Lyle Joseph Barnes passed away at the age of 89 on May 25 in Hurricane, following a prolonged illness. After writing his thesis about 25th Street’s seedier history, Barnes expanded on his prior research and, along with his wife Jean, authored Notorious Two-Bit Street in 2009 and the book’s second edition in 2021.

Born December 11, 1936, in Lehi, Lyle Barnes’ history with 25th Street began as a teenager, according to his wife Jean.

“When he was a young debate student in high school, he had stayed at the old Ben Lomond Hotel in 1954,” Jean told the Standard-Examiner. “And he and his friends had dared each other to go out on that street — 25th Street — because from their window in the Ben Lomond Hotel, they could look down on those wild three city blocks. They could see the drunks and the people. They could hear the people making raucous party-type noises as they were on that street. And that was when the street was still near its finest.”

She noted that the street in the early- to mid-20th century had developed quite the reputation, at one point in the 1920s sporting 52 known brothels in and directly adjacent to the three blocks from Wall Avenue to Washington Boulevard — somewhat of a drop from the decade before.

Photo supplied, Visit Ogden

“In 1911,  it was typical for proprietors of houses of ill-repute in the early 1900s to advertise their brothels in the classified section of the Ogden City directories under the category entitled, ‘furnished rooms,'” Jean said. “And in 1911, there were 83 ‘furnished rooms’ establishments in the classified section of the Ogden City directory, so this was a huge center for prostitution.”

Jean said that, only a few short years later, it wouldn’t be dares but rather academics sending Lyle to 25th Street.

“Lyle was in his 20s, and he was working on a master’s degree in history at the time,” she said. “And the professors, of course, they needed to have a thesis written. The professor suggested several subjects. They were boring subjects, like a canning company … but my husband, he wanted something so interesting.”

She said that interviewees would include everyone from former Weber County Sheriff Mac Wade to Anna Belle Weakley of the Porters and Waiters Club.

Jean also noted that Lyle was well-equipped for his time on 25th Street.

“My husband taped his interviews,” she said. “He had a briefcase. It was like a suitcase that had a state-of-the-art recorder in it. That’s how big the recording systems were. But sometimes Lyle felt that he should carry a gun — a pistol — with him, because he felt like his research might be looked down upon by some of those operators of vice.”

She and Lyle married in 1980. During his life, he served as a history teacher at Weber High School and Roy High School before moving on to a distinguished career in the legal field.

Several years after Lyle had completed his thesis on 25th Street, Jean said he was approached by people who wanted to write a book based on his research.

“People wanted to write a book using his information, his research,” she said. “He was not OK with that. He said, ‘I’m going to write a book so that they don’t have the credit for my research. I want to have it known that I did this research.’ And so hurriedly, we wrote.”

She said, unlike the thesis, this would be a collaborative effort covering the history of the street from 1869-1954.

“The master’s degree thesis was called ‘Ogden’s Notorious Two-Bit Street,'” she said. “When the book was published — the first one — in 2009, we changed the name to ‘Notorious Two-Bit Street,’ and it included the information in the thesis. But then we did more research. He did more research, and I also did more research because he asked me to write a walk down ‘Two-Bit Street,’ which would talk about the buildings and what each of those had had in them in the past. So I wrote a lengthy tour down 25th Street, and I thought it was very, very interesting.”

As interesting as the research may have been, Jean said in their rush to complete the book, the quality suffered.

“My husband was in a hurry to get that book published, because other people were chomping at the bit, wanting to publish their own books with his information,” she said. “I didn’t like it, but he said, ‘OK, we’re done now,’ and so we published that book, and it was not quite ready for prime time.”

Following this, Lyle would also delve into the realm of historical fiction, publishing “Gone With the Railroad” in 2011.

Jean had one major critique of her husband’s dive into fiction.

“I wasn’t crazy about the title,” she said. “I thought it was too close to ‘Gone with the Wind, but he liked it, no matter what I thought.”

But there was one element of the novel she absolutely loved.

“My maiden name was Erickson,” she said. “And so he had one of the main characters named Lucy Erickson. So I thought that was kind of cute. He was a romantic, and he wanted the hero of the book to be in love with me, actually.”

Jean said the couple would approach the book once again, putting out a second edition of Notorious Two-Bit Street in 2021.

“I hope it solved all of the problems that we had with the first book,” she said. “And it added more information, so it’s really the definitive book for him.”

Unfortunately, after the couple moved out of northeast Layton a decade ago, Lyle would never have the chance to return to Historic 25th Street in person.

“Because Lyle had pulmonary fibrosis, which is a serious lung disease, we had to move to Southern Utah to help him stay alive,” she said. “He was in a wheelchair the last few years of his life and before we moved down here he was using a cane because his back had been injured when he was a young man working in Lehi at the sugar factory.”

But jean noted that it never diminished Lyle’s view of Ogden and its wildest thoroughfare.

“He was definitely passionate about the history of Ogden and Ogden’s 25th Street,” she said.

The second edition of Notorious Two-Bit Street is available for purchase at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/notorious-two-bit-street-jean-barnes/1140987945