Ogden Nature Center calls on community to help paint historic farmhouse
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- An undated photo of the historic farmhouse located at the Ogden Nature Center.
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- An undated photo of the historic farmhouse located at the Ogden Nature Center.
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- An undated photo of the historic farmhouse located at the Ogden Nature Center.
OGDEN — One of the Ogden area’s longest-standing structures and a fixture of the 152-acre expanse that is the Ogden Nature Center will quite literally be getting a new coat of paint (and a general tidying up) this weekend, and the public is invited to pitch in.
The nature center and My Hometown Ogden are teaming up Saturday to paint the historic farmhouse located on the south end of the nature preserve and education center near 12th Street. Meanwhile, Arbor Pro Tree Service will be trimming trees and brush and removing dead trees in the lead-up to the community event, which is being billed as a Day of Service.
Ogden Nature Center director Laura Hayes Western told the Standard-Examiner that 100-200 volunteers are expected to turn up for the event. It’s a level of engagement that she considers typical of the people who call the area “home.”
“I guess in a lot of ways, I feel like Ogdenites, if you will, are just some of the most community-minded individuals,” Western told the Standard-Examiner.
The project will include prepping and painting the farmhouse, garage and shed in addition to removing debris and other property maintenance.
One could say that the history of the farmhouse is the history of Ogden itself. When recounting the structure’s story, Western invoked names associated with the city’s beginnings.
Those names included Miles Goodyear, the fur trader who built Fort Buenaventura, namechecked by many as the first Anglo settlement in Utah, and Capt. James Brown, who purchased the fort and the land surrounding it (essentially Weber County) from Goodyear for approximately $1,950 in 1847 and founded Brownsville, the settlement that became Ogden.
“Not too many years after that, William Hodson built the farmhouse in 1872,” Western said. “So, the farmhouse stands as kind of a beacon of this land, if you will. And when William Hodson lived on the land, he farmed the land, and it was pasture and farmland and orchard.”
Generations of the Hodson and other families worked the land where the nature center and the historic farmhouse are today, as well as the land surrounding it, until the U.S. Department of Defense began its lengthy stewardship of the area and the Utah General Depot (later known as Defense Depot Ogden) was activated in 1941.
Ogden Nature Center was founded some 34 years later, at which point the farmhouse was tapped as the preserve’s community hub.
“When the Ogden Nature Center started in 1975, that building was used as our first visitor center,” Western said.
More recently, the farmhouse has been used as affordable housing for staff; there are AmeriCorps interns living there now, according to Western.
Its century and a half of use and the current renovation project notwithstanding, Western says the craftsmanship that went into erecting the farmhouse back in 1872 remains evident today.
“We had some folks come out and evaluate it, and they actually use a device that shows whether the floors are warped … and the floors were perfectly flat,” Western said. “If I put a ball in the middle of my living room, it might roll to one end or the other, but in this house that was built all those generations ago — perfectly flat floor.”
Still, preserving the structure and making it shine is a sizable task. Western says $30,000 in supplies and labor is being donated for the current project, and the nature center will accept all the volunteers it can get.
Those interested in volunteering at the Ogden Nature Center can contact Volunteer Coordinator Heidi Austin at volunteer@ogdennaturecenter.org or by calling 801-621-7595.