Old Ogden Photos are a Time Machine

Ray Cardon's hobby snapshots in 1940 are a real time machine looking into Ogden's past.

The corner of 22nd and Washington, looking west, about 1940. Photo by Ray Cardon

Cardon was a pharmacist at the H. E. Riley Drug Store, 2201 Washington Blvd. That's where he got his film developed. I found more than 100 (I'm still counting) of his negatives in a box of unsorted negatives stores in the Union Station Library's back room.

How'd they get here? No clue.

Hugh Riley?

Ray Cardon is the father of Ogden attorney Kelly Cardon.  Kelly told me his dad only worked a couple of years at H.E. Riley. World War II came along and Ray joined the U.S. Navy. After the war he came home and set up his own drug store on 24th Street.

Ray met his wife at that drug store, Kelly said. Eventually Ray operated several businesses in and around Ogden, including a flower business.

Ray was a pretty prolific photographer. In a previous blog I showed some of his snaps of the Pioneer Days Parade going past the front door of the drug store. The business was a perfect perch to see it all. There are other pictures of a very early Ogden Canyon, Ogden High School, and scenery around Pineview Reservoir.

But what about the drug store itself? He did take pictures of that.

It's hard to tell who he took pictures of. Kelly is wracking his brains trying to recognize them, but we can guess.

This gentleman, in a nice suit standing in the front door, has the air of a man who owns where he is standing. My guess, this is Hugh Riley, the owner of the drug store. Who else would stand like that for a formal picture?

There is a series of pictures of people either waiting outside the store to get in, or piled up at the counter, drinking Pepsi and eating lunch. These pictures have the feel of some sort of special even at the drug store.

Perhaps the grand opening? I need to dig into the old newspapers and see if there was a news announcement of it.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that these pictures are square, not rectangular. That would mean Ray was using a different camera, or perhaps someone else was taking these
pictures? No clue.

I love the look of this woman, obviously very impatient to get in the door. They've got tooth brushes on sale for a nickel and, by God, she's going to get some! Wanna bet she elbowed that kid next to her?

Ray shot a few customers or workers at the store too. I wondered if the young lady was the girl he eventually married, but Kelly said no, that's not his mom.

There's a kid who looks like your standard soda jerk ... probably some college kid making summer money.
d.

I love the shot at the top of this post showing the whole corner, looking west from across the street. To the right right was Tabernacle Square, where the LDS Church operated. You can't see the tabernacle, but you can see cars parked on the side street, folks walking across the street, just going about their business.

What would  a stroll down that street have been like? Full of things to see.

Commerce was more compact back then. Businesses themselves tended to be tucked into small buildings. Fewer folks had cars, after all, so business went to where the customers could get to them, not vice versa.

As a result, if you lived downtown, you could do most of your daily marketing with a short walk.

And a lot of folks did live downtown. According to the 1941 Polk City Directory, the Gregory Apartments upstairs from the drug store were mostly occupied, eight of the 12.

You can see Wheeler Bakery next door to the south of the drug store. What you can't see further down the block was an O.P. Skaggs warehouse next to Wheeler Bakery. Then there was an O.P. Skaggs grocer and meat market.

At 2215 there was Quality Cleaning. At 2219 you had the Community Bakery, and at 2221 you had the Coffee Mug Restaurant. At 2223 there was the Grill Market, selling meat.

At 2229  you would go into Sears & Roebuck department store. At 2243, still not even halfway down the block, was Bud's Barber Shop, then Rainbow Market and meats at 2245. At 2247 there was Central Market grocery and meats.

Four grocery stores, two bakeries, a drug store and a barber shop, all in one block and that's just on the west side of the street. There were more clothing stores and grocers on the east side, all within one city block.

You could leave your apartment, buy food, clothing, aspirin, a soda and newspaper and go back home, all without breaking a sweat or spending a cent on transportation. If you worked for the railroad -- and in 1940 a lot of Ogden folk did -- you could get by without a car in Ogden very nicely.

Pioneer Days Parade Photo History

You shot historical photos today, although you may not have thought so.

It's sad that so many of the shots taken today will remain on the cell phones that took them. Transferred to computers or, maybe, even paper? It rarely seems to happen any more.

Which is a shame. They look ho-hum today, but discovered 70 years down the pike, they're fascinating, time machine images.

A bit ago I found a pile of old negatives in the Union Station Archive. They were unsorted, unlabeled, just sitting there. As I looked I realized that what they were were shots of Pioneer Days Parade, probably around 1940, taken from in front of a drug store on the corner of 22nd and Washington. The auto parts store across the street, which just recently closed, is clearly visible.

Who took them? Ray Cardon, the father of Ogden Attorney Kelly Cardon. Ray was a pharmacist in the H.E. Riley drug store. His name is on the film envelopes holding the negatives. I have no clue why Ray's negatives are in the Union Station archive, but I'm incredibly glad they are.


They are fun pictures.

You can see floats in the background and people in the foreground. The clothing styles, the way people held themselves, the way they stand around, all give a great picture of how people, then, conducted daily life.

These are great pictures, too.

We can date the pictures pretty closely to about 1940. Ray only worked at the drug store a couple of years before joining the U.S. Navy in World War II. After the war he returned to Ogden and set up his own drug store on 24th Street. Kelly remembers a lot about growing up in central Ogden in the 50s and 60s as a result.

So when you ponder your pictures from today, have some prints made up, put them in an envelope and set them aside where the kids may, one day, come across them. Your kids will marvel at the cool old cars, the funny clothes, the odd way people spent the day.

History in the making, today.

People watching in 1940. See how funny they're dressed? (Actually, they're mostly dressed in
their best. To watch a parade? That's how folks dressed to go out back then.)

I took this one. See the funny way folks dressed back in 2014?

Pioneer Days Disaster; Ogden blasted by missiles

OGDEN BLASTED

I got the hat!

SOUTH KOREAN, NORWEGIAN MISSILES RIP

US NAVY JOINS FUN!!

US AIR FORCE SAYS "US TOO!!"



Talk about getting no respect.

Here it is, Pioneer Days when all the world celebrates Ogden, and what do we get?

A barrage of Harpoon cruise missiles.

Although, technically, not at the city of Ogden. No, the missiles were fired at the USS Ogden, a naval ship named for the city, which was sitting in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, minding its own business, when suddenly the ocean became anything but pacific.

The USS Ogden, long may its glory wave, now sleeps with the fishes, 6,000 feet down.

When I first came to Ogden I saw, in city hall, a framed picture of the USS Ogden displayed in a trophy case by the main stairwell.

"Cute," I thought, "we have our own ship!"

Thar' she blows!  Cruise missile explodes inside the USS Ogden

In the mid-80s I was fortunate enough to visit the USS Ogden, which was a "Landing Platform Dock," a sort of delivery ship for US Marines.

The idea was to let Marines load into their landing craft without having to climb down the side of the ship on rope ladders. The Ogden had a dock inside it from which landing ships full of Marines could be sent to shore.

The internal dock  opened out the rear of the ship. The Ogden saw duty in Vietnam and, I suspect but it was never confirmed, the first Gulf War.

Posing for a last photo before the bombs come

It could also land and launch helicopters.

The Ogden was launched in 1964 and decommissioned in 2007. She was replaced by a new class of ships with similar duties but bigger and, one hopes, better.

When they decommissioned the Ogden I was told the US Navy planned to sell her to the Mexican Navy. Apparently that didn't happen.

Tuesday I came to Union Station and Archivist Lee Witten showed me a news clip from a friend in Hawaii. It's a Honolulu Star-Advertiser from July 14 and there was our dear old USS Ogden, in flames.

"High-priced firepower bombards target ship" reads the headline.

Target ship? Us? Yike!

But it's true.

The Navy needed something to shoot at to test out a new class of Harpoon cruise missile. The Ogden was sitting around rusting away, so it got picked.

It sounds as if it was quite the battle, albeit a bit one-sided. The Ogden was unmanned, unarmed, a sitting duck, but still gave a good showing.

The USS Ogden in better days

First a South Korean submarine launched a Harpoon cruise missile. Then a Norwegian Frigate hit it with a Naval Strike and Evolved Sea-Sparrow missile. The US cruiser USS Chosin weighed in with another Harpoon.  F/A 18 and P-3 aircraft smacked it with missiles.

Hawaiian Air National Guard F-22 Raptors peppered it with 20mm cannon. Finally, a B-52 bomber dropped a GBU-12 laser-guided bomb onto it.

You can watch video of it being blasted here (click).

I gotta tell ya, either the Ogden was particularly sturdy or the US Navy's cruise missiles aren't all they're cracked up to be. According to the Star-Advertiser, the barrage started at 8 a.m. and it wasn't until 4:30 p.m. that the Ogden finally capsized. It didn't sink until 7:28 p.m.

So it took nearly 12 hours for three navies and the US Air Force to sink one pathetic, unarmed ship sitting dead in the water.

A sad end, but, it could have been worse.

Union Station Archive news stories
of first USS Ogden's Christening. 

This is not the first ship named for our fair city.

During World War II the Navy named a patrol frigate for Ogden. She was launched in June of 1943, part of the massive effort to crank out ship for the war effort.

A delegation from Ogden, including Mayor Harm Peery,  attended the launching. Pioneer Days Rodeo Queen Margaret Shelton smacked her nose with a bottle of champaign.

That USS Ogden went on to win three battle stars as a convoy escort. In one battle a Japanese bomb missed her by 50 yards, and her gunners were credited with helping shoot town two torpedo planes.

But then her glory days were over. The Ogden was given to Russia in 1945 as part of the lend-lease program. Russia kept her until 1949.

Here's where sad irony strikes. The US Navy, not feeling further need for the USS Ogden, gave her to Japan -- the same Japan that tried so hard to sink her -- where she served out her final days as the Kusu.

I have no idea what Japan did with the first USS Ogden when it was done with her. Probably melted her down and made her into Toyotas.

So perhaps being sunk, after absorbing a barrage of missiles and cannon fire, is a better fate.

June 1943 news story of first USS Ogden's launch
(Union Station Archive)

The Harm Peery Pioneer Days Bonanza

1935 Pioneer Days letterhead

Thank you, Harm Peery.

First off, you were one of the most fun mayors this town ever had.

Gasoline fights with Salt Lake City? Legal liquor sales? Protected prostitution? Getting arrested for selling booze to minors?

Genius!

But not just fun. A promoter, bar none. You put this town on the map in the middle of the Great Depression, made it world-famous, and more important helped the town make some serious money.

What you did, of course, was promote Pioneer Days.

Before you came along it was a nice humble little thing, but you blew it up, made it exciting, made people start talking.You brought in a rodeo, movie stars, good times galore, and even led the parade.

And then, one day years later, you died.

When folks were tearing down your Old Mill bar at the mouth of Ogden Canyon to build a development, someone found some of your old scrapbooks.

The person who found them was a musician at the bar. He didn't know what to do with them, but figured they were going to get tossed out, so gave them to another musician, whose wife, Francis Bush, was a school teacher with a feeling for historic preservation.

So Fran donated the scrapbooks to Union Station, where they got stored in boxes.

A few months ago I came across them, unlabeled as anything other than "Harm Peery Collection," and chased their history down through Fran. I am VERY excited about these scrapbooks because they contain a lot of the ephemera -- letterheads, ads, handbills, stationary -- of Pioneer Days from 1934 and 1935.

This is all the really common, meaningless stuff that got tossed, and so is really hard to find now.

But it's all really cool, with early logos in the distinctive type of art they used back then.

We also have a lot of the news stories from those days -- the beard growing contests and the like.

Harm was always trying to find a way to make the national news.

When Admiral Richard E. Byrd was involved with his second Antarctic Expedition, from 1934 to 1936, Mayor Peery issued a public challenge to the explorers to take on Ogden in a beard growing contest.

When Wallis Simpson stole the King of England's heart and he abdicated the throne in 1937, Peery issued a public offer to marry them, for free, during Pioneer Days. They declined the offer, or would have if they saw it in the news. I doubt he really mailed it to England, but he definitely sent it to the news services.

Pioneer Days is upon us again, so I thought I show you some of the stuff.

This is just a small sample. We've got a whole scrapbook full of it, and some amazing newspaper clips and even whole pages from the S-E, including original coverage of the first parade in 1934..

All showing what great fun this town was, and still is, thanks in great part to Harm.

Page 1 of the S-E snowing July 24, 1934, Pioneer Days Parade. Yes, they got it in the same day's paper.

Amazing Traces of the West Show at Union Station

Got a sneak peek at the Gallery at the Station show for Traces of the West this year and, my word, this stuff is wonderful.

The Gallery is hosting a region-wide show, the works attracted by a pretty hefty prize for first place. The works in painting, drawing, sculpture, bronze, leather and metal, are just mind-blowingly wonderful.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the sneak peek for yourself -- the show opens Friday for the First Friday Art Stroll. Come on down and take a much longer look.

Rail Travel Through Ogden the Hard Way

I found these two in Union Station's grand lobby, pondering the murals and railroad equipment. I pondered them and was struck, visually, by the guy's really cool tattoo.

"I just like trains," he told me, but that's not just any train, it's a steam engine plowing along, armpit-to-armpit.

Travis Ripwell, 23, said he's been traveling by rail without benefit of Amtrak or tickets or any other technicalities for the past six years. Emily Rothman, 19, said this is her first trip. Both have the brown and lean look of folks who've been living rough for a while. Their packs are huge, dangling boots and water bottles and other impedimenta.

Travis said they're from the Tallahassee area of Florida, but started this particular trip in New Orleans.

He rattled off their trip-tic: New Orleans to Waycross to Savannah, then Baltimore, Richmond, Ashville, Knoxville, Nashville, Chicago, Pocatello and finally Ogden.

They did that all on freights. They did a little side-trip to Salt Lake City where they picked up a few bucks playing guitar and washboard on the street, climbed Ensign Peak just to look around, and then came back to Ogden. They hope to catch a freight here heading west to the Oakland/Bay area.

Travis Ripwell and Emily Rothman take
a break from trainhopping.

Riding the rails is tough, he said. The railroad bulls will throw you off the train or, worse, in jail, so he said they depend on word of mouth information to stay out of trouble.

In Pocatello "they have zero tolerance, they will throw you in jail for 30 days," he said. The tactic is to get off the train before it hits town, go to the other end of town and get on again.

The grapevine is good for travel information, he said.

"It's kind of just basic information, if you know where the train is running, you know where it goes."

Riding the rails is safer than hitchhiking,  he said. The gangs that used to ride the rails, beating up and killing people, seem to have faded, so he said he feels reasonably safe.

I sure hope so.

Let's be clear: Riding the rails is insanely dangerous. Getting on and off freight cars is beyond hazardous, especially carrying heavy back packs like these two are. The weight of the pack can pull you back and off, under those wheels.

Years ago I met a guy in the Ogden yards who was missing a leg lost to a train. He said he watched the train wheel cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

Travis and Emily were in Union Station looking to pick up a few train-related souvenirs, asked the way to the post office so they could mail some stuff home, and set off again. When they get to Oakland, he said, they'll "get a pizza and then go to northern California and look for work."

"Be safe," I told them, and off they went.