1 / 4

One of the first four monuments on the Heritage Trail in South Ogden's Friendship Park, pictured here on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

2 / 4

One of the first four monuments on the Heritage Trail in South Ogden's Friendship Park, pictured here on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

3 / 4

One of the first four monuments on the Heritage Trail in South Ogden's Friendship Park, pictured here on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. A second granite monument can be seen in the background on the right.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

4 / 4

One of the first four monuments on the Heritage Trail in South Ogden's Friendship Park, pictured here on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

❮ ❯

SOUTH OGDEN — A park in South Ogden City is helping to teach patrons about the area’s history — and it’s only the beginning of the trail.

Recently the first phase of Friendship Park’s Heritage Trail came to fruition with the installation of four granite monuments along the park’s walking path with plans to install more in the future.

South Ogden City Manager Matt Dixon told the Standard-Examiner that conversations about the Heritage Trail started all the way back in 2021 with the loss of another nod to the region’s past.

“There used to be an old monument on Highway 89 near 40th Street that just kind of sat against the fence — it was a Kit Carson monument,” he said. “Initially, the group Sons of the Utah Pioneers came to the city and said, ‘Hey, we think we’d like to work to relocate that monument.’ That’s where this really all started — thinking about who owned that monument, who put it there. It was in UDOT’s right-of-way where it shouldn’t have been.”

Before these questions could be sufficiently addressed, a major wind storm rendered its own judgment — and an opportunity.

“As fate would have it, a tree from the golf course fell, went through the fence and crushed the Kit Carson monument,” Dixon said. “That’s what started the conversation about historical monuments in South Ogden. Is there a place for them? Where would we put them? Then this idea was conceived that we would work with groups like the Sons of the Utah Pioneers and others to try and highlight the area’s history.”

He said a committee was then formed to help develop what would become the Friendship Park Heritage Trail.

“There’s an existing asphalt trail around that park area residents have used for years as a place to get out and do some walking,” he said. “The committee has put together some phases for the Heritage Trail. We’re excited that, recently, we completed what we are calling ‘Phase 1.’ There are four monuments that have been erected, and each monument is a three-sided monument.”

Each granite monument has a theme and explores three related subjects with a large inscription about each. The first monument gives information on the geology of the area, the geography of the area and Lake Bonneville. The second monument has information on ancient peoples, historic Shoshoneans and the Fremont Culture. The third monument includes information on the American fur trade, Peter Skene Ogden and Miles Goodyear. The fourth monument includes inscriptions on John and Jessie Fremont, the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition and Stansbury and Simpson.

The first four monuments were placed in August.

“We have ordered the granite monuments for the next four — Phase 2,” Dixon said. “We have funding to install the next four monuments, and those will be monuments featuring early pioneers, the railroad, local entrepreneurs — Browning, David Eccles and Thomas Dee, Utah Construction — and water development.”

He said the city has raised nearly $200,000 to date for the project and that the Heritage Trail is ultimately planned to include 12-15 of these monuments when it is complete. Contributors have included Sons of the Utah Pioneers, Emma Eccles Jones Foundation, Goldenwest Credit Union, Bank of Utah, Weber County RAMP and South Ogden City. Second phase monuments are expected to be installed sometime in 2026.

Dixon said there may even be some opportunities to integrate technology into the Heritage Trail.

“We’ve talked about, potentially in the future, utilizing QR codes,” he said. “You can only engrave so much on a granite monument. If we’re able to raise some additional funding, we could spend that in creating QR codes where we could point folks that are interested in a certain topic to resources where they can learn even more. We like that idea of interacting with the history.”

He added that a couple of Friendship Park’s neighbors could especially benefit from having the Heritage Trail in walking distance.

“This park is next to H. Guy Child Elementary School and it’s also just north of South Ogden Junior High School,” he said. “We see some opportunities, from an educational standpoint, to work with some of the teachers and individuals where these could become homework assignments to say, ‘Hey, go pick a monument, do a report on it and share it with the class.’ Take the kids around the park and spend some time learning about the area’s history.”

Dixon said the timeline of future phases will depend on funding availability.

“We are funded through Phase 2,” he said. “Short of receiving some grants or donations, we’ll be stalled. We would like to be able to secure some additional funding between now and next summer so we can order four additional monuments or how ever many we’re able to order.”

He said it’s been exciting to see the project get off the ground.

“Like any project, it moved slow at first as we were trying to plan and get the right people at the table and identify the monuments and what should we highlight about our unique history,” he said. “Now that all of that planning and buildup has happened, it’s now really the exciting time where we’re able to see monuments placed in the park and start to see the opportunities to build this project out and share that history.”