Hooper via boat
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Sunday, April 1, 2007 | 
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Bryce Petersen Jr.
Standard-Examiner staff
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By Bryce Petersen Jr.
Standard-Examiner staff
HOOPER -- Glenn Barrow has gone where no Hooper mayor has gone before.
In a visit Friday to Fremont Island, Barrow, along with a group that included a city councilman and three history professors from Weber State University, followed the footsteps of the Fremont Indians, John C. Fremont, John Baptiste and surprisingly few others to this remote, private island.
Barrow became the first Hooper mayor to visit Fremont Island in the city's seven-year history. The island was included in the city's boundary when it was incorporated in 2000, and was given its own as-yet-undefined zone.
"It's kind of open," said Councilman Dennis Weston of development the island's zone would allow.
"It depends on the services we'd have to provide."
So what services does the city provide on Fremont Island?
"Absolutely no services at all," Barrow said.
Well, it's technically covered by the city's contracts with Weber County Sheriff's Office and Weber Fire District, but nothing has come up to bring the agencies to the island, Weston said.
While Barrow and Weston were making history, they were treated to a healthy dose of it by their educated companions, including Richard Sadler, co-author of the "History of Weber County" (Weber County Commission, 1997) and dean of Weber State's college of social and behavioral sciences.
Throughout the day, Sadler treated the group to sensational stories -- of grave robbing, tuberculosis and disappointment -- fueled by island landmarks that have been preserved by isolation.
Justin Barrow, who owns Castle Rock Adventures and leases the island for cattle grazing and as a hunting preserve, led the group to relics spanning almost a millennium, from rock art and a stone grinding bowl left by Fremont Indians in about 1200 to a small plaque, added in 1981, naming David E. Miller Point.
Near Fremont Island's highest point, Justin Barrow, whose father is Glenn's cousin, pointed out a small cross that was carved by Kit Carson in 1843 during the first trip by Europeans to the island.
"We have several people that come out to hunt and get just as fascinated by the history," Justin Barrow said.
Sadler, fascinated, studied the cross. He postulated that Carson was probably driven to carve it out of boredom with John C. Fremont's experiments on lake water. He noted that the cross later damaged Fremont's presidential bid -- bringing charges that he was a secret Catholic in an anti-Catholic nation, even though he didn't carve it himself.
Then the professor, who was on the island for the first time, said, "I thought the rock was bigger. And I thought the cross was bigger."
"In the pictures, they make it look this big," added Richard Ulibarry, also a history professor at Weber State, indicating a 1-foot-by-2-foot box about four times larger than the actual cross.
Meanwhile, Glenn Barrow climbed to a point 800 feet above the level of the Great Salt Lake, at an elevation just below the shoreline of prehistoric Lake Bonneville, and took in a view of his city he'd never seen before.
"Here, take a picture of me and Dennis at the highest point of Hooper City," Barrow said.
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