HISTORIC MARKER
After the Samuel Ward family established their first log home above Kaysville, they soon found that one group of Shoshone often traveled along a habitually used north-south trail that passed along on the lower mountain bench above the cabin. Ward made it a practice to feed the travelers and give them a place to stay. Ironically, what seemed like generosity to the settlers was expected by the natives who had utilized the resources of what is now Davis County for millennia. When Ward gave them slices of beef, they hung it over a fire on a stick and cooked it. He told some of the natives that they could have peaches off a certain tree, so for years when the peaches were ripe, they would return, pick the fruit, and carry it off carefully tucked inside their buckskin shirts.
Fruit trees were not initially easily grown in the area. One 1850 settler of west Kaysville stated that at the time of first settlement “we could not raise a peach tree, but the elements are so softened that now we can raise any kind of fruit.” The well-drained soil and climate on the foothills east of the city later proved to be a productive climate for orchards.
Where the bridge crosses over Highway 89, is the spot where the Ward Brickyard was located. It was one of several natural clay deposits from which brick was created to build the earliest structures in the area. The finished brick was a red adobe from which schoolhouses, homes, and other buildings were made. In 1875-76, Samuel Ward set up kilns at about 350 North and for almost forty years he and his son supplied building materials throughout the valley. Bricks were made much like adobes in the first phase, but after drying they were fired to make a more durable product.
Sources
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Phillips, Edward. “Biographical Sketch of Edward Phillips written by Sylvia Phillips in 1889 from dictation.”