East Layton, Utah
Near Ogden, Utah
You're on the east bench above Layton, in what was once its own town. Mormon pioneers first settled this area in the eighteen fifties, drawn by fertile soil and water running down from the Wasatch. The benchland orchards here produced abundant fruit, part of the harvest that earned Utah its reputation as a garden spot.
East Layton incorporated as a separate community in nineteen thirty-six, largely so it could secure funding for a shared water system. It was always small. Its population actually dropped in those early years, from about one hundred sixty residents down into the low hundreds.
It grew slowly for decades, finally became a city in nineteen seventy-two, then merged back into the larger city of Layton in nineteen eighty-one. Today the orchards have mostly given way to homes, but the name remembers a town that stood on its own.
