Editing Weber County, Utah (section)

==History==
The Weber Valley was visited by many trappers seeking beavers and muskrats along its streams. One of the first on record reached the area in 1824, traveling from [[Fort Bridger]]. He reported that the [[Bear River (Great Salt Lake)|Bear River]] flowed into a salt bay. [[Peter Skene Ogden]] passed through in 1826, representing the [[Hudson's Bay Company]]. He traded in this area for several years, near present-day North Ogden. [[John C. Frémont]] explored the Weber Valley in 1843 and made maps of the area. The Fremont reports encouraged readers to seek their fortunes in the western frontier. [[Miles Goodyear]] was a fur trapper who constructed a way station on the [[Weber River]] in 1845. In 1847 he sold it to incoming [[Mormon pioneers]]. James Brown purchased and changed the site's name to Brownsville (later changed to Ogden).<ref>[http://www.webercountyutah.gov/Parks/fortb/history.php History - Buenaventura Park (accessed March 31, 2019)]</ref>

After the Mormon pioneers began filling out into the future state of Utah, the fledgling government (as of 1849 known as [[State of Deseret]]) began a system of government. On January 31, 1850, the legislature provided for the creation of six counties to generally cover the area, named in this order:
* Weber (with Ogden as county seat)
* Great Salt Lake
* Utah
* San Pete
* Tuilla
* Little Salt Lake<ref>[http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/History/UtahCounties/HistoryOfWeberCounty1996RobertsSadler.pdf Richard C. Roberts & Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County (1997). Accessed 31 March 2019]</ref>

The county boundaries were better defined by the 1852 [[Utah Territory]] legislature. The borders were adjusted by subsequent acts in 1855, 1856, and 1862. The creation of [[Nevada Territory]] in 1862 also administratively reduced the county's territory significantly since its 1852 description had it running to the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California. A final adjustment in 1880 concerning the various lands in the [[Great Salt Lake]] area brought the county's borders to their present configuration.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/documents/UT_Individual_County_Chronologies.htm|title=Utah: Individual County Chronologies|website=Utah Atlas of Historical County Boundaries|publisher=[[Newberry Library|The Newberry Library]]|date=2008|access-date=March 31, 2019|archive-date=March 6, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306153326/http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/documents/UT_Individual_County_Chronologies.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

As of the 1852 description, the original Weber County stretched from California in the west, to the Oregon boundary on the north, to a point in the middle [[Davis County, Utah|Davis County]] in the south.<ref>{{cite book|first=Richard Swainson|last=Fisher|title=A new and complete statistical gazetteer of the United States of America| publisher=J.H. Colton Co.|location=New York|year=1855|page=[https://archive.org/details/newcompletestati01fish/page/870 870]|url=https://archive.org/details/newcompletestati01fish|access-date=February 5, 2011}}</ref> As Nevada and the State of Utah evolved, Weber County was trimmed so that it now occupies a stretch of the [[Wasatch Front]], part of the eastern shores of [[Great Salt Lake]], and much of the rugged [[Wasatch Range|Wasatch Mountains]].