OGDEN -- The largest gift shop in Utah isn't located in Salt Lake City or even Salt Lake County.
It's found in a rural pocket of Ogden where more than 20,000 square feet of gifts, souvenirs, candles, cards, flowers and seasonal merchandise combine to create an unusual retail resort called Rainbow Gardens.Located at the mouth of Ogden Canyon, Rainbow is being billed as the largest gift emporium in the western United States. Among its aisles and shelves are what the owners say is one of the biggest collection of Christmas ornaments in the state, a mini "festival of Christmas trees" and a large collection of Utah souvenirs.
"We're huge," said Jennifer King Francl, vice president of Rainbow operations.
The store also has toys, dolls, soaps, kitchen accessories, candies, baskets, plants, silk flowers and more.
But Rainbow is more than just big. It has the stature of a hotel lobby, the smell of a garden, the flavor of an old-time resort and enough nostalgia to simulate time travel amid a spectacular mountain setting.
"Our site makes us beautiful. People love that," Francl said. The nearby Ogden River and the rugged mouth of Ogden Canyon create a spectacular setting.
Every holiday season some people struggle with those extremely difficult Christmas gifts for friends or family. What do you give that person who seems to have everything? Rainbow -- a sort of "Trolley Square" of Ogden -- is a likely place to find that obscure gift.
Rainbow also has its own restaurant -- the Greenery -- that opened in 1976. It's a medium-price eatery that specializes in Mormon Muffins, Benedict Arnolds and Marco Polos.
A well-known Ogden attraction, Rainbow is located on historic hot springs. It once offered bathing and ballroom dancing and more recently both swimming and bowling. (Hot dogs from a vending machine was one its biggest novelties for kids in the 1960s.)
A rare cigar store Indian circa 1855) still greets visitors at the main entrance.
Now the store is looking to attract more of the Salt Lake market.
Last summer, Rainbow reopened the north end of its 37-year-old, 18-lane bowling alley annex as a new gift attraction full of Utah souvenirs, post cards, flags and books.
The same family, Robert W. and Rosanne King and their children, have operated Rainbow since the mid-1940s.
The Kings ran the indoor and outdoor Rainbow Gardens swimming pools up until 1970 when the Rainbow Imports Gift Shop opened in the old ballroom -- once used for marathon dancing. In 1974, the old 100,000-gallon indoor pool was converted into a terraced gift area.
"We have this unusual, big old building," Rob King, vice president of promotions and design, said.
Rainbow also has more expansion plans. In the next several years, The Kings plan on combining all the former bowling alley's wooden flooring to create a dance area. A new restaurant, the "Caffeine Cafe" is also planned on the old bowling lanes as well as three party rooms for guests.
"We want to have some special events here," King said.
That expansion will also still leave the old outdoor swimming pool to be created into some other new feature in the future.
The Rainbow land was originally a hot springs resort, long before used by area Indians for health benefits.
Members of a U.S. Geological Survey made the first scientific analysis of the hot springs at the mouth of the canyon in 1872. They found the water to be 121 degrees.
A miner claimed rights to the hot springs shortly thereafter. A local businessman (and eventually Ogden's first "gentile" mayor), Fred J. Kiesel, purchased the property in the 1870s and offered free mineral baths.
In 1890, an electric power plant was built at the mouth of Ogden Canyon and a resort, to be called "Power Place" was planned there. A financial panic in 1893 halted those plans, but a Victorian building that eventually became the Ogden Canyon Sanitarium was constructed there in 1905-06, with a hotel, dining rooms and mineral baths.
Trolley and wagon service was offered to the resort. Financial problems soon plagued the resort, and the building was destroyed by a fire in 1927.
A.V. Smith purchased the land in 1928 and rebuilt the resort in brick, renaming it El Monte Springs. Wrestling, swimming, private mineral baths, boating, marathon ballroom dancing and motorcycle climbs were all offered. However, the Great Depression hit; the resort closed in 1932 and it inactive for 10 years.
Harman W. Peery, Ogden City's "Cowboy Mayor," purchased it in the early 1940s. He renamed it Riverside Gardens and billed it as the "Kochbrunnen of America," offering mineral bath water superior to any other. It also featured swimming and dancing.
The resort was turned over to Peery's son-in-law, Robert W. "Bob" King and his daughter, Rosanne Peery King, in 1946. They renamed it Rainbow Gardens and made numerous improvements, The bowling alley was added in 1961.
Today Bob is retired and Rosanne is semiretired. Still, they manage to show up at the store most every day. Rosanne continues to select and order much of the gift shop's inventory. Two other sons, Russ and Peery manage the Greenery.
Bob said it was easy to be innovative when the swimming pool lost money because of all the high school pools that opened in the area.
"It's not hard when you're desperate. You get crazy," he said of Rainbow's evolution into a gift shop.
Although all of northern Utah's other hot spring resorts have vanished or are in financial trouble, Rainbow is thriving with hot gifts, rather than hot water.
To reach Rainbow, take U.S. 89 to Harrison Boulevard and go north to Valley Drive and then east to the mouth of Ogden Canyon. Or take I-15 to the 12th Street exit and travel east, taking the last right turn before entering Ogden Canyon.