Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/389

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Peter Skene Ogden Journals 359 • m region; those settlers took the name from the Indians and the retired trappers who lived here and there along the streams. Local tradition' has it that Mr. Ogden had trouble with the Indians when there and that one of his men named Weber was killed in the canyon now so named and through which the main line of the Union Pacific railroad is now built. There jis no confirmation of this, however, and the name Weber is American rather than French-Canadian. The flat valley where the city of Ogden is now located is more likely to have been the site of Ogden 's Hole, in the general acceptance of that term. It is there that the Ogden river comes out of a beautiful canyon of the same name — a canyon that was almost impassible until the river was put to commercial use and a fine boulevard constructed through it, connecting the city with the Ogden valley, eight or nine miles away. This canyon is now the pleasure resort of the citizens of Ogden and affords delightful opportunity for the entertain- ment of their guests. The Ogden valley is a stretch of meadow land rather narrow in width, but opening into other small valleys of the branch streams that form the Ogden river. The trail used by Indians and trappers in passing to and from this valley crossed a divide and followed a smaller and less pre- cipitous canyon opening at North Ogden, a few miles from the city of Ogden, and the early settlers understood Ogden's Hole to mean this smaller canyon and divide. It may also be remarked that the writer of H. H. Bancroft's History of Utah in a foot note mentions Ogden's Hole as the mountain resort of a noted desperado of that name. The publication of these two Journals completes the set of four, which was begun in the Or. Hist. Quarterly for Decem- ber, 1909. A sketch of the life and career of Mr. Ogden appears in the Quarterly for Sept., 1910. No one who has not seen the original of one of the Journals used by the trap- pers and traders when in the field can appreciate the difficulty in reading their contents. They were made of small sheets of beaver skin often indifferently cured and tied with a thong ;