World War II changed Layton forever

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 forever changed Layton City and northern Davis County, as the area became a military focal point. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin newspaper was one of the first papers to report on the Japanese surprise attack. (Heritage Museum of Layton photograph.)

PERHAPS the most pivotal date in all of Layton City history was December 7, 1941. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II changed Layton and the surrounding area forever.

Yes, Hill Field was already under construction in 1940, but World War II escalated progress and activity in military bases in the area and Layton’s population soared.

In 1940, Layton was a small, sleepy farming town with a population of just 646 people.

“It was kind of a closed group,” Jay Dansie, a lifelong Layton resident recalled during a 2014 interview about life in Layton before Hill came along. “It was still a settlement of families,” he noted, explaining that there just were not many outsiders. That all changed, Dansie said, when Verdeland Park, a massive World War II military housing development, opened where Layton High School, the Layton City Offices and Commons Park are today, in 1943. It boasted some 1,500 residents – half the city’s population – in its heyday.

“The whole city changed when Verdeland Park went in,” Dansie said. “It changed the city forever.”

Indeed, Main Street was widened. The city’s first traffic signal went in during 1943 at Main  and Gentile streets, as Layton’s population had multiplied.

This picture shows Verdeland Park. The U.S. Government condemned 85 acres of land owned by six Layton families and bought it for $23,934 on May 12, 1942, to establish an area for Verdeland Park housing. Renters were accepted in January of 1943 for almost 400 units. To qualify, one or both heads of a household had to work at Hill Field. The housing units were made of plywood, had a living room and either one, two or three bedrooms, with rent being $21.50, $24.50 or $31.50 respectively per month. The houses were laid out in sections, with an alphabetical listing of A to P.

                                                                                    (Heritage Museum of Layton photograph.)

 At the time Verdeland Park was built, Layton City had a population of about 960 citizens. By the end of 1943, 1,440 residents were living in Verdeland Park thus more than doubling the population of Layton City.

Residents of Verdeland Park worked at Hill Field and the Navy Supply Depot, and since many of the heads of the households were serving in the military a lot of the workers who lived in Verdeland Park were women.

The year 1944 represented a milestone for Layton City, as the community coped with an increasing population from Hill Air Force Base personnel and families during World War II.

Layton’s population was only 646 residents in 1940, but a decade later it had increased more than five-fold to 3,456.

The official ground-breaking at “Hill Field” was on January 12, 1940, in a blizzard, that was part of the wettest northern Utah winter since 1890. A 75-auto caravan braved the slippery roads for the ceremony and only the War Department’s heavy equipment made the route passible. Hill’s main gate is on the Layton side of the base. Hill Air Force Base is situated on a “hill,” above much of Layton City. However, the base was actually named after Major Ployer P. Hill of the U.S. Army Air Corps, who perished while test flying a prototype of the B-17 bomber.

Although grading on the base’s four runways had begun in November of 1938, they were not paved until the summer of 1940 and not completed until September 1, 1941 at a huge cost of $1.35 million. The runways were 7,500-feet long and 150 feet wide.

Work on the operations hangar and annexes began on July 24, 1940 and were not completed until October 17, 1941 at a cost of $503,728.

Because of its many farms, Layton had a significant Japanese population when World War II began. Some young men in Layton Japanese families served in the U.S. military during the war, but some anti-Japanese sentiment was still prevalent during wartime.

The U.S. Government condemned 85 acres of land owned by six Layton families and bought it for $23,934 on May 12, 1942, to establish an area for Verdeland Park housing. Renters were accepted in January of 1943 for almost 400 units. To qualify, one or both heads of a household had to work at Hill Field. The housing units were made of plywood, had a living room and either one, two or three bedrooms, with rent being $21.50, $24.50 or $31.50 respectively per month. The houses were laid out in sections, with an alphabetical listing of A to P.

After the war, many airplanes were stored east of Hill Field’s runways. An estimated 700 aircraft, mostly B-26s, were mothballed, but there were 144 B-29 Superfortresses stored at Hill AFB too after the war.