There could have been a Boy Scout cabin built in Adams Canyon

                                               The upper waterfall in Adams Canyon.

TODAY Adams Canyon is the most popular hiking route in all of Davis County. With plenty if shade and a spectacular waterfall, it appeals to families and many individual hikers.

However, if history had gone slightly different, there would have been a Boy Scout cabin built in upper Adams Canyon, just below the main waterfall.

According to the Lakeside Review newpaper of Jan. 29, 1991, Francis Eli Wiggill, a scoutmaster in Syracuse, had permission to construct a cabin in the cabin on land owned by the Morgan Lane and Livestock Company. (This land ownership preceded the U.S. Forest Service.)

The planning of this cabin took place in the early 1920s.

However, the date of August 13, 1923 changed all that. There were flashfloods in Davis, Weber and Box Elder counties that day. In Farmington Canyon, six people were killed by the flood -- including six Boy Scouts who were camping. The water and mud rushing out of Farmington Canyon at the height of the flood exceeded 10 feet in height and was up to 100 feet wide.

After that flood, fearful parents did not allow their boys to camp in Adams Canyon and the plans to build a cabin in the canyon were abandoned.

"You know, all the floods and damage in the canyon never bothered the spot where we were going to build the cabin," Wiggill told the Lakeside Review. "It would have still been there."

A bridge in Adams Canyon. A 1920s cabin would likely have been located about another 100 yards further along the trail, in a fairly flat place where Boy Scouts sometimes set up camp today.

(Note that there is one cabin halfway up the mountain side above Layton and another cabin found above Kaysville on the mountainside.)

-WHEN was the first hike up Adams Canyon mentioned in a newspaper? It was printed in the Weekly Reflex newspaper of May 1, 1930. Twenty boy scouts from Kaysville hiked up Adams Canyon. Mention was made of "magnificent waterfalls" and that five deer and an eagle were spotted.