25th Street Confidential

Generations of Ogdenites have grown up absorbing 25th Streets legends of corruption, menace, and depravity. The rest of Utah has tended to judge Ogdenknown in its first century as a gambling hell and tenderloin, and in recent years as a degraded skid rowby the streets gaudy reputation. Present-day Ogden embraces the afterglow of 25th Streets decadence and successfully promotes it to tourists. In the same preservationist spirit as Denvers Larimer Square, todays 25th Street is home to art galleries, fine dining, live theatre, street festivals, mixed-use condominiums, and the Utah State Railroad Museum. 25th Street Confidential traces Ogdens transformation from quiet hamlet to chaotic transcontinental railroad junction as waves of non-Mormon fortune seekers swelled the citys population. The streets outsized role in Ogden annals illuminates larger themes in Utah and U.S. history. Most significantly, 25th Street was a crucible of Mormon-Gentile conflict, especially after the non-Mormon Liberal Party deprived its rival, the Peoples Party, of long-standing control of Ogdens municipal government in 1889. In the early twentieth-century the street was targeted in state wide Progressive Era reform efforts, and during Prohibition it would come to epitomize the futility of liquor abatement programmes. This first full-length treatment of Ogdens rowdiest road spotlights larger-than-life figures whose careers were entwined with the street: Mayor Harman Ward Peery, who unabashedly filled the city treasury with fees and fines from vicious establishments; Belle London, the most successful madam in Utah history; and Rosetta Ducinnie Davie, the heiress to Londons legacy who became a celebrity on the street, in the courts, and in the press. Material from previously unexploited archives and more than one hundred historic photos enrich this narrative of a turbulent but unforgettable street.