Mormon History Association Conference
June 5 - August 8
The Mormon History Association invites you to Ogden, Utah for its sixtieth annual conference to be held June 5-8, 2025. Situated on the Ogden and Weber Rivers near where they join the Great Salt Lake, and nicknamed “Junction City” when it became the connecting point between numerous railroad lines, Ogden has long been a site of junctions. Long before Latter-day Saints dreamed of an American Zion in the Great Basin, ancestors of Shoshone and other indigenous peoples criss-crossed the region, establishing trade networks and sharing languages, settlements, and cultures.
Ogden highlights a confluence of events and dynamics that shaped Mormon settlement, identity, and culture, and ensured that the tradition would always be intertwined with the wider world. The railroad especially brought diverse groups to Ogden. Wealthy investors and industrialists as well as Black Americans and Chinese, Japanese, German, and Irish immigrants were drawn to the burgeoning railroad town and its economic opportunities, bringing greater influence from the margins. They built communities that both constituted and contradicted centers of Latter-day Saint power, resulting in diversity, and alternative directions. Conversely, families like Apostle Franklin D. and Jane S. Richards represented Ogden’s influence on the highest levels of the church.