Throwback Thursday: Splitting the Bill for a Road Over the Kaysville Dam (Kaysville, 1926)

One hundred years ago this week, the Davis County Clipper printed something most of us would scroll right past today: the minutes of a county commission meeting. But read the October 22, 1926 front page closely and you get a snapshot of a county still building its roads one survey, one gate and one split bill at a time. And right in the middle of it is Kaysville, working out who should pay for a new road over the Kaysville dam.

A road over the dam, and a bill to split

The meeting was held on October 4, 1926, with Commissioners Holt, Winegar and Stevenson present and Assistant County Clerk Louise James keeping the record. Partway through the meeting, Mayor Barnes and Councilman Blood of Kaysville City came forward with a plan and a survey made by Sumner G. Margetts for a new road along the reservoir over the Kaysville dam.

Here is where it gets familiar. According to the minutes, Kaysville had thought the bill would be charged to Davis County, since the commissioners were the ones opening the road. The Clipper says the matter “was discussed at length.” In the end, everyone agreed to share it: Davis County would pay three-fifths of the bill, $66.00, and Kaysville City would pay two-fifths, $44.00. That is $110 in all, settled around the commission table.

Cattle, gates and a “new lower road”

Kaysville was not the only community with road business that day. A resident asked the commissioners to open a road to the hills as an extension of Glover’s Lane, a name still on the map in Farmington today, so it would connect with “the new lower road now being opened” and cattle could be driven up into the hills. He also wanted to know why a road running north from Glover’s Lane had been opened without anyone consulting him, and he asked permission to fence that road with a gate that neighboring landowners could pass through. The commissioners promised to look into it and asked him to bring back a petition signed by the landowners affected.

That same lower road was clearly the big project of the season. A representative of Burton Implement Company came in about bids for fencing wire and posts for the “new lower road now in course of construction by Davis county.” Meanwhile, a representative of Lund & Company wanted to sell the county a new road grader, and the commissioners ordered a No. 7 grader for the West Layton district.

Mapping the county and a spur on the Syracuse branch

Two more items hint at a county getting ready to grow. A Mr. Griffith, who was making a topographic survey of Davis County, asked whether the commissioners would put up an additional $1,000 so the mapping could be carried out more extensively than first planned. The board said it would give him an answer within the coming week.

Then came a petition from the Oregon Short Line Railroad Company, signed by assistant chief engineer B. H. Prater. The railroad asked for the right to build, operate and maintain a standard gauge spur track off the main track of its Syracuse branch, crossing a county road in Section 2, Township 4 North, Range 2 West. The reason given was simple: the spur was needed “to facilitate the handling of increased business at this point.” The commissioners granted it on a unanimous vote.

The board also read a letter from the State Fair association, filed an opinion from Attorney General Harvey H. Cluff on judges of election, signed a proxy so Davis County’s share in the Davis & Weber Counties Canal Company could be voted, approved the claims on hand and adjourned to October 18, 1926.

Why a meeting like this still matters

None of it made banner headlines. But a dam road with a split bill, a question about a gate, a new grader and a railroad spur are the small decisions that shaped how people and goods moved through Davis County. A century later, cities and the county still sit down to sort out who builds what and who pays for it. Some things about local government have not changed much at all.

Want more stories like this? Visit our Davis County history hub, explore Kaysville history, or browse more finds from the Davis County Clipper archive.

Your turn: Does your family remember the old roads around Kaysville, or stories about driving cattle up into the hills? Tell us in the comments.

Sources

• “County Commissioners Meeting Held, Oct. 4th.” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), October 22, 1926, p. 1. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. View the original page.