The Scoop on Wheeler Canyon, off Ogden Canyon

    The mouth of Wheeler Canyon, at the far east end of Ogden Canyon.  Photo by Whitney Arave.

WHEELER CANYON is the first canyon below Pineview Dam. It is southwest of the Dam itself.
Today Wheeler Canyon is best known as a mountain bicycle trail. However, use of the canyon dates back to 1866. Levi Wheeler, an Ogden area pioneer, located a sawmill on the stream in Wheeler Canyon that year and he is the origin of its name.
The sawmill materials had been hauled across the plains  to Utah. Calvin Wheeler, son of Levi, told the Ogden Daily Standard Newspaper of Sept. 20, 1919 about the origin of the canyon's name. He also said that when he lived near the canyon in the 1860s, he recalled traveling some 16 miles from Huntsville to kill 16 elk for food, to get through the winter.
-Also, a century ago, the area in Ogden Canyon near Wheeler Canyon's mouth was called "Pine View" and hence the name of the today's dam there.
-A Boy Scout troop of 24 boys, led by Scoutmaster Charles E. Fisk, hiked up Wheeler Canyon in the fall of 1922. They then climbed to the top of Mount Ogden -- with no trail to follow. Then, the descended down the left-hand fork of Taylor Canyon -- again with no trail to follow. Despite encountering cliffs and two inches of snow, there were no mishaps.
The Scouts reported seeing lots of blue grouse and willow grouse and even the tracks of a wolf. They returned to Ogden City after a 13-hour hike that covered some 25 miles. (-From Ogden Daily Standard, Oct. 23, 1922.)

-In the 1920s and up until the construction of Pineview Dam, there used to be the "Power Dam" at the head of Wheeler Canyon. This dam was built in 1897 and was some 40 feet deep and 300 feet long.
Ogden City got most of its drinking water from the artesian wells in Ogden Valley and also from Coldwater Canyon -- before Pineview Dam came along, in 1937.

South Fork: A dam started but never built

                                             Tubing the South Fork of the Ogden River.

By Lynn Arave

IMAGINE the South Fork of the Ogden River without all or most of its campgrounds/picnic areas.

No Bott, South Fork, Perception Park, Meadows, Willow or perhaps even Magpie. No tubing or fishing most of the South Fork River either. It almost happened …

That’s because in November of 1912 full scale work began “on Big South Fork Dam,” according to the Standard-Examiner of Nov. 16 that year. (Some preliminary work had been done in 1911.)

After 40 years of dreaming about a dam on the South Fork, machinery was working there.

(Bishop W.S. Steward of Plain City had previously spent considerable money in the South Fork area trying to find a suitable dam location, but had given up. Other had tried too. Only a revival of support by former Ogden Mayor/then Standard-Examiner Publisher William Glasmann had pushed the idea forward again.)

Fifty men, armed with powder, steam and machinery, began to prepare the site for concrete work. This dam was envisioned of being able to double Ogden and area’s population and serve water needs for 100 years.

Where exactly was this dam started? At the confluence of Cobble Creek along the South Fork, or near today’s South Fork Campground.

The proposed earthen dam was estimated to cost $1 million (or $24 million in today’s value) and initially rise 120 feet – and eventually 200 feet in height. It would have had a storage capacity of 50,000 acre feet. (Pineview is 110,000 acre feet.)

 “The camp at the dam presents a busy scene and the place is a tented city,” The Standard reported.

The dam was eventually a joint project between Ogden City and the Ogden River Reservoir Company. Electric power generation was also planned.

However, the project was very controversial and a March 23, 1911 Standard article called a meeting on the South Fork dam the most important meeting ever held in Weber County.

(Remember: in this era, there was no Pineview or Causey Reservoir, only a small dam at the head of Wheeler Canyon in Ogden Canyon.)

“The people in Huntsville looked with surprise as the big gasoline engine hauling seven tons at a time through that town,” The Standard reported.

What happened to the dam?

It was eventually determined that the core wall was located on a fault plain. Also, while the south end wall hit bedrock, the rest did not. Blasting revealed an almost bottomless mud plain.

Plans were even revised to take the dam about 1.2 miles downstream to the west, but additional shortcomings on a suitable foundation and delays/changes/politics in construction doomed the  project.

“Reservoir site abandoned,” was a Nov. 22, 1912 headline in the Standard. That proved to be somewhat premature as some work on the possible dam was still being done in 1913, as well as the late winter of 1914. The project was on-off again many times.

As a sidelight, some of the first moving pictures ever seen by Ogden area residents came in the fall of 1913. “Moving pictures of fashion show and big dam” was an Oct. 22, 1913 headline in the Standard. Images of work on the South Fork Dam were shown at the Globe Theater, 2530 Washington Avenue. “The picture of the big dynamite explosion at the damsite is interesting,” the article stated.

As recent as May 18, 1923, the Standard reported government officials still mulling the South Fork of the Ogden River as a possible dam site. Interestingly, then, one site was called “Magpie Reservoir,” with potential for a 200-foot high dam (and likely the location of today’s Magpie Campground).

By 1926, Echo Reservoir in Weber Canyon was started and then the Great Depression struck in 1929.

By the 1930s, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation controlled all dam construction and it started Pineview Reservoir in 1934 in Ogden Valley itself.

In 1966, Causey Reservoir was completed. It is on the South Fork of the Ogden River (and also included some of Skull Crack Canyon, another potential dam site explored in the 1920s).

Still, you’ve got to wonder if the South Fork Dam had been built in the 1910s, where would today’s South Fork campgrounds be? What about Highway 39’s route? Would Pineview and Causey reservoirs still have been built the same, or at all?

Additional sources: “Public Documents in Utah,” volume 1, page 68; and “The Irrigation Age,” volumes 20-21.

(-Originally published by Lynn Arave in the Ogden Standard Examiner on June 27, 2014.)

-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  

From Magpie to Skull Crack Canyon: Ogden Valley Area Place Names

                           The top of Wheeler Canyon.                    Photo by Whitney Arave.

By Lynn Arave

"PLACE names in some respect are like historic moments. They are windows through which we can see the history of an area,” the late William W. Terry, an Ogden-area historian, wrote in his book, “Weber County is Worth Knowing.”

Here is a list, not intended to be comprehensive, of selected place name origins in the Ogden Valley section of Weber County. (More name origins in Northern Utah will be explored in future articles):

Causey Creek/Dam: Named for Thomas Causey, an early settler, who operated a saw mill there. (The dam was built from 1962-1966.)

Chicken Creek: This moniker is derived from all the wild chickens, who roamed this area in Liberty’s early days.

Dairy Ridge: So called by a rancher who had dairy cattle roaming in the Monte Cristo area.

Dog Pen Ridge: Called after the pens of dogs kept there by area sheepherders.

Dry Bread Hollow/Dry Bread Ponds: Levi Wheeler built an early road in the Monte Cristo area, but he and his crew ran out of provisions and only had dry bread to eat until the project was completed. The ponds were originally called Elk Ponds, since so many elk watered there.

Eden: So named by Washington Jenkins, a government surveyor, who thought the area was beautiful and that the town deserved the Biblical name of Eden. (North Fork Town was its prior name.)

James Peak: Titled for James Davenport, who cut timber in the area for the railroad.

Lightning Ridge: So named after a bolt of lightning struck some trees there during a storm.

Magpie Campground, Creek, Canyon and Flat: Named for Bryon Fifield, who was nicknamed “Magpie” and was one of the first Ogden Valley settlers to enter the South Fork area, searching for wood. There is also a nearby Magpie Canyon and that was perhaps the first reference to Magpie in the area, as the campground came afterward.

     Today's Pineview Dam. The old Pineview Hotel was located in that area.

                                                                            Photo by Whitney Arave.

Pineview Reservoir: Named by Eudora Decker Wilcox, who operated the historic Pineview Hotel, campground, cottages and way station with her husband, Moroni Edward Wilcox. This hotel, a rival of the Hermitage, was located at the edge of Wheeler Creek in upper Ogden Canyon and disappeared when the Dam was built.

Shanghai Creek/Canyon: Named after the historic pioneer bridge of the same name that at one time crossed the Ogden River at the west end of Ogden Valley. This area is now under Pineview water.
However, where did the Shanghai name itself came from?
"The Shanghai Bridge, situated a little east of where Wheeler's Creek emptied into the river, was long and narrow, standing about fifteen feet above the water. It had no railings on the sides and was approached by a curve in the road which made it an extremely dangerous place especially on a dark night." 
The bridge was also known for having loose boards at times.  --This is a historical excerpt from the history of Martha Ann Bronson (found on: http://gatheringgardiners.blogspot.com/)
She lived in Eden from the 1850s ,until her death in 1926.
One can then surmise the bridge earned its name perhaps from pictures seen of other risky, narrow bridges in the Shanghai area of China and this early bridge was reminiscent of them.
The first reference to Shanghai Bridge was May 19, 1881 in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, where it stated that the new bridge, just opened, has a "high name." Apparently, area residents built the bridge on their own, after losing patience with the  government.
Skull Crack Canyon: Received its unusual title after James Slater and Marinus Johansen were hunting in what would become the Causey Dam area. Johansen hit one of his unruly mules with his gun barrel and cracked its skull.

Snowbasin: The area was originally named Wheeler Basin for Levi and Simon Wheeler who operated a saw mill there. The Ogden Chamber sponsored a “Name Wheeler Basin” contest in the summer of 1940 to herald the coming ski resort. Geneveve Woods (Mrs. C.N. Woods) won the contest with her Snowbasin name submission, officially announced on Aug. 2, 1940.

Trigger Gulch: No gun connection here. The name came from a shingle mill in the area that had a trigger used to move a large blade up and down that cut pines into shingles.

 The South Fork of the Ogden River is a popular tubing area today, thanks to Causey Reservoir and its control of the runoff water.

Wheat Grass: The title simply came from all the tall, wild grass that used to grow in the Causey Dam area.

Wheeler Creek/Wheeler Basin: Their name came from Levi Wheeler, an early settler who operated a saw mill where Pineview Dam is now.

Wolf Creek: No definite answer here. Either it was named for a large gray wolf who roamed the area in pioneer times, or it was for a man named “Wolfe.”

-Ant Hill Flat: On the dirt road from the top of South Fork to Hardware Ranch. Its nickname is "Piss Ant Flat," but that's an unofficial name that has never been on any maps I've seen. Presumably, a lot of ant hills were found in that area.

SOURCES: Ogden Standard-Examiner, June 6, 1918 and also June 29, 1975; “Utah Place Names,” by John W. Van Cott.

(-Originally published by Lynn Arave in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, Jan. 10, 2014.)

-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