Fort Buenaventura
Near Ogden, Utah
Fort Buenaventura, built by mountain man Miles Goodyear in eighteen forty-five, was the first permanent Anglo-American settlement in what is now Utah. Goodyear chose the junction of the Weber and Ogden Rivers, just north of here, as a trading post where he could supply emigrant trains bound for California. He lasted barely two years before selling the post to Captain James Brown of the Mormon Battalion, acting for the church, for one thousand nine hundred fifty dollars in November eighteen forty-seven, just months after Brigham Young's pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley.
The Mormons renamed the site Brownsville, then Ogden, after the fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden who had explored the river in eighteen twenty-five. A reconstruction of Goodyear's log fort stands today at Fort Buenaventura Park on the Weber River in Ogden, marking the western terminus of the fur-trade era and the opening of permanent settlement in the Great Basin.
