Captain James Brown

James Brown captained Company C of the Mormon Battalion on the U.S. Army's epic 1846 march toward California — the longest infantry march on record — though illness sent him and a sick detachment to winter in Pueblo instead. He reached the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, days behind Brigham Young, then rode to California to collect the Battalion's pay. With it he bought Miles Goodyear's lonely trading fort on the Weber River in 1847 — the first permanent settlement in the valley that became Ogden. Brown is counted among the city's founders.

What the plaque says

Captain James Brown Captain James Brown, Pioneer, Soldier and one of the founders of Ogden, enlisted in the Mormon Battalion of the U. S. Army in the Mexican War, July 16, 1846, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and was made Captain of Company C. The Battalion marched overland to San Diego, longest march of infantry ever recorded. At Santa Fe, Captain Brown was placed in charge of the sick detachment and ordered to Pueblo where they spent the winter of 1846-47 with a group of converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints enroute from Mississippi to the Salt Lake Valley. In the spring he marched his men by the way of Fort Laramie and the South Pass arriving in the valley July 29, 1847, closely following Brigham Young and the Mormon Pioneers. Captain James Brown Early in August he left by way of Fort Hall for California to collect the Army pay due members of the Battalion. Returning late in 1847, he stopped at the Fort of Mile Goodyear, a trapper, located near the junction of the Ogden and Weber Rivers. From Goodyear he purchased for $3,000 all the land now comprising Weber County together with some livestock and the fort. The land was conveyed to Captain Brown in a Mexican land grant, this entire area being at that time part of Mexico. In January, 1848, he settle here with his family and began the colonization of Brownsville, later Ogden. He was born September 30, 1801, and died September 30, 1863.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ogden Union Station — 0.2 mi
  A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
• Snowbasin — 5.9 mi
  One of the country's oldest ski areas and a 2002 Olympic downhill venue — world-class terrain that somehow still skis uncrowded.
• Hill Aerospace Museum — 7.1 mi
  Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac
• 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.

More markers nearby

• James Brown's Purchase (2) Markers — steps away
• Jedediah Strong Smith - Ogden — steps away
• John Henry Weber — steps away
• Lorin Farr (2) Markers — steps away