Ogden, Utah: A City Named for a River Named for a Trapper

When Mormon leaders laid out Ogden, Utah, in 1850, the city took its name from the river, and the river already carried the name of a Hudson’s Bay Company trapper. His name was Peter Skene Ogden, so the city got its name secondhand.

Brown’s Fort before Ogden

Before there was an Ogden, there was a fort. H. H. Bancroft’s 1889 History of Utah says Miles M. Goodyear held the land near where the Weber and Ogden rivers meet and “built a fort, consisting of a stockade and a few log houses.” On June 6, 1848, James Brown of the Mormon Battalion, coming back from California with “$5,000, mostly in gold-dust,” bought the tract from him. Bancroft admits the price is fuzzy: “Some say for $1,950; others place the amount at $3,000.”

So the place took Brown’s name first. Edward Tullidge, writing in 1889, says the history of Weber County has to start with “Brown’s Fort (Goodyier Fort) or Brownsville,” which years later became the Ogden Branch of the church “and still later” Ogden City.

Named for the river

In August 1850, Bancroft says, “Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, and others laid out the city of Ogden, so called from the name of the river.” Tullidge puts the name a few months later: when the church organized the Weber Stake on January 25, 1851, “the Weber branch received the name of Ogden.” On February 6, 1851, Governor Young approved the charters for four new cities, and Ogden was one of them, according to J. Marinus Jensen’s 1924 history of Provo.

If you’re wondering whether Ogden ever saw the place, these books don’t say. You’ll notice, too, that the one writer who explains the choice, Bancroft, credits the river, not the man. The river already had the name.

Peter Skene Ogden, or Skeen

As for the man, Henry Gannett’s 1905 federal list of place names describes him as “an old mountaineer of the Hudson Bay Company, Peter Skeen Ogden.” Orson F. Whitney’s 1892 History of Utah also spells it Skeen and lists him among “the notable characters traversing the Great Basin” in the fur-trade years. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography files him under Skene, notes that he was baptized Skeene, and lists Skeen and Skein as other spellings.

Whitney adds one more detail. Ogden “gave his name to the Ogden or Humboldt river,” the long river that crosses Nevada. Bancroft, mentioning that Ogden River in his chapter on the trappers, adds a footnote: “Previously called the Mary River, and now the Humboldt.” So Nevada’s river lost Ogden’s name. Utah’s river held on to it, and so did the city.

Bancroft also noticed that some people in his day got the city’s name wrong: “Ogden, or, as it was sometimes erroneously called, Junction City.” He doesn’t say where the nickname came from, but he does describe the city as sitting “in the centre of a network of railroads.” Junction City never replaced the trapper’s name, though.

Sources & further reading

• H. H. Bancroft, History of Utah, 1540-1886 (1889), pp. 25, 307, 700. The Ogden River of Nevada “now the Humboldt” (p. 25); Goodyear’s fort, James Brown’s purchase on June 6, 1848, the uncertain price, the city laid out in August 1850 “so called from the name of the river,” and the “Junction City” mix-up.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 229. City, river, canyon and valley named for Peter Skeen Ogden of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
• Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, vol. 1 (1892), pp. 292-293. Ogden among the fur men of the Great Basin, and the “Ogden or Humboldt river.”
• Edward W. Tullidge, Tullidge’s Histories, vol. 2 (1889), pp. 22, 413. Brown’s Fort, or Brownsville, and the branch named Ogden on January 25, 1851.
• J. Marinus Jensen, Early History of Provo, Utah (1924), pp. 76-77. The city charters for Provo, Ogden, Manti and Parowan, approved February 6, 1851.
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “Ogden, Peter Skene.” The spelling Skene, the baptismal Skeene, and the variants Skeen and Skein.
• GNIS feature 1444049 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Ogden, which repeats Gannett’s line.