Ogden

Ogden, city, seat (1852) of Weber county, northern Utah, U.S. It lies at the confluence of the Weber and Ogden rivers, just west of the Wasatch Range and east of the Great Salt Lake. The community began as a settlement developed around Fort Buenaventura, a log stockade with an irrigated garden built in 1845 by Miles M. Goodyear and purchased by the Mormons in 1847; Goodyear’s cabin is preserved. First known as Brown’s Fort, it was laid out in 1850 by the Mormon leader Brigham Young and renamed for Peter Skene Ogden, a trapper and fur trader who worked in the area in the 1820s and who organized several rendezvous on the site. After the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad (1869), Ogden became a distribution point for the agricultural produce of the intermountain region.

Transportation, income-tax processing, light manufacturing (pharmaceuticals, clothing, and transportation equipment), and aircraft industries (located at nearby Hill Air Force Base) are the city’s economic mainstays. Weber State University was founded in 1889 as a Mormon academy. John Moses Browning, the designer of the Browning automatic rifle, was born in Ogden, and the city’s John M. Browning Firearms Museum has a collection of the inventor’s firearms. The Snowbasin winter sports area, on the east slope of Mount Ogden, is 18 miles (29 km) east. Nearby Ben Lomond Peak (9,712 feet [2,960 metres]) provided the model for the famed Paramount Pictures logo. Inc. 1851. Pop. (2000) 77,226; Ogden-Clearfield Metro Area, 442,656; (2010) 82,825; Ogden-Clearfield Metro Area, 547,184.