Miles Goodyear Cabin

The first non-indigenous settlers in Utah were neither the Mormons themselves nor the Mexicans and the Spanish who nominally claimed the area before them. Before the former and after the latter, mountain men and fur traders came to the future state in search of their own riches. One of them, Miles Goodyear, built Fort Buenaventura in modern-day Ogden in 1845, several years before the Mormons arrived here and the United States annexed the region.

Fort Buenaventura was a humble trading post, consisting only of a few cabins, a stockade, a garden, and corrals for livestock. Besides serving the declining fur trade, it was a stop for Americans heading west to California. When Mormons arrived in Utah in 1847, Goodyear convinced them to settle in the Weber Valley and purchase the fort. However, it was abandoned in 1850 after a flood. The immigrants moved to higher ground to found what is now Ogden.

The Miles Goodyear Cabin survived thanks to its being moved several times over the years. It was eventually acquired by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, who gave it a permanent home at the Weber County Pioneer Museum. Today, the oldest non-ruined building in the state, it is protected under a newer ramada and is furnished to look as it did during the fur-trading days. Besides the original structure, Fort Buenaventura as a whole has been faithfully reconstructed at its original spot, southwest of downtown Ogden.