Lower 25th Street Historic District

The railroad made this street. When the transcontinental line reached Ogden in 1869, a quiet Mormon town became Junction City, and the two blocks running east from the depot filled with everything a railroad crowd required — hotels and saloons, groceries and laundries, cigar stores and bakeries, brothels and, yes, an ice cream parlor. It drew a mix rare in early Utah: Italian, Chinese, Japanese, German, Jewish, Black, and Spanish-American families all made their livings here. That crowded, polyglot, sometimes lawless street is now Historic 25th, its old buildings preserved.

What the plaque says

The coming of the transcontinental railroad to Utah and Ogden in 1869 sparked the transformation of the city from a quiet Mormon community to a bustling center of commerce and transportation. The hub of that economic activity was the train depot and the two-block section of commercial buildings at the west end of 25th Street. Contructed between the 1870s and the 1920s, those buildings housed the broad range of businesses that one would expect in a booming railroad town: hotels, saloons, grocers, clothing stores, restaurants, boarding houses, brothels, cigar stores, laundries, bakeries, jewelry stores, theatres, and even an ice cream parlor. The mix of people was also diverse. There were significant numbers of Jews, Italian, German, Spanish-Americans, Blacks, Japanese and Chinese that were drawn to the city, creating a sociological climate much more complex than the simple Mormon/non-Mormon distinction that had persisted during the pre-railroad years. Though crime and prostitution were an unavoidable part of the activity on 25th Street, the street also had its share of prominent personalities and events. President Theodore Roosevelt, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey, "Gentleman Jim Corbett, and publisher William Randolph Hearst were among the many national figures who strolled down the sidewalks of 25th Street. Because of its historical significance in both Ogden and Utah, the Lower 25th Street Historic District was listed in the National Reginer of Historic Places in 1978.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ogden Union Station — steps away
  A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
• Snowbasin — 6.1 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 — 7.2 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

• Creston Hotel, Grand Pacific Restaurant — steps away
• The James O. Stephens Building — steps away
• Porter Block — steps away
• The Solomon C. Stephens Building — steps away