John F. Erdmann

John Erdmann is the only Brigham City Mayor who served for two non-consecutive terms. He began his first term the year the community’s first library was established. City property was provided, and adult leaders of the Mutual Improvement Association (LDS youth organization) built the structure. The one-story frame building was completed by December 1898 with construction costs estimated at slightly more than $1,000. When the library, called the M.I.A. Reading Room, first opened, it contained about 300 books obtained through door-to-door canvassing by the youth.
Also during Erdmann’s first term, the sugar beet industry got a boost when the Ogden sugar factory agreed to process the beets with growers receiving $4 a ton. He signed a new ordinance allowing liquor sales, but regulated duties of liquor dealers; he designated the public square across the street from the Tabernacle as the site for the new Central School, and agreed to furnish water to schools and to the Oregon Short Line Railroad Company.

Second Term

John Erdmann was elected for a second term sixteen years after his first term ended. During his second term, he was able to secure water from Mantua and obtain an $80,000 bond issue to rebuild Brigham City’s water system. While he was in office, the Utah Idaho Sugar Company built a sugar factory in town, and the Mayor and City Council offered them use of water from Box Elder Creek.
His obituary in the Box Elder Journal characterized his years as Mayor:

He was never accused of favoring any class of people and left the business of the City in splendid condition. . . Coming from German extraction, he belonged to a class of people who are frugal, pushing and economical, living within his means and not contracting debts he could not pay when due. So it was an economical, sound business administration he gave the people of this community. He was honest to the cent and his word was as good as a bank note.

Box Elder News, April 1920.

Notes

: Government
: Book