Corinne - Pioneer Railroad Town

This scrap metal sculpture is directly behind the marker, in the center of the small historical and memorial plaza. (Backside of marker is visible in the background.)

Notice the rusted railroad rails used around the plaza.

Stenciled rusted metal memorial placards decorate the plaza.

Freighting was big business in Corinne. There could be seen many wagons waiting to be unloaded from the Montana gold fields.

The Gillet home is still in use today at the corner of 4000 West and 2600 North.

Presbyterian Church built in 8170; destroyed in 1896 by a wind storm.

Methodist Church – oldest in the state, built in 1870. It is also the oldest protestant church still standing in Utah.

The Japanese had a prominence in Corinne.

The LDS Church was organized in 1877 with H. J. Faust as Bishop, but because of so much oppression, closed down. Not until 1914 dis the LDS Church get established in Corinne.

Corinne Opera House

Central Hotel: torn down in 1943

Corinne had a number of hotels: The Western hotel, the Metropolitan Hotel, and the Uinta House. There were at least 7 different boarding places.

1849 - Wagon road to Montana established by Captain Stansbury – the greatest natural highway in the world

1868 - October 8: quote (SLC Reporter) “Everybody and his wife is bound for Bear River”

1869 – February 18: 15 houses and a hundred and fifty inhabitants

1869 – March 15: Town site selected – J. E. House was apparently given authority to choose the site. J. O’Neil was his construction engineer.

Corinne had many names (Bear River, Conner, Burg on the Bear, Little Chicago of the West) before General J. A. Williamson named it after his talented daughter. The city plat was 3 miles square, blocks 264’ X 280’. The first eight blocks were divided into 22’ X 132’ lots with alleyways.

1869 – April 7: The railroad pulled its first engine across the new bridge

1869: Union Pacific completed the freight depot as the line was coming through Corinne. The ticket depot was built a short time later.

1869 – March 24: The town flourished with buildings and tents being erected. Montana Street drew most of the bidding where prices ranged from $5 to $1000; three hundred lots sold the first day, by mid-summer, sales reached $700,000 with 1500 inhabitants wanting a piece of the pie.

As the business came, Montana Street flourished; tent buildings and permanent buildings, drug stores, cigar shops, saddle harness shops, wagon shops, millenaries, tin shops, newspapers, banks, lawyers, a winery, saw mill, flour mill, brick yard, lumber yard, smelter, opera house, and a number of hotels and boarding houses. Along the tracks were two depots and a number of warehouses.

Old Masonic Lodge (still in use today)

Old city truck in front of Foxley’s Grange

Corinne School: Built 1911

Baseball was a big sport in the early days of Corinne


The Steam Ship “The City of Corinne”

Corinne had many firsts in Utah: the first weather station, the first water system, the first and only house of ill repute (which did not last long) and the first steam ship, “The City of Corinne.”

The plans were to make the town an inland seaport on the Great Salt Lake. Fox Diefendorf, one of the leading settlers, undertook to construct the most magnificent ship to ever sail the Great Salt Lake. It was 150 feet long, weighed 950 tons, and cost $45,000. By Tuesday, May 23rd 1871, she was ready. There were persons from every community to see the grand ship go into the mighty Bear River for her first voyage.

With Captain Sam Howe in command, it was a vessel that would travel the Great Salt Lake – to Lakeside, Black Rock, Lake Point, and Monument Point, bringing back to Corinne supplies, passengers, and iron ore.

Because of mud bars at the mouth of the Bear River, “The City of Corinne” was sold in April 1872 to a mining company, renamed after General James A. Garfield (the Garfield) and served as an excursion ship. Docked at Salt Air in the ‘50’s, it caught fire and burnt to the water line.

There is not much evidence of Corinne’s early days left. The old Methodist Church is still standing and being restored, one of the original houses is looking like ti did when it was new, and from the latter period of the 1980s is the old Mercantile and the Masonic Lodge.

Corinne died out as fast as it grew; 1866 – 1880 were Corinne’s hay days, then farmers and ranchers moved in, made Corinne their home, and put in a canal for irrigation and a better water system. Most of the buildings were either torn down or moved to the farms and ranches west of town. The old Central Hotel was torn down and the brick was used to build a barn on 7600 West.

This metal silhouette of the Jupiter locomotive, commemorating completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, is on the southeast side of the marker.

This metal silhouette of Union Pacific No. 119 locomotive, commemorating completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, is on the northwest side of the marker.