Notorious Two-Bit Street: 2nd Edition

By Lyle and Jean Barnes

Madams of brothels, houses of gambling, rampant government corruption—all these were found in a late 1800s Mormon community. This is the fascinating, well-researched, true history of Two-Bit Street—a street that became known throughout the world for its ladies of the evening and saloons that never closed. The American West’s wildest poured into this small Utah town after it was chosen to be the Junction City for the newly constructed 1869 transcontinental railroad. A history that spans three quarters of a century, this book shows how a pious people can be overpowered by an uncontrollable malignancy of lust. At times inspiring, this book also unveils the struggle between deep corruption and those who wanted this corruption to be destroyed. Infamous Twenty-Fifth Street in Ogden has been named as one of the ten great streets in America because of its past notoriety and its complete contiguous turn-of-the-century commercial architecture which remains as a witness of that colorful past. Lyle J. Barnes is the street’s original historian, and many other authors have quoted his history of Twenty-Fifth Street. With the fine additional research and writing done by Jean Barnes, this second edition makes Lyle’s best-selling history better than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662436611

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Notorious Two-Bit Street

2nd Edition

Lyle and Jean Barnes

Copyright © 2021 Lyle and Jean Barnes

All rights reserved

Second Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-3660-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3661-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

ALSO BY AUTHOR LYLE J. BARNES

Gone with the Railroad

Note: this book is not a suitable reading for children.

To heroes that exemplify values and courage.

Table of Contents

SETTING THE STAGE

The Scene

The People

A Clash of Cultures

The Criminals

SYNOPSIS OF 1869 TO 1944

Ogden before the Railroad Came

The Iron Horse Arrives

Reality Sets In

Gentile Kate

Drugs and Alcohol

Downfall of Government

Madam Belle London

Fanny Dawson and the Murder Company

Law Enforcement on the Street, 1916–1930

The Tunnels

Mayor Harman Peery

THE CATACLYSM BEGINS AT THE TOP

Mayor Bramwell

Chief of Police T. R. Johnson

Introduced to Jack Meyers

A Secret Informant

An Unlikely Pair Conspires

The Plot Succeeds

Findings of the Grand Jury

What Kind of Man?

The Meyers Trial

Justice Delayed

The Bramwell Trial

A SHORT REPRIEVE

A Time of Passiveness in Law Enforcement

CRACKDOWN

Sheriff Mac Wade, Anti-Vice Crusader

Mac Wade

The People Get on Board

The Rose Rooms

Rosetta Ducinni Davie and Bill Davie

THE PORTERS AND WAITERS CLUB

AnnaBelle Weakley

Joe McQueen

POST-CLEANUP REFLECTIONS

A WALK DOWN TWO-BIT STREET

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO US?

THE TRAIL OF HOPE

INTRODUCTION

My thoughts go back to my first exposure to Ogden, Utah’s Twenty-Fifth Street—notorious Two-Bit Street.

I remember when I visited Ogden in the early 1950s as a young student of debate from Lehi High School. My teacher Mr. Taylor took me and other members of his debate class to Ogden to compete with other high schools in various speech contests at Weber State College. We stayed on the fifth or sixth floor of the Ben Lomond Hotel, located on the corner of Twenty-Fifth and Washington, in a room with a window facing the western end of the infamous street. The college was then just a short distance from our hotel.

My roommates and I were very curious about this street and some of the rumors we had heard. The reputation of the street had, by that time, become general knowledge among the inhabitants of the state of Utah. Ending on Wall Avenue in front of the train depot, the three city blocks we viewed to the west of our hotel had been the focal point of this dishonorable reputation. Of course, that excluded the area around Weber College, which also stood on Twenty-Fifth, but to the east.

As we peered out of our hotel window, each of us dared one another to venture out onto the scandalous street. Each one of us took the challenge, and the adventure was on. It was dark outside around our hotel, except for the streetlights. But lower Twenty-Fifth Street illuminated the night, as music could be heard from saloons along the edge of this lustful road. I remember seeing a number of rough-looking men and women milling about, and we heard waves of loud laughter and riotous socializing.

The feelings of bravery that resulted from the dare—the courage and the sense of adventure—soon turned to feelings of intimidation and fear. My companions and I lived in a small Utah town named Lehi, about fifty miles south, and we were not accustomed to the apparent evils that we encountered on Ogden’s stretch of wild businesses. Just as we neared a saloon, the door flew open, and a drunk and two others stumbled out onto the sidewalk. We could hear raucous noise and music from inside. Fear took over, and we all retreated back to the hotel and stayed inside for the rest of the night.

Except for the awnings which once shaded business fronts and the poles running down the center of the street, the appearance of Twenty-Fifth Street’s buildings in the early 1900s, as photographed above, had not changed much by the early 1950s when my classmates and I looked down at this view of the notorious street.

A December 2008 view of lower Twenty-Fifth Street from an upper floor of the Ben Lomond Hotel. Compare this with the previous photograph showing the same view west, but with buildings which were still standing in the early 1950s when my high school classmates and I stayed at the Ben Lomond Hotel. The Broom Hotel and a series of saloons and two-story hotels were later replaced by two large modern buildings shown above, a bank building and a six-story federal building.

Since that night, I have often wondered what we might have encountered had we continued. What kind of people were they, and would we have been safe if we had gone farther? If the women and men we glimpsed on the street had chided and ridiculed us, would we have felt threatened? Would we have been drawn into a fight by menacing characters brandishing knives and outnumbering us?

As this history will show, that night, Twenty-Fifth Street was near its zenith, and some of the main players were still in place. Historically, it tottered on the precipice of change as vice and crime struggled to remain in power and as the sheriff’s office and police department investigated and aggressively arrested persons of the underworld.

More than ten years later, in 1966, I took a Utah State University extension class at Weber State College, taught by Professor C. Blythe Ahlstrom. By then, the college had moved to its current location in Ogden, away from lower Twenty-Fifth Street and closer to the mountains eastward which line the wide valley of the Great Salt Lake. The class was designed for graduate students of history, to help each of us begin to write a master’s degree thesis. In the final class, before we were to start researching and writing, Professor Ahlstrom wrote the outline of a typical master’s thesis on the blackboard, along with examples of possible subjects. He gave us the option to choose from his list of suggestions or to select any other historical subject of interest. The suggested subjects I remember on his list included the Bamberger Railway in Utah and the California Packing Company expansions into Ogden. I was twenty-nine years old, and all the suggested topics seemed very boring to me. So I began to explore my own interests.

I reflected back to my own youthful experience on Twenty-Fifth Street. It was then that I realized I want to find out how bad that street really was! So I immediately planned to make an initial investigation. If I didn’t find anything, only then would I consider researching one of the professor’s boring subjects.

To begin with, I needed to find some person still living that could remember the street when it was filled with vice and crime, as it long had been since the coming of the railroad. That person also needed to be someone not threatened by any document I might produce disclosing his or her own involvement.

I went to the Ogden City and County Building standing at Twenty-Fifth Street and Washington Boulevard. There, I spoke to a gray-haired woman named Elizabeth Tillotson, who told me about an elderly gentleman still living in Ogden by the name of T. R. Johnson. He had been Ogden City chief of police from January 2, 1944, to December 31, 1945. I called him on the telephone, and he agreed to give me an interview.

On the day of the interview, I took with me a then state-of-the-art, compact, portable, battery-operated, reel-to-reel tape recorder that entirely filled my briefcase. I fully expected that Mr. Johnson would not allow me to record our conversation, but he proved me wrong.

I remember sitting with him in his dimly lit living room in Ogden, asking questions and listening while he related many of his experiences. It had been twenty years since he had served as the city’s chief of police, but he had an excellent memory of people and events. Before being appointed chief of police, he had been a newspaper reporter, and his recall of detail was still very keen. He gave me many stories and names of other individuals who had been involved with Twenty-Fifth Street. I really appreciated that Mr. Johnson was my first interview because his interview helped me begin my research. He not only piqued my interest in proceeding with the writing of my thesis, but his information gave me insight into new sources I could use. He provided me with a list of contemporary individuals he remembered as major personalities, who also then might provide interviews.

I eventually became almost obsessed with my research because the facts I gradually learned were so intriguing. As I spoke with those connected to Twenty-Fifth Street, I found that some people I wanted to interview felt reluctant to talk: Some expressed concern about being the source of exposing others. Some worried about their own reputations. And a few confessed that they had felt trapped in their roles, believing they hadn’t been given the option of doing the right things because of the possibility of losing their positions or their jobs.

Other people connected to the street were quite excited to tell of their experiences, and these were usually the heroes involved in the cleaning up of Two-Bit Street. Yes, there were heroes, and there were villains, and each reacted differently to my questions.

One attorney I spoke to warned me not to use the name of his client in my thesis. The client had been picked up for prostitution, and her name had appeared in the newspaper. I have since learned for myself, as an attorney, that the fact of her name having already been published in the newspaper would have removed her legal right of privacy, to some extent. There might have been some liability resulting from the passage of time and the resulting anonymity. However, I never intended to hurt anyone. Suffice it to say, this particular woman—then a prominent and worthy citizen of society—deserved to enjoy the fruits of her repentance.

As I proceeded with my research, I began to feel insecure about my physical safety, because the subject matter I pursued was quite volatile. Not often, but on a few occasions, I carried a small German semiautomatic 25-caliber pistol called a Lilliput in my briefcase. Some of the places I needed to go into, on Twenty-Fifth Street, seemed just a little scary. And some of the individuals I had to talk to might have taken offense. In addition, the subject matter itself constituted an exposure of crime and vice. I could never be sure if someone would want to stop me and even violently attack me.

I am now eighty-four years old. More than fifty years have passed since I first began this work. I started it in 1966 as that master’s degree thesis. While a teacher at Roy High School, I attended graduate school at Utah State University. After finishing my thesis, I graduated with a master’s degree in history while attending my first year of law school at the University of Utah.

It is now 2021, and the street has changed. A portion of its appearance is very different. The street is no longer commonly called Two-Bit Street, although historical plaques found at certain places on the street refer to it by that name. The name has been preserved, in large part, because of my original 1969 thesis, which bears the title Ogden’s Notorious Two-Bit Street, 1870–1954.

This thesis has been in the Utah State University library. Since its writing, a copy of my original thesis has been preserved in the special collections section of the Weber County Library in Ogden. And it can only be read within the library. The last time I looked at the copy owned by this library, it was worn and faded from frequent use. It seemed to have been copied enough times to appear somewhat tattered.

The Ogden City Planning Department has also had a copy of the original 1960s thesis and has owned a copy of the first edition of this book since the year it was first published. Both have been useful in the planning department’s efforts to protect the buildings on historic Twenty-Fifth Street. In 2014, the American Planning Association designated historic Twenty-Fifth Street in Ogden as one of the ten great streets in America. This national association acknowledged Twenty-Fifth Street’s past notoriety and recognized Ogden for its complete contiguous turn-of-the-century commercial architecture. (Broadway in New York City, and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, were two of the other streets honored.)

The contents of my thesis had not been available for sale to the public until 2009 when the first edition of this book was published. In spite of that fact, many people have read the decades-old thesis, and history professors at Weber State University have used it as a resource in teaching about local and state history.

The response to the first edition of the book Notorious Two-Bit Street was very gratifying. It seems to have become a favorite book in many personal libraries. Many people, after reading the first edition of this book, have stopped to talk to me at book-signing events. Reading groups have asked me to share my experiences. They tend to ask the same question: How did you gather all these facts and information? I usually just explain that I’m old enough to have written a master’s thesis during a time when many of the great heroes, public servants, and characters in the book were still alive.

A more complete answer is that the facts were taken from (1) oral interviews of historical heroes, (2) personal scrapbooks kept by them or by others close to them, (3) interviews with historical characters that were part of the problem, (4) police records, (5) evidence used in court and preserved in the evidence room of the court building, and (6) newspaper accounts. The original master’s thesis and both editions of this book have included all the above kinds of sources.

The purpose of this second edition is the same goal as the first—to make the story of Twenty-Fifth Street available for public reading and ownership. Nevertheless, it is not suitable reading for children because the subject matter, by necessity, exposes very base elements of human character and activities.

This second edition keeps the history intact while adding photographs and information that will illustrate more fully the colorful history of the infamous three blocks of Ogden’s Twenty-Fifth Street. I’ve also included a few more perspectives gained from having been an attorney-at-law for more than forty years.

It is my hope that these histories may serve as an anchor to all future writings about the street and provide accuracy where it might not otherwise be possible. While writing these, I’ve occasionally noticed contradictions between the real facts and the rumors spoken through time. A rumor can change greatly from its original story, after passing through several people, regardless of how factual or fictional it may have first been. As it turns out, the true history of Twenty-Fifth Street depicts a worse condition prevalent over the years than gossip and rumors ever described.

It’s been a thrill to present facts from real people that actually lived the events and were instrumental in changes that happened on this audacious street. What an honor I have felt to have had, although briefly, a personal acquaintance with some of them. I’ve satisfied my own desire to learn more about a few of the historic personalities tied to the street.

I appreciate the close family members of Ogden madam Rosetta Ducinni Davie for sharing their perspective, as well as information and photos of her. I’m grateful to AnnaBelle Weakley and to Joe McQueen, who personally provided me with insights into the social conflict prevailing in 1940s Ogden.

Even after the book’s first edition was published, my research continued as various individuals shared family histories. Children, still living, have shared with me the life experiences of their deceased fathers—fathers who were heroically involved in Twenty-Fifth Street history. Surely, more information from the lives of the heroes of that day would be instructive for any era.

In this edition, I have tried to answer the following questions: What was so different in two men—Police Chief T. R. Johnson and Sheriff Mac Wade—that drove them to accomplish what none of their predecessors had even attempted? What kind of men had the steel to press forward in an effort to end corruption in government and to bring a halt to the flagrant criminal environment of Ogden’s notorious Two-Bit Street?

Even though I wrote the eighty-one-page original history of Ogden’s Notorious Two-Bit Street—my master’s thesis—long before I ever met my wife, Jean Barnes, she coauthors this book with me, and rightly so. Not only did her efforts help make the first edition possible, but she has researched and written fully half of the pages comprising this second edition. As just a part of those pages, she authored the chapter entitled A Walk Down Two-Bit Street, with colorful histories of Twenty-Fifth Street’s antique buildings.

From newspapers of the mid-1940s, Jean researched and wrote many pages of added information on the Meyers-Bramwell story, unveiling an entirely different view of this mayor of Ogden. She included enlightening portions of newspaper articles so readers might get a taste of living in Ogden and reading the news during those intriguing times. Jean researched and wrote about the fascinating life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s controversial Federal Reserve Board Chairman—the Hotel Ben Lomond’s Marriner Eccles. The appendix section also includes her essay on plural marriage.

There is no greater detail person and researcher than Jean. For the first edition of this book, she spent countless hours at the Weber County Library, sifting through decades of old-time Ogden City directories, advertisement by advertisement, and name by name. As she researched, she discovered hotel manager Annie K. Chapman, property recorder Florian De Voto, former police chief John Davenport, and details of madam Belle London and former mayor Fred J. Kiesel, which had previously not been brought to light. She recreated some headlines and advertisements from those bygone directories and newspapers, to give readers a sample of thumbing through their pages.

Together, we hunted through Weber County property records and scores of photographs at the Ogden Union Station Archives. She helped me sort through hundreds of mug shots at the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City. Jean also helped me obtain interviews with saxophonist Joe McQueen and with the family members of Rosetta Ducinni Davie. She was with me as I interviewed them and as I gained information from family members of T. R. Johnson. For the first edition of this book, Notorious Two-Bit Street, she worked overtime—editing, making the history more complete, and double-checking the research for accuracy.

For this second edition, Jean has been running an exhausting long-distance marathon of research, writing, rewriting, and editing, for several years. To improve an already captivating book, she changed some of the organization and layout for this edition.

Jean has been a great counselor as we have discussed the facts, and their value, in the history of Twenty-Fifth Street. We’ve had a lot of fun together sharing this amazing journey of uncovering more about Two Bit Street’s past. It is therefore very appropriate that she be named co-author of this second edition of Notorious Two-Bit Street.

This is the history of Two-Bit Street, a little stretch of road running east from Ogden’s historic Union Station railroad depot. How did only three blocks of an Ogden street gain more notoriety than many entire cities?

It began in a small Mormon town.

Lyle J. Barnes,

June 2021

PROLOGUE

A history that records the weaknesses and failures of society may serve as its conscience. The story of Twenty-Fifth Street in Ogden is that kind of history. It reminds us that it is possible for evil influences to prey upon even the most religious of societies until weakened and vulnerable to the pressures of the underworld.

The pioneers who entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847, had been driven out of several places they had settled across the Midwest. They were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The final expulsion had been from their beautiful city of Nauvoo, Illinois.

These early pioneers had been converted to the belief that the apostle Peter’s prophecy in Acts 3:21 was being fulfilled through Joseph Smith, the first latter-day prophet. This scripture had promised that there would be a restoration of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

After the close of the New Testament, nearly fifteen hundred years had passed since God had spoken to men on the earth. Latter-day Saints believed he had again commenced speaking to mankind, through his prophets. They believed that sacred truths had been restored, beginning in the year 1820 with the appearance of God, the Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ, in a sacred grove in upper-state New York. Many events had followed, including a restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ upon the earth, with twelve apostles, a prophet, and all the priesthood powers that had been held anciently in Christ’s church. Jesus had taught that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you [the ancient disciples] and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. (Matthew 21:43–44) After the end of the New Testament, God’s voice had become silent. Now, it had been heard again through Joseph Smith, their prophet.

These converts were so impassioned that they endured being driven from place to place and, eventually, to a trek across an exhausting 1,300 miles of wilderness in covered wagons or pulling handcarts. Many of them died along the way, all in an effort to settle in a safe place and worship God as they believed.

After arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the task of settling the wilderness began. The succeeding prophet, Brigham Young, soon called people to settle at various locations along the front of the Wasatch Mountains. One of these calls went to a group of people who went north from Salt Lake City and began the settlement of Ogden.

The great distance of wilderness between the then-existing western reaches of civilization, to the Rocky Mountains, seemed to be a great protection to the Saints from 1847 to 1869. While there were a few incursions into the peace and tranquility of the Mormons (as they came to be called), they prospered and lived in peace—a peace they had struggled long to acquire.

Eventually, news began to filter into this safe haven that a railroad would be built to connect the east coast of the country to the nation’s western shore and many points in between. The changes to the social fabric of Ogden began in 1869 when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroad tracks were joined at Promontory Summit in Utah, some fifty miles northwest of Ogden. The railroad had come from the east, through the mouth of Weber Canyon, and had made its way to a point on the west side of Ogden, where train depots would later stand.

The advent of the railroad had not been part of the historical experience in the West. Never before had these frontier people faced changes resulting from a highway and motorized transportation in the form of trains pulled by steam engines. These previously isolated people were suddenly no longer alone in a wilderness community.

A small settlement twenty-five miles northwest of Ogden, the town of Corrine, had been the destination to which merchants and cattle drives made their way. Many people anticipated that Corinne would become the major city to service the coming railroad. As a result, that community grew in size. In 1870, there were 806 permanent residents. A year later, the population had grown to 3,000. And by 1872, it had expanded to 6,000 people (according to Brigham D. Madsen in his book, Corinne: The Gentile Capitol of Utah).

In 1869, tents that housed businesses in Corinne during early summer were replaced by buildings before autumn. The settlers built their own adobes, one historian penned. They knew they had to get into something warmer by winter.¹

The very early start of Corinne in about 1870. The town’s first structures can be seen in this photograph courtesy of the Ogden Union Station Archives collection.

Corinne attracted many people who speculated on wealth they hoped soon to gain, when cowboys and miners might bring their cattle and ores to the town, to ship them by rail. Prostitutes, gambling operators, and dope peddlers set up their nefarious businesses in Corinne’s rapidly swelling community. Located as it was in a remote wilderness, these vice operators were free from the long arm of the law. And there was absolutely no presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the town.

Early days in the city of Corinne. Speculation that the railroad would make Corinne a junction city, for transporting goods to and from other locations in the country, caused the city to grow rapidly. Photograph courtesy of the Ogden Union Station Archives collection.

Historian Dick Kreck, author of the book Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad, declared there were nineteen saloons, two dance halls, and eighty prostitutes in Corinne.²

Marian Danielson, a local Corinne historian of thirty years, has disagreed about Corinne being a hell on wheels town, saying, They didn’t have a boot hill, they didn’t have a hanging tree, and they didn’t have gunfights down the middle of the street. So we weren’t a really, really bad town with a lot of unpleasant things going on. Her sources of information came from newspapers of the time, the census of 1870, and the city minutes (five thousand pages) she transcribed and organized by topic.³

The 1870 Corinne census listed grocers, several liquor dealers and brewers, plenty of hotel workers and restaurant waiters, brickyard and sawmill workers, a painter, carpenters, a banker, telegraph operators, a newspaper editor and printers, barbers and dressmakers, a jeweler and watch-maker apprentice, a couple of shoemakers, laundry workers, a photographer, a glass blower, physicians, a marshal, one school teacher, and others. Danielson admitted to there being only two properties owned by prostitutes, along with fifteen to twenty other women designated with no occupation, who were possibly prostitutes.⁴

The town of Corinne’s location could not compete, however, with the community of Ogden, in the railroad’s decision to make Ogden its junction city.

As a result, many of the people of Corrine found it prudent and reasonable to move their enterprises and businesses to Ogden and other locations. Gestations of prostitution, gambling, and narcotics (predominately opium) began in the Mormon city, as Ogden absorbed the businesses and people of Corrine, as well as from other railroad towns east and west.

Serving as the gateway into Ogden City for those who stepped off the train, Twenty-Fifth Street evolved to indulge the appetites and desires of the people who traveled through Utah.

Realizing this, the people of Ogden struggled at first to prevent the ominous specter from haunting the city. But soon, they were overpowered in numbers. It wasn’t long until new officials, voted in by the new majority, were faced with the choice of either cleaning up crime and vice or allowing them to remain. These officials learned that they could enjoy political strength, enough to maintain themselves in power, by befriending underworld leaders.

As the ancient Israelites had become corrupt after experiencing prosperity and freedom following their escape from captivity in Egypt, prosperity and peace enjoyed by some in Ogden seemed to bring a decrease in their resolve to fight evils and corruption. Many others began to feel that a corrupt influence was present but that there was little they could do about it. As time passed, they began ignoring it as if, by doing so, it would cease to exist. It didn’t disappear. Instead, it grew and became so strong that eventually they were bound by its power.

---

¹ Marian Danielson, Standard Examiner, 4 August 2013, p. D5.

² Dick Kreck, Standard Examiner, 4 August 2013, p. D1.

³ Marion Danielson, Standard Examiner, 4 August 2013, p. D5.

⁴ Ibid.

CHAPTER 1

SETTING THE STAGE

Three blocks of wickedness and sin, the reputation of Ogden’s Twenty-Fifth Street was possibly worldwide. It was said by some that you could send a letter to a person on Twenty-Fifth Street in Ogden, Utah, from anywhere in the world by merely writing the address as Two-Bit Street. The letter would arrive, safe and sound, to the rightful addressee.

How did this name come about? Soldiers, airmen, and sailors, having occasion to come through Utah, had circulated the name Two-Bit Street throughout the world. As troop trains stopped at the Ogden depot on their way north, south, east, and west during the war years, these men had the opportunity to sample the infamous street. One can imagine military men on the decks of ships, in aircraft hangers and foxholes, talking about their experiences on Two-Bit Street. They could have described the gambling casinos, the Chinese in their special dress, pimps in flashy shirts and suits, and a profusion of brothels, all in the open, enticing soldiers in uniform.

Officers and base commanders may have begun using the name Two-Bit Street as a term of contempt. Perhaps too many servicemen returned to their military bases sick, broke, unkempt, intoxicated, or addicted after a holdover at the Ogden train depot. The use of the expression two bits is slang for the paltry monetary sum of twenty-five cents and seems to pronounce disdain.

The Scene

First, let’s take a look at the scene. Through the years, Twenty-Fifth Street has seen several changes.

An early name given to the street was Fifth Street. In the 1870s and 1880s, it was one of only eight streets running west to east in the community of Ogden. After a sizable population increase, city boundaries were enlarged, and the street numbering was changed. Fifth Street then became Twenty-Fifth Street. Sixth Street became Twenty-Sixth Street. And so on. In 1870, the streets running north to south—intersecting Fifth Street—had originally been named Wall, Franklin, Young, Main, Spring, Smith, Pearl, Green, and East.

In the very early years of Fifth Street, there were few traffic rules. The term speeding meant racing horses furiously or immoderately, faster than the regular traffic. And such person(s) caught in violation of this law [were] liable to a fine in any sum not exceeding fifty dollars.⁵ Riding or leading horses onto the sidewalks brought a fine of up to ten dollars.

Teamsters lingering too long (over five hours) in the saloons, thus neglecting animals tied to the hitching rails, could suffer fines of up to $100, incarceration in prison for up to fifty days, or both. Police officers could take the animals to livery stables to get them fed and watered, which could accrue additional expense to the owners. Blacksmith shops did a thriving business fitting horseshoes. And the cry of runaway! could bring the entire populace to the doorways.⁶

Before the turn of the century, photographs of Twenty-Fifth Street depicted a dirt street rutted by wagon wheels and divided by streetcar tracks. The street was dusty during dry seasons and muddy in wet weather. Wooden sidewalks protected footwear from the mud and dust but created further hazards in the form of splinters, protruding nails, and crevices wide enough to swallow dropped coins. Large box elder, cottonwood, poplar, and elm trees shaded parts of the street. If a picture is worth a thousand words, photographs must be shown to describe the actual scene.

Circa (approximately) 1870s photograph. Very early structures and road conditions in the community of Ogden are shown, near the time of the coming of the railroad to the Ogden junction. Some believe this view is Fifth Street (now Twenty-Fifth Street), between Main Street (later called Washington Avenue) and Young Street (today’s Grant Avenue). Photograph courtesy of the Ogden Union Station Archives collection.

Ogden’s Main Street area. This photograph is believed to show the intersection (left) which would become home to the 1882 Broom Hotel. The extreme left gives a glimpse of Fifth Street stretching westward to the railroad junction area. This photo is courtesy of the Weber State University Library.

Standing on the corner of Fifth Street and Main is the newly built Broom Hotel. Photograph courtesy of Ogden Union Station Archives collection.

Construction on the elegant Broom Hotel started in 1882. Beginning in 1883, the street railway system was then constructed on Fourth, Fifth, and Main Streets, originally with mule-drawn streetcars (according to Utah State Historical Society’s 1940 A History of Ogden). The passenger fare was ten cents per person.

An advertisement describing the Broom Hotel, published in the 1883 Directory of Ogden City and Weber County, announced:

For many years Ogden, the railroad center of the Rocky Mountain region, suffered from the lack of appropriate hotel facilities, and thousands of travelers, both pleasure-seeking tourists and business men, passed by the city after a few moments’ stop at the depot, who otherwise would have remained a day or two in the town. This deficiency was finally supplied by Mr. John Broom, an old-time citizen and a man of enterprise, who, in April, 1882, commenced the excavation for the foundation for the Broom Hotel, on the corner of Main and Fifth Streets, where formerly a row of low wooden structures had served as permanently dangerous firetraps.

The advertisement went on to give the dimensions of the grand new hotel:

The Broom Hotel covers an area of 66 feet on Main Street, by 160 feet on Fifth Street. The part of the building on Main Street fronts to the east, and that on Fifth Street faces to the south. It is built of the best fireproof brick and is three stories high. On the first floor on Main Street there are three elegant stores. The first room on the floor on Fifth Street is 30 x 60 feet and is designed for the office, baggage room, etc. The billiard hall is 30 x 52 feet, and its appointments are equal to any other on the Pacific Slope. At the west end of the building and facing the south is the apartment 15 x 60 feet, fitted in neat, tasteful style and occupied by Mr. John G. Chambers, the pioneer bookseller, news dealer, etc. On this floor in the west end of the building are the culinary departments, the kitchens, larder, laundry, etc., with ranges and all other appliances of the latest improved styles. Water is abundant for all necessary purposes.

On the second story there are 34 elegant hotel parlors, with bay windows fronting the south and east. In addition to these is the magnificent dining hall, 52 x 28 feet, splendidly arranged, lighted, and painted. The third story also contains 35 rooms similar in