LAYTON CITY boasts intriguing street titles, some unique to the area and others grounded in mystery or history.
Various long-time city street names have an important story to tell.
Here are some such tales:
There’s a romantic legend surrounding the Angel Street name.
This tale involves an early settler who was in love with two women
residing on the same road. Not being able to decide between the two, he referred to them as his "angels." Hence the street's eventual name, though it is also identified today as 1200 West in Layton.
However, another variation of the story is that there were two young girls who lived along the street, favored by two young men. Andrew Egbert, father of the girls, disapproved of the relationships with the King boys, though the young men kept referring to their "angels" who lived along that street.
Yet, by another less likely tale, the City's namesake, Christopher Layton, had several other polygamous wives living along the street and that he referred to them as his angels and hence the street name.
(Angel Street also continues south into Kaysville).
Also, not legend is that a portion of the street became “sweeter” in about 1915, when a sugar beet factory opened along the road, just west of where the Smith’s offices/plant are located today. Soon, a small segment of Angel Street, just north of Gentile Street, became officially known as “Sugar Street.” The sugar factory was torn down in 1972 and an adjacent warehouse – its last solid memory – was demolished in 2001.
Antelope Drive used to be called “Straw Street,” because it was a
clay-based road in the 19th Century and had to have a lot of straw
thrown on top of it to even make it passable. In the 20th Century,
Antelope Drive (2000 North in Layton) became known as Syracuse
Road. The Antelope title took hold in the late 1960s, when the state
of Utah purchased Antelope Island and the highway was a straight shot to the causeway that was built to travel across the Great Salt Lake to that island.
Hill Field Road, passing by the popular Layton Hills Mall, was
referred to as “Easy Street” in pioneer times.
Why was road called "Easy Street" at first? The story goes that a noisy steam engine used to operate at the Layton Mill, which would have been closer to Layton's downtown area. Thus, "Easy Street" was coined, since heading to the northeast along this road, it became so much more quiet, serene and "easy going," without the loud sound of the mill. (-According to the Davis News Journal of July 14, 1977.)
The road was also proposed to be renamed Freedom Boulevard in
1991. UDOT even created new signs and installed a few prematurely in the summer, before the Layton City Council ended up voting 4-1 not to rename the busy highway after all.
Mutton Hollow Road, near the Kaysville-Layton border is
named after a former sheepherder who lived in that part of the city.
-Layton also has a series of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John streets in its northwest area. Located just west of Main Street and south of Antelope Drive, these came about in the early 1960s when a subdivision was built there. Harris Adams, a veteran Layton resident and a historian was a member of the Layton City Council at the time and doesn't recall if they were ever said to hold any Biblical significance. However, he said federal housing officials didn’t care for the grid street layout that was first proposed for the area. So, the subdivision was changed so that the area streets curved to resemble a "bull's-eye" shape, much to the delight of the housing leaders (and the confusion of newcomers to that area).
Cross Street was so titled in 1903 because it was a shortcut to the
Layton Canning Company from Main Street. This company had
recently merged with the Woods Cross Canning Company when the
name took hold.
Rosewood Lane was originally called Fiddlers Creek Lane. It
was named after some musicians who lived on the street. Later, some confusion led to the Rosewood designation. Some subdivision developers have revived the Fiddlers Creek name in recent years.
-And, Gentile Street, was so named because in the 19th Century there was a group on non-Mormons who lived west of Main Street and so unusual were non-Mormons in Layton back then, that the street became known as Gentile Street. Gentile sometimes refers to non-Mormons in early Mormon Church history.
(AND, the idea of naming a place after non-Mormons with the "Gentile" term is NOT unique to Layton. The Gem Valley (Grace, Idaho and surrounding area) was originally named "Gentile Valley," in 1870 -- likely before Layton's Gentile Street was named -- after the non-Mormons who first lived in that S.W. Idaho valley.)
-Here are some other unusual street titles in Layton City: Aircraft
Avenue; Artists Way; Camelot Drive; Chapel Street;
Constitution Way; Hunter’s Glenn; Jack D Drive; Icabod
Lane; Merlin Drive; Morning Star; Poets Rest; Snoqualmie
Drive and Vird Ann Street.
-Also, of note: Gordon Avenue has been a confusing road ever
since the mid-1960s, when I-15 disconnected the through road and
created an eastern section and a western section. Since then, they do not connect except through traveling a section of Hill Field Road and then Main Street. A proposal in the late 1990s would have renamed the western section of Gordon Avenue, from Main Street, west to the Syracuse border, “Allen Avenue,” to honor a long-time family who lived along the road. However, that proposal was soon dropped by a consensus of the City Council.
-Layton also had some short-lived street names that did not survive
into modern times.
For example:
“Pioneer Road” was what a portion of today's Sunset Drive was
named. This route traveled though Dawson Hollow and was of the
city's main link to reach Mountain Road, Highway 89. (The city
does have an unrelated Pioneer Drive road today.)
"Call Street": The south end of today's 2200 West, south of
Gentile Street. It was named after a family who resides in the area.
"Hill Street": The north end of 2200 West, north of Gentile
Street, and named for the Hill family.
Bone Street: A short segment of today's 3200 West that went
south from Gentile Street and ran parallel to Call Street. This road
was originally named after the Bone family.
“Canyon Road” was the original title of Church Street. This
was a road that went north over a sandridge hill and dropped down
into South Weber in pre-Hill Air Force Base days (before 1940). It
was a major route to Weber Canyon. (Layton City does have
unrelated Canyon View Drive and Canyon Rim Drive streets
today.)
SOURCES: “Layton” history book (1985), by the Kaysville-Layton
Historical Society; Deseret News Archives; Harris Adams, Layton
historian.
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