From Ogden's ‘Utah University’ to an Alternate Ogden LDS Temple Site

                       30th Street and Tyler Avenue sign today.

THE intersection of 30^th Street and Tyler Avenue, Ogden, is now just southeast of Ogden High School's stadium. However, 124 years ago, when the area was mostly open land, “Utah University,” a Methodist College, was being constructed there in 1890.

Jump ahead in time to 1921 and the same land was offered to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a possible site for a future Ogden Temple.

Neither a university, or a temple ever came to fruition and today the land to the south of Ogden High (built in 1937) is filled with homes all the way to Mount Ogden Junior High School.

Joseph Clark owned this land, just east of Harrison “Avenue” (now Boulevard) and he entered into an agreement with a Methodist Education Board, according to multiple reports in the Standard-Examiner.

The plan was for 43 acres of land to accommodate the so-called "Utah University" and some 164 residential lots to occupy much of the remaining 250-plus acres of Clark’s 320-acre tract.

“Methodist University is slowly progressing,” was a Sept. 28, 1890 report in the Standard.

Indeed, almost a year later, the first story of the University’s main building was nearly completion, according to an Aug. 26, 1891 Standard story.

However, shaky and insufficient financing plagued this project, as did some national controversies in the Methodist Church.

Ogden City had also been accused earlier that year, as somehow not living up to its commitments for this ambitious educational project (June 7, 1891 Standard).

Soon , all work stopped, the project was abandoned and the land legally came back to the Clark family.

In the 1890s, Thirtieth Street was a popular thoroughfare, with promising commercial potential. By 1920, the street was sometimes nicknamed “Sperry Boulevard,” because the Sperry Flour Company had a large mill and grain elevators on the extreme west end of the road (in pre-31^st Street Expressway days).

Next, in early 1921, the Clark Family approached the LDS Church about receiving a donation of land, near 30^th Street and Tyler, with just one condition – that an Ogden Temple be erected on the property one day.
(This land was often called "the old university grounds" for many years.)

According to the Deseret News of May 16, 1921, LDS Church President Heber J. Grant and his then, Second Counselor, Anthony W. Ivins, visited that property on May 15.

President Grant said they could not accept the donation, since the LDS Church already had more than $2 million in existing projects on application and there was no telling when a temple could be built in Ogden.
(One of those planned church projects was the Ogden Deseret Gymnasium, completed in 1925.)
Furthermore, Grant identified Lester Park (663 24^th Street, where today’s Main Weber County Library sits) as better suited for a temple site.

More than three years later, on May 7 1924, the Standard reported that the Associated Clubs of Ogden had written to President Grant about trading Tabernacle Square Park (site of today’s LDS Temple/Tabernacle) for Lester Park. Purpose of the trade was to provide “a suitable site for an Ogden temple.” That proposal was also turned down by the LDS Church.

In conclusion, there are simply a lot of “what ifs” to contemplate for today’s Ogden High area and the many homes nearby.
Any way that history implies things could have turned out in that area, it was still destined to be a focal point on Ogden's east side.

(-Originally published by Lynn Arave on Sept, 12, 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  

The brutal gridiron of yesteryear

                               Rice Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah.

FOOTBALL was truly a violent game lacking adequate protection and padding for players during its early years.

For example, football in Weber County back in 1885 was plain brutal.

The Nov. 24 Standard-Examiner that year reported a game scheduled between boys living on the Ogden bench and those in the lower part of town.

“The boys have laid in a good supply of shin plaster, and for a week or past, they have had a carpenter busily engaged in manufacturing crutches,” The Standard reported.”Several competent surgeons have been retained for the occasion and will be in attendance.”

Indeed, all Utah schools operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also banned football completely in the early 20^th Century.

"Opposed to the game of football” was a headline in the Deseret News on Dec. 8, 1905.)

Thus, football was played at BYU, when it was named Brigham Young Academy, from 1896-1903. But, about the same time as the Brigham Young University name came along in 1903, the sport of football was discontinued, for almost 20 years, until 1922.

This also meant there was no football at Weber Stake Academy (forerunner of Weber State University) during that same period.

(Of course, no one dreamed back then that BYU would ever be the national champion in college football, as it was in 1984, some 62 years after the ban was lifted.)

                          Liz and Daniel Hafen at the U. of U. football game at halftime.

This wasn't just an LDS Church stand against football in that era. Institutions all over the U.S., like Harvard and Columbia, were also against the sport for its brutality.

"Not for gentlemen" was a common belief at school's which banned football.

"Football is a hospital feeder," was another slogan of those against gridiron play.

Nationally, there were at least 45 deaths and hundreds of serious injuries reported from college football in 1905, according to a Standard article that year.

President Theodore Roosevelt that year met with sports officials from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to try and get football injuries reduced.

Roosevelt’s sons played the game and he wasn’t out to ban the sport, just make it safer to play.

-Ogden High also seemed to enjoy playing football truly “out of its league” a century ago. The Standard of Oct. 12, 1912 reported “Ogden High is defeated 56 to 0” in a headline.

The victor of that game? The University of Utah freshman team, which Ogden played annually in that era – despite being outweighed by an average of 25 pounds and facing superior experience.

-The year 1912 was also a pivotal one in rules for the sport of football. Nationally, according to the Standard of Aug. 30, 1912, the number of downs increased from three to four and the value of a touchdown was raised from five to six points.

-Football also wasn’t just for males in its early era. The Standard of Nov. 1, 1911 carried a report that girls in Indiana high schools had been regularly playing the game that year. However, a girl playing the sport in Evansville got injured, the first reported injury to a female player that season.

-Finally, it wasn’t just the injuries that were a concern for early football. Gambling on the gridiron contests was rampant and considered a vice to many.

(-Originally published on September 5, 2014, by Lynn Arave and 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