OGDEN — Between 1870 and 1950, 25th Street was the bane of God-fearing, peace-loving citizens.
Prostitution, gambling, bootlegging (during the Prohibition years), opium, rape, burglary and murder all helped define 25th Street between the railroad depot and Washington Avenue as Ogden's wildest, loudest, most dangerous place. Decent citizens refused to go near it. City administrators alternately combatted and colluded with the lawlessness. It took a long time to finally chase out the criminal element.
You might think, then, that current city leaders would condemn 25th Street's history, or at most use it as a morality tale. But you would be wrong.
Ogden's administration is trumpeting 25th Street's unsavory past, proudly pointing out such things as where Belle London ran her brothel and where Fanny Dawson ran her murder company.
What in the heck is going on here?
"Time is a great healer," Mayor Matt Godfrey said. "It was kind of a necessity that we go through a time where we really downplayed that history. But now it's a selling feature."
In the past several years, 25th Street has become the funky, off-beat center of Ogden's downtown, full of restaurants and specialty shops and clubs capitalizing on the street's raucous reputation. And now, to cap it off, the state has awarded the city a $15,000 grant (matched by the city) to construct an oral history of 25th Street's wild years and display that history in a new kiosk.
"Twenty-fifth Street represents Ogden in many ways," city planner Greg Montgomery said. "We want to keep these things alive."
Funny what the passage of time can do. The same people who wrung their hands in anguish when gambling and prostitution on 25th Street were, in the words of researcher Lyle Barnes, "operating in the open with all the advertising and commercializing of regular legitimate enterprises," now chuckle at the street's colorful past. And many people who frequented the street as children view their adventures with the gentle tint of nostalgia.
Salt Lake resident Tom Reese's grandparents both conducted, er, dubious enterprises on 25th Street. "I heard so many rumors that my grandmother was a madam running — uh, you know — but I was so young I didn't know," he said. "All these women around — I just thought she was popular. . . . We used to watch people coming out of the bus station, drunk. It was a wonderful childhood."
(Predictably, 25th Street's wilder denizens tended to thumb their nose at Utah's dominant religion. One early madam known as Gentile Kate went so far as to buy Brigham Young's carriage, which displayed various symbols of Mormonism, and parade up and down Ogden's streets in it.)
"As rich as the more ritualized histories of the state are, oftentimes they're too wonderful: How can we measure up?" said Kathryn MacKay, a Weber State University professor whose historical preservation class is collecting the 25th Street oral histories. "Twenty-fifth Street evokes a more eclectic view."
Furthermore, MacKay points out, the street wasn't just about lawlessness. Many of Ogden's most historic buildings are there, and many immigrant families lived there as well.
The oral histories will be collected through the summer, when they will be complied and put into the new kiosk. If you have a personal story about 25th Street, contact MacKay at 1-801-626-6782.
E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com