Mountain Green is a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in northwestern Morgan County,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, United States. The population was 4,231 at the 2020 census. Located up the

Weber River The Weber River ( ) (Shoshone: Ho-o-pah) is a long river of northern Utah, United States. It begins in the northwest of the Uinta Mountains and empties into the Great Salt Lake. The Weber River was named for American fur trapper John Henr ...

from Ogden, Mountain Green is the world headquarters of the

Browning Arms Company Browning Arms Company (originally John Moses and Matthew Sandefur Browning Company) is an American marketer of firearms and fishing gear. The company was founded in Ogden, Utah, in 1878 by brothers John Moses Browning (1855–1926) and M ...

Geography

Mountain Green lies in Morgan Valley at the east end of lower Weber Canyon, just north of

I-84 Interstate 84 may refer to: * Interstate 84 (Oregon–Utah), passing through Idaho, formerly known as Interstate 80N * Interstate 84 (Pennsylvania–Massachusetts), passing through New York and Connecticut {{road disambiguation ...

at the interchange with Utah State Route 167 (Trappers Loop). The community is located in the northwest corner of Morgan County, and includes the lowest point in the county.

History

Deserters Point

The present-day site of Mountain Green was the location of a historic meeting of three groups of mountain men in May 1825.

Peter Skene Ogden Peter Skene Ogden (alternately Skeene, Skein, or Skeen; baptised 12 February 1790 – 27 September 1854) was a British-Canadian fur trader and an early explorer of what is now British Columbia and the Western United States. During his many exped ...

, leading 58 trappers from the British

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

, camped here on May 22, 1825. The next day, 25 American Rocky Mountain Fur Company trappers belonging to John Henry Weber's brigade arrived under the command of Johnson Gardner. Étienne Provost was also encamped in the area, with his own company of 15. On May 24, 1825 John Gray, a half-Iroquois leader of the freemen trappers who were dissatisfied with the conditions and pay under the

, declared their intention to leave Ogden's brigade. The HBC freemen had spent the previous several days with Johnson Gardner's group, and had brought the Americans back with them to support the freemen's plan to desert, seeking higher payments for their furs and lower prices for supplies. Several men who had previously deserted HBC encouraged others to come along. In the end 23 Hudson's Bay Company trappers deserted, taking some 700 pelts with them. Ogden and his remaining men left the area the next day. This encounter led to a territorial dispute. Gardner and his men claimed the Hudson's Bay Company trappers were violating United States soil, while Ogden insisted the area was jointly controlled by the U.S. and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. Provost, who remained neutral in the argument, was in fact the only one with a valid claim. The

Adams–Onís Treaty The Adams–Onís Treaty () of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Spanish Cession, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty,Weeks, p. 168. was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to ...

of 1819 had recognized

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

's rights to the territory south of the 42nd parallel. Control had then passed in 1822 to newly independent

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

, whose government had granted Provost a license for his activities in the region. The deserting HBC freemen joined the American trappers on their way to Henrys Fork (Green River) about 120 miles to the east for the first of what was to be sixteen Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, organized by fur trade entrepreneur William H. Ashley, which took place on July 1, 1825. For some years prior, American trappers and mountain men had traveled as much as 2,000 miles to transport their furs to markets in

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

. For the Spanish,

Taos Taos or TAOS may refer to: Places * Taos County, New Mexico, United States ** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico *** Taos art colony, an art colony founded in Taos, New Mexico ** Taos Pueblo, a Native American ...

was a common destination. The site became known as ''Deserters Point''. Today there is a

rest stop A rest area is a public facility located next to a large thoroughfare such as a motorway, Limited-access road, expressway, or highway, at which drivers and passengers can rest, eat, or refuel without exiting onto secondary roads. Other names ...

there, with a

historical marker A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, bearing text or an image in relief, or both, ...

. The highway which connects Mountain Green with the Ogden Valley over the ridge to the north is named Trappers Loop.

Settlement

When

Mormon pioneers The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter-day Saints, who Human migration, migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the ...

began to arrive in Morgan County in the 1850s, they found a man named Ben Simon already in possession of the land in the Mountain Green area. The Mexican government had granted Simon the use of this land for grazing cattle, sometime before the 1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). It was signed on 2 February 1848 in the town of Villa de Guadalupe, Mexico City, Guadalupe Hidalgo. After the defeat of its army and the fall of the cap ...

. He and his brother James had apparently been trading with the

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

in the vicinity for some 20 years. Such early settlers as George W. Higley and Gordon Beckstead moved to Mountain Green in the 1850s with permission from the Simons and the Native Americans. The settlement was named ''Mountain Green'' due to its abundant green grass. In 1877 the population was about 150, but a number of families left in fear of conflict with the Indians, and the 1880 census showed only 75 residents.

Modern era

''Circa'' 1960, the Ogden-based

found the need for a rural test-firing facility. They purchased a Mountain Green farm in 1961, and by 1968 Browning had relocated its executive offices, research and development, sales and data processing to the Morgan County location. A

volunteer fire department A volunteer fire department (VFD) is a fire department of volunteers who perform fire suppression and other related emergency services for a local jurisdiction. Volunteer and retained (on-call) firefighters are expected to be on call to respo ...

called the Mountain Green Fire District was established here in July 1971. It was started due to a perceived need for faster response times than the county

fire station __NOTOC__ A fire station (also called a fire house, fire hall, firemen's hall, or engine house) is a structure or other area for storing firefighting apparatuses such as fire apparatus, fire engines and related vehicles, personal protective equ ...

some away in Morgan could provide. A separate fire station was built in 1973. In 1997, the

Insurance Services Office Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), a subsidiary of Verisk Analytics, is a provider of statistical, actuarial, underwriting, and claims information and analytics; compliance and fraud identification tools; policy language; information abou ...

evaluated the Mountain Green Fire District and gave it a Fire Suppression Rating Schedule rating of class 6, equal to the grade of the Morgan Fire Department. Mountain Green has remained unincorporated and largely undeveloped, but is growing quickly. In 2007 the northern Utah section of the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach progr ...

offered a design assistance team to develop guidelines for a new Mountain Green town center.

Demographics

As an unincorporated community, Mountain Green lacks official boundaries, so population estimates vary. An informal estimate in 2003 gave the population as 4,000, approximately half the total Morgan County population. As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2010, there were 2,309 people living in the CDP. There were 688 housing units. The racial makeup of the CDP was 97.8% White, 0.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.9% Asian, 0.5% from some other race, and 0.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.1% of the population.

Education

Mountain Green has its own

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

and middle school, Mountain Green Elementary School and Mountain Green Middle School. Older students attend Morgan High School in Morgan.

References

External links

Mountain Green, Utah Town Center
March 2008 draft, accessed January 5, 2015 {{authority control Census-designated places in Utah Census-designated places in Morgan County, Utah Populated places established in the 1850s