Ogden City is located at the confluence of the Ogden and the Weber rivers in Weber County in northern Utah. In 1989 the city had a population of 69,000 residents. Weber County, which centers on Ogden as the county seat, had a population of 160,100.

Ogden claims to be the oldest settlement in Utah because of the founding in 1845 of a small picket enclosure, Fort Buenaventura, on the Weber River by Miles Goodyear, a mountain man working in the northern Utah area. Goodyear met the Mormons coming west in 1847 and offered his fort and claim, which the Mormons bought in November 1847. His claim included the fort and the area approximating the present Weber County boundaries.

In the fall of 1847 and the spring of 1848 James Brown and his family and the Lorin Farr family were sent by Brigham Young to begin settlement of the area, which became known as Brown's Fort until 1851 when the name Ogden was given to the city. The name derives from the Hudson's Bay Company trapper, Peter Skene Ogden, who was trapping in the valleys and mountains east of Ogden in 1825.

In the period from 1847 to 1870, the community survived as a rural agricultural area with small settlements forming along the Ogden and Weber rivers. In early times, settlement was limited by the extent that the water could be brought from the rivers and streams to the land. Later, the Pineview Dam and canal systems, and the Weber Basin Project in more recent times, expanded the water resources and the community consequently expanded.

With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the development of the Ogden community changed considerably. Politically, the Mormon community leadership was challenged by the increasing non-Mormon population that came into the area with the railroad. The non-Mormon leaders tried to wrestle the political and economic control of Utah from the Mormons and center their control at Corinne, a main stop on the transcontinental line north of Ogden.

Brigham Young and the Mormon leadership would allow none of this and took steps to bypass Corinne with a railroad line to the north as well as an agreement with the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies that Ogden would be the main terminal of the transcontinental line. By 1874 the challenge of Corinne was over; Corinne continued to decline as businesses moved to Ogden, and Ogden became recognized as a major railroad and commercial center. In Ogden, Mormons and Gentiles (non-Mormons) mixed together in business and politics. In 1889 Fred J. Kiesel, a Gentile, was elected mayor of Ogden, the first breakthrough in Utah of the Mormon-dominated politics.

...more