Along the Mill Race

In 1851, pioneers from the Mormons’ core settlement of Great Salt Lake City traveled by horse and ox-drawn wagon some 60 miles north to found a settlement on what was known as Box Elder Creek. Three years later, President Brigham Young sent apostle Lorenzo Snow to take charge of the settlement and make it into a city. Brother Snow named the town Brigham City, in honor of the church president, and set out to make it the showplace of rural Utah. The town, as he had it laid out, had a grid of wide streets, with large lots, intersecting north-south and east-west boulevards, and welcoming parks and public squares. In 1874, under Brigham Young’s direction, Lorenzo Snow established a Mercantile and Manufacturing co-operative known as the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association. Its first enterprise was, as was necessary in any stable community of any size, a flour mill, deriving its power from the waters of Box Elder Creek. Then came herds of cattle and sheep, and then the requisite tannery and woolen factory. Those were followed by a pottery, a boot, shoe, hat, and harness factory, a dairy and cheese factory with its own large herd of cows, a planing mill and furniture factory, and numerous other manufacturing and mercantile businesses, in which the people of the community held the stock. It was a grand enterprise, and functioned well until interference by the federal government brought it to its end, toward the end of the nineteenth century. This is the story of Brigham City’s mercantile and manufacturing cooperative.