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.
