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Photographer: Cosmos Mariner
Taken: June 17, 2013
Caption: Corinne: Its Declining Days
Additional Description: 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.
Submitted: April 11, 2014, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Database Locator Identification Number: p270490
File Size: 3.462 Megabytes

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