Morgan: Gateway Through the Weber

Morgan, Utah sits in a high mountain valley carved by the Weber River, wedged between the Wasatch Range ridgelines. The first settler to live permanently in Morgan Valley was a man named Charles Peterson, who arrived in eighteen fifty-five and had to cut his own road through the canyon to get there. Morgan County was officially formed on January seventeenth, eighteen sixty-two, carved from portions of four surrounding counties.

The small town at the valley's center became the county seat and was named in honor of Jedediah Morgan Grant, an early Latter-day Saint leader who had helped organize the road construction that made settlement possible. North Morgan and South Morgan were combined and incorporated in eighteen sixty-eight with William Eddington as the first mayor. Weber Canyon, which I-eighty-four follows today, was always the most important gateway into the Great Salt Lake Valley, and Morgan has guarded that passage for over a century and a half.