Spring Lake Villa

Joseph E. Johnson ran a whole economy out of one Spring Lake villa. He bought this adobe home in 1861, and with his brothers he spun off an astonishing variety of enterprises from it: drugstores and a fruit-tree nursery, a trunk factory, a sorghum mill, a cannery, a broom factory, a wholesale seed house. He was also a newspaperman — his printing office turned out the Farmer's Oracle, the first agricultural paper published in Utah. Few frontier figures tried so many things at once, or made a small settlement into such a hive of making and growing and selling.

What the plaque says

In 1859, James Pace and James Butler built large adobe home on this site, purchased by Joseph E. Johnson, 1861. He and brothers Benjamin F. and George W. operated many industries: drug stores, fruit-tree nursery, trunk factory, sorghum mill, cannery, broom factory, wholesale seed house, and printing office where first Utah farm paper, the Farmer's Oracle, was published. Benjamin F. Johnson, became first bishop; Samuel Openshaw, Justice of Peace; Don Carlos Babbitt, Constable.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Payson Lakes — 7.6 mi
  Three alpine lakes in the pines, twelve miles up Payson Canyon
• Nebo Loop Summit — 11 mi
  The byway's 9,300-foot high point, with Utah Valley spread out below
• Mount Nebo — 12 mi
  At 11,928 feet, the highest and southernmost peak in the Wasatch Range
• Thistle Landslide — 14 mi
  The ruins of a town destroyed by a massive landslide in 1983

More markers nearby

• Black Hawk - Ute Indian Chief — 0.3 mi
• The Walker War — 2.4 mi
• First Relief Society Hall — 2.5 mi
• Santaquin — 2.5 mi