Marion Danielson holds a photograph of the steam boat The City of Corinne on Thursday April 13, 2023.
CORRINE – Box Elder County’s Corinne is well known for being a railroad town and for being a gentile, or non-Mormon, city in a state founded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Marion Danielson was the city clerk for the city of Corinne for 15 years. While working there she found a goldmine of historical information about the town and wrote a history book about it.
One of her chapters has a detailed account of the City of Corinne, a steamboat the city built to haul freight and passengers down the Bear River to the southern borders of Great Salt Lake to a place called Black Rock.
Black Rock in Tooele County was the original resort where people enjoyed playing in the water. At the time it was a popular swimming beach along the California Trail and an area known for shipping ore and lumber. Another resort, Lake Point Resort, was just over a mile west of Black Rock. Then there was Garfield Beach Resort owned by the Union Pacific Railroad.
“General Patrick Conner converted a schooner into a steamboat and hauled railroad ties and telegraph poles from Lake Point to Corinne for building the railroad,” Danielson said. “He named his boat after his daughter Kate Conner.”
His boats were 55 feet long. Conner eventually had three steamboats hauling freight from the south end of the lake to Corinne where freighting had become a large part of their commerce. Freight would go from Corrine through Idaho as far north as Ft. Benton, Montana.
Lake Point was a remote part of the lake and Salt Lake City investors tried to make the beach an appealing destination for customers.
“In 1871 a steamboat company was formed in Corrinne and Fox Dienfeidorf, a major shareholder in the company, agreed to build the steamboat at the cost of $30,000 plus $6,000 for himself,” she said. “The city raised $6,000 and they started to build the steamer.”
When the boat was finished it was 130 feet long with a hold that could carry 300 tons and resembled a Mississippi riverboat with two big smokestacks and a paddlewheel in the rear.
“The City of Corinne had a kitchen, a dining room, 10 state rooms, a solon for men and another for women and offices with plans to accommodate 150 passengers,” she said. “When they launched the boat, it went about 20 feet and got hung up on the bottom of the Bear River. It took them seven hours to get it unstuck and it finally made it down 30 miles of the Bear River to the Great Salt Lake.”
The successful trial run was made with 50 people on board on June 9, 1871, and they ran three trips a week until July. The freight dwindled and so did interest in sightseeing. The City of Corinne and its competitor, the Kate Conner, wintered in Corinne.
“The boat didn’t operate a whole year before it was docked,” Danielson said. “The water in Bear River lowered and after a few trips it got stuck on the lake a few miles from Corinne and couldn’t go anywhere.”
In April of the next year H.S. Jacobs & Company, a mining company, bought the City of Corinne to use it to transport ore to their smelter in Stockton and haul passengers for parties and excursions. Then in 1875 Brigham Young’s son bought it and used it for three-hour, 20-mile tours of the lake.
“In June of that same year General Garfield took one of the tours,” she said. “The crew thought so much of the General’s visit they decided to rename it the General Garfield.”
“It was finally taken to Black Rock Beach, smokestacks and paddle wheel removed the boat was used as hotel and restaurant in its final resting place,” Danielson added. “In 1890 it caught fire and burned to the ground.”
There are no artifacts left of the steamboat. Without Danielsen’s research the City of Corinne would have been long forgotten. She chronicled 150 years of Corinne History for the sesquicentennial celebration of the unique little town in Utah.