As copied directly from, “History of the First Ten Ditches and Mill Creek,” a post on the Ogden history blog site History of 2nd Street, Ogden, Utah: Stories of Bingham’s Fort, Lynne, Five Points. By user weberhistory, published April 14, 2010.
David Moore wrote that emigrants and gold seekers passed through Ogden in 1850 starting the first of June. They camped on the high bench where Ogden City cemetery is now located and passed down the steep north bank and ferried over the Ogden River. It was a continual rush of teams, wagons, pack animals and companies of men until the last days of July. They paid Captain Brown 10 dollars per bushel for wheat and then ground it in a large coffee mill of Francillo Durfeys and paid him for the use of this mill.
David Moore recorded: “Our flour that we had ground at Neuff’s mill (7 miles south of Salt Lake City) [1] in the fall was all gone early in the season and the rush of the emigration prevented any of the folks living north of Ogden river from going to mill because the ferry was running almost day and night and we could not get any team to go to mill until the great rush was slackened some. So we lived on boiled wheat and corn and made what bread we ate of wheat ground in coffee mills. We also got some service berries and segos from the Indians, but we all felt happy and cheerful and did no complaining.”[2]
In the fall after the death of Chief Terikee, a great many people located in Farr’s Fort, and these new settlers “contributed to the building of Farr’s flour mill (located east of Farr’s Fort) which had been suspended during the trouble with the Indians. The mill was completed soon after New Year’s 1851 and begun grinding our wheat and corn. This was a great advantage to Weber County and north part of Davis County.” [3]
[1] Source given on blog as Mariam Jones, Cynthia Harrington, Elias Bowen, Francillo Durfee, manuscript, 1999, online, p.28.
[2] Source given on blog as Sketch by David Moore Wrote from Records and Memory, manuscript, p. 5
[3] Ibid, p. 5, 7