As early as 1850, single families had moved into the valley area to the mouth of Box Elder Creek about 60 miles north of Salt Lake City. More families arrived, some from England and others from Scandinavia and a fort was built for protection from the Indians. In 1854 Lorenzo Snow, an Apostle of the Mormon Church, was sent with fifty families to preside over and strengthen the colony now known as the Box Elder Settlement. His vision all leadership together with his organizational ability would be the greatest single factor in stabilizing the community and establishing permanency in the years ahead. I his diary he wrote:
''When I arrived in Box Elder County, I found the location where Brigham City now flourishes in a very unprosperous condition. Whether its change from a primitive state should be called improvement, i.e., whether it was better or worse for what had been done on the premises, would puzzle an antiquarian. Even the log meeting house, with its ground floor and earth roof, was more extensively patronized. as a receptacle for bed bugs than for the assemblage of Saints.
At first, in locating there, I only took a portion of my family, as a small and incommodious adobie hut was the only tenement attainable. During the summer and fall, I succeeded in erecting a house, one story and a half in height, thirty feet by forty. It being impossible to obtain shingles, I covered the building with slabs. and for two winters the rattling of those slabs, put in motion by the canyon breezes. supplied us with music in the absence of organs and pianos. "
In 1855 the town was laid out and named Brigham City after the Mormon Prophet Brigham Young. Those who helped in the laying out of the town-site were rewarded with first choice of lots and later choices were awarded those who helped the rock wall around the town.
When the survey was completed, Main Street extended north and south for four blocks with the various plots occupied by houses some of which eventually housed small businesses as well as families. Actually the whole town-site was laid out in accordance with the plan for the “model city of Zion” as given by Joseph Smith, the martyred Mormon Prophet, who had designed the plan for cities in Missouri and had especially employed it for the city of Nauvoo in Illinois before the Mormons were driven out.
All the streets were wide running east, west, north and south and intersecting at right angles. Some provisions of the plan including specific location of houses on lots, gardens front and back and a prohibition relative to the keeping of certain livestock within the city limits were not imposed, but the geometric prescriptions were carried out in general.
Except for the extensive development of home industries and manufacturing in the 1879’s and ‘8o’s farming and general agriculture pursuits formed the basis of the economy through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century with considerable emphasis on fruit growing and shipping.
By 1868 the year of Clem's birth, the railroads from east and west were being constructed through areas adjacent to the settlement. Within a year's time the transcontinental system would be tied together by a meeting of the rails on the promontory not very many miles to the west.
The Box Elder Settlements complex had expanded to include nearby local settlements such as Three Mile Creek (Perry) south of Brigham City. It was here that Clem was born and lived the first few years before moving to Brigham where he was to live out the rest of his days.
The larger town now boasted a court house which served as theater and social gathering center as well as the seat of county government. Some fine private residences here and there among the many humbler dwelling places gve' evidence of a growing prosperity, but there was no community water system as yet, and residents were required to take their water from the ditches or from open or pump-style wells dug on private property.