Hoytsville, Utah: Three Names, One Weber River Valley
Near Park City, Utah
The little Weber River settlement that eventually became Hoytsville went through names the way frontier communities sometimes did. Thomas Bradberry and a group of settlers arrived in eighteen fifty-nine and called the place East Plymouth. When the Black Hawk War erupted in the mid-eighteen sixties and settlers pulled together to build a defensive fort, the community renamed itself Unionville as a statement of solidarity.
Meanwhile, in the early eighteen sixties, Samuel Pierce Hoyt built the first flour mill in all of Summit County, and the community found a new identity. A working mill in the mountain valleys was no small thing. It meant settlers could grind their grain locally instead of hauling it over rough roads.
The settlement renamed itself Hoytsville in the miller's honor, and the name stuck. Today it is a small census-designated place between Coalville and Wanship, still quiet on the banks of the Weber.
