Utah-Na/Boothe/Wasatch/Howard Hotel
- Ken Bott
- Feb 24
- 3 min read
“The Fortunes of the historic Howard Hotel have been tied to those of Brigham City itself since 1903. That was the year the hotel, then known as the Utah-Na, was built. Actually, the Utah-Na had opened a year earlier a few doors down the street in a commercial block whose second-floor offices had been converted to guest rooms. But for over a decade city business leaders had recognized the need for a “a great, big hotel” in addition to the small boarding houses that had been around for years. In 1904 the new Utah-Na opened at 33 South Main Street.
The new hotel had a gracious main floor lobby and a dining hall. The second floor held 25 guest rooms, all with solid maple floors and doors and bathrooms of tile, brass, and porcelain. The hotel’s Neoclassical Revival façade was of red brick with a great, decorative arch over the second story. The side walls were of less-expensive adobe. Brigham City had had telephones since 1889, electricity since 1890, and a water system since 1892, so the hotel offered up-to-date comfort.
From its beginning the Utah-Na attracted a large clientele. For some years before 1904 Box Elder County had been developing a large-scale fruit industry. Agricultural successes spilled over into other economies so that between 1900 and 1928 the town’s number of small businesses doubled from 175 to 350. Soon these local business groups and clubs were using the Utah-Na as a meeting center. They had to stop in each day anyway since the post office was located on the first floor. In addition, Brigham City lay at the upper end of the busy, 120-mile Wasatch Front. This assured the hotel a steady stream of both commercial and private travelers.
After a decade somebody determined that the Utah-Na could use competition. Two other hotels opened. The one that became the Utah-Na’s chief rival stood just across the street at 13 and 17 West Forest, in a busy new commercial block. Besides the 50-room Hotel Brigham, this block housed a bank, beauty and barber shops, a jewelry store, billiards parlor, drug store, offices of a weekly newspaper, and suites for abstractors, attorneys, and accountants.
To keep up with the competition, the Utah-Na changed its name and remodeled. It was known as the Wasatch for a time and received a third story, 25 additional guest rooms, a pleasing wooden balcony that created a gently dramatic entrance canopy, and new architectural touches. For the next several decades the Wasatch (soon renamed the Boothe) and the Brigham served as Brigham City’s leading hotels.
In 1923 and 1925 a new owner, J. E. Ryan, enhanced Hotel Boothe’s status as a local eatery. He added a banquet hall and installed a street entrance to the café for better access by day only guests. The latter years of the 1920s were the hotel’s prime.
In 1931 the Howard family bought Hotel Utah-Na/Boothe and renamed it the Howard. The Great Depression had begun, and the period of growth for Brigham City, as for nearly every other small town in America, ceased.
But a clean, modest-priced hotel was still needed, and the Howards stayed in business throughout the depression and for three decades beyond. Not that survival came easily. The Howard’s days as a social and civic center had ended. In 1938, the gracious balcony was replaced by a plain marquee, and in 1946 the ground-floor lobby and banquet hall were converted into a Greyhound bus depot.
What finally killed the Howard, though, was the 1969 completion of Interstate 15, which bypassed Brigham City. The hotel turned some of its spaces over to small businesses, but its upstairs rooms remained available for overnight or monthly lodging into the 1980s.
In the 1990s Brigham City is seeing another boom along with the rest of the Wasatch Front. Interest in the old Howard Hotel has rekindled. The marquee has been removed and the building has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Once again the fortunes of the Howard and Brigham City go hand in hand.”
“The History Blazer” Utah State Historical Society
Photographs are used for nonprofit educational and noncommercial purposes only. Earlier photos are likely Compton photos and many of the later photos are likely Bruce Keyes from BENJ. If you know whom to credit, feel free to add it in the comments so that proper credit is given. Thanks and enjoy!
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