So the Great Salt Lake makes its entrance into comparatively modern American history.
In 1825, Peter Skeen Ogden, accompanied by his party of Hudson Bay Company trappers, pursued his brilliant adventures, and left behind a record which induced the naming of the city after him.
In 1841, the country around the spot where the city now lies was held, on a Spanish grant, by Miles M. Goodyear, who built a fort and a few log-houses near the confluence of the Weber and Ogden rivers.
On June 6, 1848, a man named James Brown came from California with his pockets stuffed with gold dust; nearly five thousand dollars' worth of the precious thing had he. With part of it he bought this tract of land from Goodyear. It proved to be a most fertile spot. Brethren came to it from Salt Lake City. Gentiles came from everywhere. The settlement grew and prospered.
In 1849, people began to talk of locating a city right there at the junction of the two rivers.
In 1850, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and others, laid out the settlement and called it Ogden, after Peter Skeen Ogden, the explorer, long since dead, but whose dashing, daring, brilliant adventures were still charming to the men of that wild land. Every time the city's name is mentioned it is another proof that although,
"The man might die, his memory lives."
Before a year was over a school house was built in the city.
Then came that un-American sight, a wall of protection built around a city. It cost $40,000, which amount was raised by taxation.
About this time several suburban settlements were formed, but bears, wolves, and Indians soon drove the venturesome suburbanites within city limits.