Fort Buena Ventura

Before Ogden, there was one man and his fort. Miles Goodyear, a mountain man, had built a stockade he called Fort Buena Ventura near here — a few log cabins and sheds, a garden, and herds of cattle, horses, and goats — the lone Anglo outpost in a country the Mormons had not yet reached. When the pioneers arrived in 1847, Captain James Brown bought Goodyear out with wages earned in the Mormon Battalion. The fort passed from mountain man to settler, took Brown's name, then Brownville, and at last became the city of Ogden.

What the plaque says

Soon after arrival of the 47 pioneers, Capt. James Brown who was on his way to California, visited Fort Buena Ventura, located 1290 feet S.E. of this site. Belonging to Miles Goodyear, whom the original pioneers had met near Bear Lake, the area consisted of a stockade enclosing a few log houses and sheds, a herd of cattle, horses, goats and a garden. Upon his return Capt. Brown purchased Goodyear's holdings with money received as wages for the Mormon Battalion. The name was changed to Brown's Fort, Brownville, and later Ogden.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ogden Union Station — 1.2 mi
  A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
• Snowbasin — 7.3 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 — 7.6 mi
  Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac
• Powder Mountain — 16 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

• Ogden City Wall/Golden Spike (2) Markers — 0.9 mi
• Union Station- Golden Spike — 0.9 mi
• Belmont Building — 1.1 mi
• Watkins Grocery and Cranshaw Photograph — 1.1 mi