

The most significant effect this related boundary change created was that Hooper, originally known as “Muskrat Springs” and established in 1852, was now split.

This created “South Hooper” on the Davis County side and it was originally huge, going all the way south to today’s 1700 South (Antelope Drive), before the days of a West Point, Clinton and Syracuse. Over the decades as those three cities were established, “South Hooper” shrunk dramatically and only the section of unincorporated Davis County there is today was left. 

The South Hooper name also faded as the rural area only stretched from West Point at about 5000 West and State Road 37 (“Pig Corner”) about a mile north to the county line.

Yet, today some of these rural residents still consider themselves “Hooperites,” even though they reside in a different county.

A “Welcome to Hooper” sign is still posted in a field along Highway 37, deep into Davis County’s “Hooper.” 

Some students on the Davis County side of Hooper still attend Weber County schools.

New delivery drivers are likely baffled and lost by the abrupt address changes when they cross from Weber County Hooper to the Davis County side.

Eventually West Point may annex all of this remaining Davis County Hooper, as it is the only community that could.

Note 1: The South Weber Ward was located south of the Weber River in Davis County, and the ward was for a while tied to the Mormon Davis Stake; but, in 1904, because most of the residents of the area were oriented economically to Weber County, the ward became part of the Weber Stake once again for a time.

SOURCE: Page 167 of “History of Weber County,”

OR on this Web link:

http://cdmbuntu.lib.utah.edu/utils/getfile/collection/USHSArchPub/id/6295/filename/6330.pdf

*NOTE 2, More about Kington --  "Thomas Kington came to Utah with the Aaron Johnson Company in 1850, he brought his two daughters and second wife, Margaret Pisel, mt great-great grandmother.  

"Thomas Kington was 56 years old when he came to Utah. We always thrill when reading of the experiences with the United Brethren and Wilford Woodruff. Thomas Kington was the leader of the group that listened to Elder Woodruff at the Benbow farm in England.

"After his work in South Weber, Brigham Young asked him to help in Brigham City. Later, he moved to Wellsville area in Cache Valley. He remained faithful to the work that he embraced when in England.  We're grateful for the heritage he established for our family in the Wellsville area: Our mother was born on a small farm that was located along the Sardine Canyon Road, overlooking Mt. Sterling and Wellsville. She was a granddaughter of Thomas Kington. 

"Thomas Kington died in July 1874; he and several of his family members are buried in the Wellsville Cemetery.

"Our family treasures his faithfulness and steadfastness."

 -From Lynn DeHart of Ogden, Utah, a, Kington descendant.

NOTE 3: A look at Kington's headstone proves with any doubt that KINGTON is the CORRECT spelling of his name.
-It also appears that the misspelling came as the fort that Kington established became infamous because of the "Morrisite War." When a writer or a historian thought "Kington's Fort," that extra "s" seemed to roll off the tongue and hence it easily became spelled incorrectly as "Kingston's Fort."

                              The Hooper sign located deep inside Davis County.

Looking northward along State Highway 37, where Weber County Hooper begins.

                      The view southward on State Highway 37, where Davis County "Hooper" begins.


-Note 4: AND, North Salt Lake City, at the opposite (south) end of Davis County, like South Weber, also seems mis-named. Many are confused by that misleading moniker too ...
A "North Salt Lake" in Davis County? Yes and not to be confused with the north portion of Salt Lake City itself.

-Note 5:There was a failed proposal in 1914 to add South Hooper, as well as Clinton and South Weber back to Weber County, since residents there stated they did more business in Ogden and Weber County, than Davis County. (See the Weekly Reflex newspaper of Jan. 29, 1914.)



(-Portions of the above article were previously published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, by Lynn Arave, on Nov. 22, 2013.)