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Built along the Union Pacific branch line, the "end-of- the-trail" town of Corinne was founded in 1869 by former Union army officers, merchants and ambitious businessmen — none of them Mormons — and reigned for nearly a decade as the leading freight-and-transfer junction for the country's vast territory to the north.
A wild Western town of "blood-and-thunder" repute — with 28 saloons, two dance houses, 16 package stores, one gun-toting town marshal and up to 80 "nymphs du pave" — Corinne provided entertainment and distraction for constant streams of "floating populations," those miners, railroad men, gandy dancers, shippers, freighters and tourists, as well as the "sporting" crowds that came from as far away as Elko.
Corinne also brought culture to its residents and built a robust mercantile trade that rivaled any other in the Intermountain West. Its founding leaders aspired to expand trade into Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, export Utah goods, create an enterprising city, and according to historian Brigham D. Madsen, "break the economic and political monopoly held by the Mormons in the Utah Territory."
Called the "Burg on the Bear," the "City of the Ungodly," and "Little Chicago of the West," Corinne was also becoming known as the "Gentile State of Utah."
In the 1860s, increasing numbers of Gentiles in the Utah Territory were perceived as a threat to Mormon autonomy. To preserve the temporal unity of its people, LDS Church leaders issued a resolution pledging its members be self-sustaining.
"In 1866, Mormons were ordered not to buy at Gentile stores," Salt Lake City merchant Samuel H. Auerbach wrote in his memoirs. "The City's police, whose wages we as tax-paying citizens helped pay, patrolled our store at Conference time and warned the Saints away from entering."
By 1868, signs printed with "Holiness to the Lord" above a drawing of an All-Seeing Eye were hung over the front doors of all Mormon businesses, "so that the Mormon brethren could not mistake a Gentile store for a Mormon one," Auerbach wrote.
"With the boycott strongly enforced, many of the smaller Gentile merchants were forced to the wall. It looked as though [they] would be soon out of business and out of Salt Lake."
Or bring their business to Corinne.
By March 1869, Corinne was home to 500 wood-framed buildings and canvas tents, and an estimated population of 1,000.
"After the first railways locomotive hauled its first cars across the Bear River Bridge into Corinne on April 7, 1869, this number [rose significantly] with town lots selling for $1,000 each," historian Bernice Gibbs Anderson wrote in the Utah Historical Quarterly.
In 1870, a Methodist church was built. Corinne incorporated as a "third-class city." Its newly formed city council created a "free" school funded by taxpayers, prohibited polygamy within city limits, and established rules of conduct.
A gateway to Montana, Corinne outfitted nearly 500 freight wagons coming through town and was the supply station for Brigham City. Its streets bustled with stores, from mercantiles, banks and grocers to warehouses, print shops and business firms that included the Bambergers, Auerbachs, Kiesels, and the Walker brothers.
A. Greenwall built an elegant hotel that covered half a city block. Banker J.W. Guthrie exported Cache County produce on the Central Pacific. Colonel Henry House installed one of the state's first water systems; built a hotel, sawmill, and cigar factory; and operated a ferry service south of the bridge.
A smelter was built on the banks of the Bear. California redwood was imported to build hulls and beams for steamboats carrying ore and goods across the Great Salt Lake.
Stock companies traveling by railroad to California stopped at Corinne's newly built Opera House and performed tableaux vivants, musical renditions, "Hamlet" and "The Lady of Lyons" to packed audiences hungry for sophisticated entertainment.
Corinne's prospects were bright … until 1877. Laying rails northward to Idaho, the Union Pacific established Ogden as the Junction City, supplanted Corinne's freighting business and killed the town.
Eileen Hallet Stone, author of "Hidden History of Utah" and "Historic Tales of Utah," compilations of her "Living History" columns in the Salt Lake Tribune, may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com. Sources: Anderson's "The Gentile City of Corinne," Stone's "A Homeland in the West: Utah Jews Remember," and Rue C. Johnson's "Frontier Theatre: The Corinne Opera House."