Republished from our newsletter, Atsmi Uvsari, Issue 18, Winter 2007, written by Rochelle Kaplan.

Corinne, Gentile Capital of Utah

For almost ten years from March 1869, the town of Corinne reigned as “The Gentile (non-Mormon) Capital of Utah”. As the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads approached their meeting place at Promontory Summit to complete the Transcontinental Railroad, a group of former Union army officers and non-Mormon merchants founded a town due north of Salt Lake, believing it could compete economically and politically with the Latter Day Saints. Enterprising settlers wished to take advantage of the boon expected by the joining of the rails and to create a Gentile community that might challenge the Mormon enclave of Salt Lake City for control of the state. Known as the “Burg on the Bear [River],” “Connor” (for General Patrick Connor, one of the Union Army officers), and “Bear River,” the settlement eventually became Corinne, named after the daughter of a founder, General J.A. Williamson. Corinne would be the freight-transfer point for the shipment of goods and supplies to the mining towns of western Montana along the Montana Trail.

Corinne, within weeks of the driving of the golden spike on May 10, 1869, housed about 1000 permanent residents, none Mormon. Corinne became Utah’s second largest city, with over 500 buildings including 28 saloons, 24 gambling halls, 16 liquor stores, houses of prostitution, commission and supply houses, a cigar factory, a flour mill, a brickyard, hotels, two theaters, an opera house, five newspapers, and a town marshal to try to keep order. A tract was set aside for what town leaders hoped would become a state university.

Corinne was the central shipping point for goods going to and from Salt Lake City. The town was raucous and wild. Its wealth and population gave it power and the American Liberal Party, made up of non-Mormons and ex-Mormon “Godbeites,” set up its headquarters there, with initial members including Samuel Kahn, Gumpert Goldberg, Julius Malsh, Nicholas Ransohoff, Fred J. Kiesel, later mayor of Ogden, and Simon Bamberger, who in 1916 became Utah’s only Jewish governor. Political leaders in Corinne, with the support of some Washington, D.C. politicians, tried to break the political and economic monopoly of the LDS Church. The leaders petitioned Congress to have the state capital moved from Salt Lake City to Corinne and when that failed, to move the northern one degree of latitude of Utah Territory (which included Corinne) to Idaho. Also rejected was a plan to install J.A. Williamson as territorial governor. These efforts fizzled, in part, because the Mormon-dominated Territorial Legislature awarded voting rights to the women of the territory, ensuring that Mormon voters outnumbered Gentile voters. Utah was the first U.S. territory to grant women suffrage. This right was later revoked by the U.S. Congress in the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887, as one of its provisions. Women’s suffrage in Utah, while progressive, was designed to maintain Mormon supremacy in the territory.

In 1870, in Corinne City, lived Bavarian-born Abraham Cohn, retail clothing merchant, and John Cohn, born in New York, who drove a team of horses. Also in Corinne resided George Goldburg, retail grocer worth $1400, his wife Hellena, both Prussian-born, and their Montana-born children. G. Goldberg’s Outfitting House on Montana Street was advertised in the Corinne Daily Reporter in 1871, selling wholesale and retail groceries, wines, liquors, tobacco, cigars and produce. David Aurbach was an English-born dry goods retail merchant with an estate worth $1000. Jacob Livingston was a retail merchant from Poland. Prussian-born Emanuel Kahn, 36, retail dry goods merchant, had a personal estate worth $10,000 and real estate valued at $1000. What a target for a matchmaker! Other Jews were Adam Kahn, a Bavarian-born dry goods merchant whose estate was worth $2700 and Prussian-born brothers Eli B. and Nicolas S. Ransohoff, wholesale grocers, together worth $5000.

Aaron Greenwald, from Bavaria, kept a hotel. The Corinne Daily Reporter of 1871 had an ad for the Metropolitan Hotel on Montana Street, with Malsh and Greenewald, proprietors, noting, “This is a first class hotel, centrally located, commodious and well-arranged. The rooms are neatly and comfortably furnished. The tables are always supplied with the best the market affords. Fresh Oysters always on hand and served up in any style on short notice. The Bar is stocked with the finest Wines, Liquors, and Cigars.”

Listed with Aaron Greenwald on the 1870 Census were his wife Helen, and their children born in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Utah. Aaron’s hotel partner, Julius Malsh, was from Saxony. Jacob Greenwald, Pennsylvania-born, was a hotel clerk. There were a Kofman family and Bavarian-born Isaac Levi, a retired merchant worth $2250, recently married. William Levi, born in NY, worked in a trim shop. Prussian-born Fredrick Scholts was a common laborer.

Samuel Auerbach recalls Corinne:

“Our store consisted of a wooden frame with canvas stretched over it, and carried a sign: California Store. F. Auerbach & Bros. It was located on the south side of Main Street, or Montana Street, at the corner of 4th Street. The Metropolitan Hotel, operated by Malsh and Greenwald, was on the north side of Main Street. The Uintah Hotel was the main hostelry of Corinne and consisted of a wooden frame covered with canvas. A hall extended down the center with “rooms” on either side. These rooms were mere stalls divided off by canvas sheets, and each contained a small crudely built bed. The floor was a dirt floor, but beside each bed lay a splintery board to serve as a rug for tender feet. Fred Kiesel started his business in Corinne. Mr. Farmer had a good-sized store there. A. Kuhn and Brother also had a good-sized store, as well as George A. Lowe, another early merchant, and Gumpert Goldberg.”¹

The Corinne Daily Record in 1871 advertised the Wagon Depot of George A. Lowe:

It had a “full stock of the celebrated P. Shuttler’s Chicago Wagons. Always on hand and for sale at reasonable prices. Made of the very best materials and are known all through the West as the best and most reliable wagon made, and are warranted in every respect. Also on hand are a full stock of wagon covers, all sizes; wagon bows, thimble skeins, wagon woods, wagon and carriage material, of all descriptions, for sale at the lowest cash rates. Also constantly on hand and a full supply of mowers, reapers and mowers, self-raking reapers, threshing machines, Salky rakes, plows, grain drills, gang plows and all kinds of the best and most improved farm machinery. Warehouse near the depot.”

George Lowe, who may have been Jewish, was a wagon agent in the 1880 Salt Lake City Census, listed with his family and a servant. A. Kuhn was Prussian-born Abe Kuhn, listed as a merchant with his wife Fanny, their five children, a store clerk and a servant. Gumpert Goldberg was George Goldburg on the 1870 census. Goldberg was born in Germany in 1832, came to New York as a teen and spent time in Colorado and Montana before settling in Salt Lake City. An ad in the September 12, 1871 Corinne Daily Record notes, “Two car loads of magnificent California apples and pears were received today at G. Goldberg’s, besides large quantities of sweet potatoes, beans, and other products of the coast.” Goldberg had businesses in Ogden and in Corinne with his business partner Fred J. Kiesel. Joseph D. Farmer had several stores in Idaho, Salt Lake City, and Corinne. In 1882, congregants elected Farmer vice president of the Board of Directors of Congregation B’nai Israel. That same year Farmer was bathing at Black Rock on the Great Salt Lake and drowned.

The Mormons were determined to keep power. In order to consolidate the northern Utah Mormon settlements and provide a market for their products, Mormon officials proposed a narrow-gauge railroad connecting Brigham City with Ogden, Logan and Franklin, Idaho. Leaders organized the Utah Northern Railroad in 1871. By 1874, the line completed, the UNRR cut off Corinne as a link for the shipment of goods to the mining towns of western Montana. With financial ruin forecast, most merchants left Corinne for Ogden and other rail centers. Only the arrival of Mormon farmers saved Corinne from extinction. This letter to the Sabbath Visitor, one of the Jewish newspapers in America details Corinne’s decline, especially among “Hebrews”.

1. Eileen Hallet Stone. A Homeland in the West: Utah Jews Remember, University of Utah Press, 2001, p 86.

Photos courtesy of University of Utah Marriott Library Special Collection or the Utah State Historical Society.