Ogden's Untamed Women Walking Tour

Some of the most amazing stories got left out.  For the whole history of Ogden, visionary, brave, scrappy, hopeful women have been walking these very streets.  Gilded Age Ogden had notorious Madams and Mormon Relief Society Presidents living across the street from each other. And from experience I know that we’re all hungry for those stories now.

We’ll walk in the footsteps of a wonderful variety of characters from Ogden’s history on this walking tour. We’ll explore downtown Ogden around the Junction and 24th Street, and hear the stories hidden within historic buildings, ballrooms, streets, and alleys. Hiding in plain sight are the incredible tales of fascinating women, as varied as Ogden itself.

You’ll experience:

• walking in the footsteps of Sarah Anderson, who attempted to vote in 1895, was turned away, and sued! The court case results make me proud to live in Ogden

• the home site of Jane Richards, a national suffrage leader (she should be famous around here!)

• the site of the once-grand parlor house of the most powerful person in Gilded Age Ogden: notorious Madam Belle London

• Electric Alley (the Victorian red light district), its entrance hidden in plain sight, and the women who lived there

• Victorian lawyer MaryAnna Coulter, the only woman in her 1880s graduating class

• buildings that once housed secretarial schools, knitting factories, and department stores— where working class women built their own futures

• local hero “Grandma Ruby” Price, first president of Ogden’s NAACP. It’s easiest to sum up her incredible life by asking What did she not do?

• the first Buddhist Church in Utah - now hidden behind a humble Mexican restaurant

• the now-shuttered Berthana Ballroom, built by two women and famed as the “finest in the West”

• the first bell to ring in Ogden, on Ogden’s oldest church, and the sad story of the woman it memorializes

…and much more!

We’ll start our tour in the middle of The Junction, zig-zag through downtown Ogden, and return again at the end, approximately 1 hour and 1.3 miles walk.

$200 for up to 20 people.