Weber Canyon

History

Weber Canyon is, historically, one of the more important canyons in Utah. The many streams that feed into the Weber River made the area attractive to prehistoric nomadic Native Americans, including the Shoshone and Ute tribes.

The river and canyon were named for fur trapper John Henry Weber. Early explorers also included Étienne Provost. In 1825, near the present-day community of Mountain Green, trappers of the British Hudson's Bay Company Snake Country Expedition, under the leadership of Peter Skene Ogden, had a confrontation with competing American trappers, under the leadership of Johnson Gardner. Gardner insisted that the British group was trespassing in United States Territory. Ogden kept the situation from becoming an international incident, although some of his men, including Canadian Antoine Godin, left his group to join Gardner.

Emigrants traveling to California, including the Hudspeth, Bryant-Russell, and Young and Harlan parties, took the first wagons through Weber Canyon in 1846. The first road through the canyon was completed in 1855 by a group led by Thomas J. Thurston. In 1868, Brigham Young contracted with the Union Pacific Railroad to build part of the transcontinental railroad through Weber Canyon.