Marker on Left:
Captain James Brown
Captain James Brown, Pioneer, Soldier and one of the founders of Ogden, enlisted in the Mormon Battalion of the U. S. Army in the Mexican War, July 16, 1846, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and was made Captain of Company C. The Battalion marched overland to San Diego, longest march of infantry ever recorded. At Santa Fe, Captain Brown was placed in charge of the sick detachment and ordered to Pueblo where they spent the winter of 1846-47 with a group of converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints enroute from Mississippi to the Salt Lake Valley.
In the spring he marched his men by the way of Fort Laramie and the South Pass arriving in the valley July 29, 1847, closely following Brigham Young and the Mormon Pioneers.
Marker on Right:
Captain James Brown
Early in August he left by way of Fort Hall for California to collect the Army pay due members of the Battalion. Returning late in 1847, he stopped at the Fort of Mile Goodyear, a trapper, located near the junction of the Ogden and Weber Rivers. From Goodyear he purchased for $3,000 all the land now comprising Weber County together with some livestock and the fort.
The land was conveyed to Captain Brown in a Mexican land grant, this entire area being at that time part of Mexico. In January, 1848, he settle here with his family and began the colonization of Brownsville, later Ogden. He was born September 30, 1801, and died September 30, 1863.
