Ogden marker recalling Lorin Farr, Farr’s Fort takes shape on Canyon Road
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- Garth Tuck stands with a new marker that honors Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, and recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. Tuck, photographed Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023, helped spearhead creation of the new marker.
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- One of the plaques on a new marker that honors Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, and recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. The picture was taken Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
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- One of the plaques on a new marker that honors Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, and recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. The picture was taken Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
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- One of the plaques on a new marker that honors Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, and recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. The picture was taken Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
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- One of the plaques on a new marker that honors Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, and recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. The picture was taken Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
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- The original marker honoring Lorin Farr, Ogden’s first mayor, on the rear of a new marker that recounts some of the history of Farr’s Fort in the area around what is now the 1000 block of Canyon Road in Ogden. The picture was taken Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
OGDEN — As a kid growing up, Garth Tuck remembers regularly passing a historical marker along Canyon Road near his home as he was wandering the Ogden neighborhood.
“I walked by that sign I can’t even count how many times,” he said. He never looked too closely, but it marked the rough location of Farr’s Fort and offered a brief history of the small enclave founded by Lorin Farr in 1850 and abandoned around 1853. Farr, who helped with the original settlement of what is now Ogden, served as the city’s first mayor.
Fast forward to 2020, though, and Tuck began delving more deeply into the history. As leader of the Lorin Farr Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which serves the area, he spearheaded creation of a float in 2020 meant for the Ogden Pioneer Days parade that focused on Farr and Farr’s Fort. The parade never materialized due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he salvaged some of the materials, and three years later, lo and behold, they’ve been incorporated into a new-and-improved marker.
“It turned out much better than anything I originally imagined,” he said Tuesday, standing beside the marker in the 1000 block of Canyon Road, east of Monroe Boulevard. The old marker — a Boy Scout’s Eagle Scout project in the 1980s, Tuck said — was deteriorating.
The task of building the new marker started earlier this year and it was completed about two weeks ago with donated labor and materials. A contingent involved in the effort is to gather this weekend to ceremonially unveil it. “It became really a personal thing,” Tuck said.
The stone and wood memorial features several metal plaques that offer the history of Farr’s Fort, Lorin Farr — a Latter-day Saint pioneer — and a nearby sawmill that once sat in the area. The original wooden memorial has been saved and it’s affixed to the rear of the new monument.
“In addition to Farr’s Fort, Lorin Farr’s pioneering contributions include constructing the first sawmill, gristmill and woolen mill in Ogden,” reads one of the plaques on the new marker. “Other notable projects accomplished under his direction were the first road through Ogden Canyon, a significant land survey of Weber County and the construction of various highways, byways and irrigation canals.”
Tuck gets sentimental recalling the days of his youth, wandering the area, previously home to orchards. He always wondered who Lorin Farr was as a kid, never really focusing on the wording on that original marker. Now he’s been educated.
“Lorin Farr is really the one that started to develop the community into the city that we see today,” Tuck said. The new marker, he went on, is an “enduring reminder of our heritage.”
The land where the marker is located, just off the south side of Canyon Road, is part of an adjacent housing development. The property owner gave the plans the green light and Tuck said those involved also got all the necessary city approvals and permits.