Brigham City, a Co-op Town

Brigham City tried something bolder than a store. Where most Utah towns opened a branch of the church-wide ZCMI chain, Lorenzo Snow built a whole cooperative economy here — the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association, incorporated in 1870, that came to run thirty departments: a tannery, woolen mill, hat shop, and dairy among them, paying its people in home-grown scrip. Nearly every resident held a share. It grew famous as the closest thing the territory had to a working commune, studied by the utopian novelist Edward Bellamy. Fires and hard years brought it down in the 1890s.

What the plaque says

The mercantile store was the last building constructed for the Brigham City Co-op. Three years after the store opened, a fire broke out. Financial losses from the fire shut down the business a year before the cooperative organization closed. First Security Bank bought the building on July 1942

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wellsville Mountains — 9.2 mi
  The steepest mountains in North America for their height
• Hyrum State Park — 12 mi
  A family-friendly reservoir at the mouth of Blacksmith Fork Canyon
• Powder Mountain — 15 mi
  The largest ski resort in the United States by acreage — a famously uncrowded "PowMow" now remaking itself under Netflix's Reed Hastings.
• Logan — 18 mi
  A vibrant college town tucked into a stunning mountain valley

More markers nearby

• A Pioneer Home — steps away
• Brigham City Co-op Store — steps away
• Brigham City Fire Station — steps away
• Box Elder Fort — 0.4 mi