Brigham City, Utah

William Davis and Simeon Carter, Mormon pioneer settlers, explored the area surrounding Box Elder Creek in 1850. They selected a site on which to build homes. They returned to Salt Lake City for the winter. Davis, James Brooks, and Thomas Pierce returned the following year with their families to take up permanent residence. They built a row of log rooms known as the Davis Fort, which were located in the northwest of town.

Henry G. Sherwood surveyed land, consisting of 40–80 acres each, for farms at the Box Elder settlement. The lots were extra large because the rocky nature of the soil meant larger plots were required to sustain a family. Families were glad to move from the cramped and bedbug-infested fort and began building cabins and farming their plots. This took place in the spring of 1852. By the fall of 1853, eight families with a total of 24 people lived in the settlement.

Brigham Young ordered the settlers to move into forts due to the increasing Indian hostilities in some areas of the territory. A second fort was built at Box Elder.

The first Latter-day Saints immigration company, composed entirely of Scandinavians, arrived in Utah in 1853. John Forsgren, whose wife was the daughter of William Davis, led them. Most of these immigrants would settle in Brigham City.

Church president Brigham Young directed Lorenzo Snow, an apostle in the church, to take 50 families to the Box Elder area and develop a cooperative system in which the community would become self-sufficient, producing all that they consumed. This was directed during the Mormon general conference of 1853. Snow selected artisans skilled in trades important to the development of a pioneer community. Most were Mormon converts from Denmark.

Snow developed into the political and ecclesiastical leader of the community. In 1855, he had the town plat surveyed and renamed the settlement Brigham City after church president Brigham Young. He encouraged the people to build permanent homes. Several small businesses were established during the 1850s. Snow wanted Brigham City to be a model Mormon village. In order to achieve this, he directed Territorial Surveyor Jesse W. Fox to divide the large farms into smaller parcels. This was to make room for the newcomers. The smaller parcels would be five acres each.

The Box Elder County Courthouse was used for city and county business, theatrical productions, and religious meetings until church buildings could be built. The courthouse was constructed from 1855 to 1857. The original adobe structure still forms the foundation of the present courthouse, making it the oldest remaining courthouse in Utah. It was a distinguished federal-style square building, updated in 1887 with an [Page 88]attractive Italianate style cornice, window heads, and a clock/bell tower.

Snow was ready to execute his plans for a cooperative community in 1864. A mercantile store, established in 1864, was the first cooperative business, but soon many different types of industries and services were added. Workers were paid in scrip, which could be used for trade in any of the departments of the cooperative. By the mid-1870s, the cooperative association was producing all the commodities necessary for preservation of the community. Snow had accomplished his goal of making the people of Brigham City independent of the outside world. His cooperative became a prototype for similar ventures in Mormon settlements throughout Utah. It was highly praised as the first and most thriving of the Mormon cooperative organizations. However, a series of financial disasters between 1876 and 1879 crippled the organization. Grasshoppers and drought destroyed crops; the woolen mill burned and was rebuilt at great expense. In 1878, a tax was levied on the scrip issued by the cooperative. These disasters forced the association to begin selling its industries to private businessmen. The Supreme Court ruled on the tax case, favoring the Brigham City co-op in 1884. The money was returned and constructed an amazing new store in the center of town. The co-op went into receivership in 1895.

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