County Names

There have been 29 counties in the state of Utah since the creation of Daggett as the 29th county in 1918, but when the Utah Territory was created in 1850, there were only 10.  Over the course of several decades, these 10 were reshaped, with portions broken off to form other counties for matters of practicality and redistricting, eventually resulting in the current map of 29.  Even in the midst of all this, another 10 counties were established and then either dissolved or absorbed into the boundaries of other counties or even other states.  Of these 10 no longer existing counties of Utah were:
Carson
Established in 1854, Dissolved in 1861 
Named for the Carson River (that named after the famous explorer Christopher "Kit" Carson), Carson County originally dissolved in 1857, then re-established in 1859 before it became part of the Nevada Territory created in 1861.
Cedar
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1862 
Named for the juniper trees historically commonly called cedar trees in North America that were plentiful in many parts of Utah.  Cedar County was absorbed by Utah County in 1862.
Desert
Established in 1852, Dissolved in 1862 
Named, simply enough, because it was in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert.  Desert County was dissolved in 1862 with portions of it falling in the Nevada Territory and other parts being absorbed by the counties of Tooele and Box Elder.
Greasewood
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1862 
Named for the greasewood plants (a type of shrub) in a fashion similar to the naming of Box Elder County, into which Greasewood County was absorbed in 1862.
Green River 
Established in 1852, Dissolved in 1872
Named for the Green River that flows through much of eastern Utah, Green River County was first established in 1852 and dissolved in 1857, then re-established in 1859 before being finally dissolved in 1872.  Parts of it were divided among the territories of Wyoming and Colorado, and the existing counties of Cache, Weber, Morgan, Davis, Wasatch, Summit, Duchesne, Carbon and Utah.
Humboldt
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1861
Named for the Humboldt River (itself named after German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt), the county was absorbed by the newly created Nevada Territory in 1861 and exists to this day as Nevada's oldest county.
Malad 
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1861 
Named for the Malad River (from the French word for "sickly", in reference to the river supposedly making French fur trappers sick) that passes through the area, Malad County was absorbed into Box Elder County in 1861.
Rio Virgin
Established in 1869, Dissolved in 1872
Named the Virgin River in southern Utah that cuts through Zion Canyon, Rio Virgin County was divided up and absorbed between Washington County and the territories of Arizona and Nevada.
Saint Mary's
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1861
Named from an old name for the Humboldt River, when it was named for the American Indian wife of one of the Hudson's Bay Company's fur trappers.  Mary's River now exists as a tributary of the Humboldt.  Saint Mary's County was absorbed into the new Nevada Territory.
Shambip
Established in 1856, Dissolved in 1862
Located in the Rush Valley surrounded by the Stansbury Mountains to the west, the Sheeprock Mountains to the south, the Oquirrh Mountains to the east and the East Tintic Mountains to the southeast, Shambip County was named after the Goshute name for Rush Lake in the valley.  It was absorbed into Tooele County in 1862.


The 29 remaining counties were named for all sorts of things ranging from the obvious geographical features that define their landscapes, to another completely unrelated county from another state, and for a few of them, people can't even remember exactly how they came up with the name.
Davis
Established in 1850
Named in honor of Daniel Coon Davis, an early leader of the community in the area who was among the first to homestead there in what is now the county seat of Farmington.  Born in Petersburg, New York, Davis joined the Mormon Battalion with his 6-year-old son Daniel Jr., marched 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego, California in the Mexican-American War, then he re-enlisted for another 6 months and became captain of Company E.  He only lived in Davis County for a short time before he died in 1850 from unknown illness near Fort Kearny, Nebraska, assisting the perpetual emigration of fellow church members along the Mormon Trail.

Great Salt Lake, Davis County

Iron
Established in 1850 
Utah Territorial Governor and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Brigham Young believed the county would be the site of a promising iron industry that would supply an independent Mormon nation's needs.  The site of the county's currently largest city, Cedar City, was called Iron Mission, and the remains of a mining/processing community called Old Iron Town still remain, including a foundry, charcoal ovens.  Iron production was mismanaged the first few years and struggled to gain traction, but even after the settlement had peaked at mining 2,500 lbs a day, failing crops, floods and cost-inefficiency led to the abandonment of the industry.  It was originally called Little Salt Lake County, after a small lake near Parowan Gap.

Parowan Gap, Iron County

Salt Lake
Established in 1850
This one is a little obvious.  The first area of Mormon settlement in the Great Basin, Salt Lake County is in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Valley, itself named for the Great Salt Lake.

Temple Square, Salt Lake County

Sanpete
Established in 1850
The precise origin of Sanpete is unclear, but it's clearly drawn from one of a couple options; Chief Sanpitch or the Sanpit tribe, also known as the "Saimpitsi" in the Ute language, meaning "people of the tules" (tules being a type of bulrush common in marshy areas).  Chief Sanpitch was actually the leader of the Sanpit tribe in what's now called the Sanpete Valley when Mormon settlement in the Utah Territory began, until his death at the hands of Manti residents during the Black Hawk War in 1866.  The Sanpits were a band of Timpanogos who occupied the valley for at least a century before Mormon settlement.

Maple Canyon, Sanpete County

Tooele
Established in 1850  
This one is a mystery forgotten to time.  A popular notion is that Tooele was the name of a Goshute chief from Skull Valley southwest of the Great Salt Lake, but there's no evidence that such a man ever existed.  Another more likely theory is that the name is a corruption of "tule," a word for a bulrush, which are abundant in the area by the Great Salt Lake.  The original Territorial Legislature designation spelled it more phonically correct as "Tuilla."

Bonneville Salt Flats, Tooele County

Utah
Established in 1850
This name was actually given to the county before the territory would come to be known as Utah.  In the original proposal for the State of Deseret, Utah County was named for the Utah Lake Valley that makes up most of the land in its borders, and the Timpanogos Utes, who the Spanish had called yutas, who occupied the valley and gathered with other tribes for a seasonal festival at the freshwater Utah Lake.

Provo River, Utah County

Weber
Established in 1850 
The county gets it's named from the Weber River, a 125-mile tributary of the Great Salt Lake, but the River got that name from a German-born frontiersman named John Henry Weber, who as part of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, led a group of trappers into the Cache Valley near Bear Lake in 1824, just north of Weber.  The following winter in Cache Valley was harsh enough that Weber and a group of other Rocky Mountain Fur Company trappers, including company co-owner William Henry Ashley, moved their camp into the Salt Lake Valley, which was presumably when the river was named.  Weber Canyon was also a known landmark prior to Utah settlement, having been original part of the Hastings Cutoff route the ill-fated Donner-Reed party tried to take but were diverted away from Weber to the more managable but still impractical Emigration Canyon.  Weber quit the fur trade in the later 1820s and worked a few government positions in the Midwest until 1859 when, for unknown reasons, around 80 years old, he committed suicide in Bellevue, Iowa by cutting his own throat.

Union Station, Weber County

Millard
Established in 1851
Brigham Young named the county Millard and its county seat (originally intended to be the state capital at the center of the territory from which everything else would connect like the hub of a wheel or Sleeping Beauty's Castle in Disneyland) Fillmore in honor of the U.S. President at the time, Millard Fillmore, in an attempt to curry favor with the executive in Utah's bid for statehood (it ultimately received statehood in 1896 during the second administration of Grover Cleveland) and in gratitude for Fillmore's appointment of Young as the territorial governor and superintendent of Indian affairs.

Territorial Statehouse, Millard County

Juab
Established in 1852
There's a little bit of debate on this one, whether it's a Ute word meaning "thirsty valley" or simply meaning "valley."  Although not necessarily dryer than a lot of other counties in Utah, when traveling south from the much more lush Utah Valley, Juab's water resources seem starkly lacking in comparison.  Early settlers of the valley in the Salt Creek Community, now called Nephi, wrote about two American Indians who were hunting companions in the valley, one they called "Old Salt" and the other they called "Juab", but it's likely the settlers attached the name Juab to the one for his attachment to the valley rather than the valley being named for him.

Devil's Kitchen, Juab County

Washington
Established in 1852
Like so many things in these United States, Washington County is named for the first President of the United States, George Washington.  Ironically, the county seat, St. George, is not named Washington, but rather, for the fiery Mormon apostle George A. Smith who was nicknamed the "Potato Saint" for promoting the eating of raw potatoes to prevent scurvy among the settlers.

Zion National Park, Washington County

Summit
Established in 1854
Although it doesn't contain the highest elevation point in the state of Utah (that honor goes to Duschesne, the site of King's Peak), Summit County is named for its towering mountain summits that section of the drainages of Weber River, Bear River and Green River.  Its average elevation of 8,388 feet is the third-highest average elevation for any county in the United States, behind San Juan County in Colorado and Taos County, New Mexico.  Established in 1854, the new county was comprised of territory from Salt Lake County and the eventually eliminated Green River County that included large portions of Utah as well as what is now Wyoming and Colorado.

Echo Canyon, Summit County

Beaver

Established in 1856

This one is pretty simple.  People thought there was an inordinate amount of beavers (you know, the buck-toothed animal with a flat tail?) in the area.  Established in 1856, the new county was comprised of territory from Iron County.

Frisco Ghost Town, Beaver County

Box Elder

Established in 1856

Another simple, sort of boring one; there were a lot of boxelder trees in the area.  I'm not even sure if there were more boxelder trees there than in any other county, but they apparently couldn't think of anything better.  Established in 1856, the new county was created with territory from Weber County.  The same month, a no longer existing county, Greasewood, was named for the greasewood trees.  Greasewood County was absorbed into Box Elder County in 1862.

Golden Spike National Historic Site, Box Elder County

Cache
Established in 1856
Named for the Cache Valley, where fur trappers in the early and mid 19th century stashed their cache of pelts throughout the year until it was time to sell them at a rendezvous.  Established in 1856, the new county was created with territory from Summit County and Weber County.

Logan Canyon, Cache County

Morgan
Established 1862
The middle name of Jedediah Morgan Grant, a controversial Mormon apostle and member of Brigham Young's First Presidency from 1854 to 1856 whose reputation for aggressive sermons during the Mormon Reformation earned him the nickname "Brigham's Sledgehammer."  He was also the first elected mayor of Salt Lake City from 1851 until his death at age 40.  He died while touring Mormon settlements and preaching a renewed vigor in the faith in 1856 after contracting pneumonia.  He was survived by seven wives, and his son, Heber J. Grant would go on to become President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1918 to 1945.  The town that became the county seat, Morgan, is also named after him.  Established in 1862, the new county was created with territory from Davis, Salt Lake, Summit and Weber counties.

Devil's Slide, Morgan County

Sevier
Established in 1862
Named after the river that forms its western border.  The Sevier River was first named by the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 as El Rio de Santa Isabel ("The River of Saint Isabel" in honor of Isabelle of France, a devotee of the Franciscan Order in the 13th century; possibly named for her on her feast day), and later the Rio Severo ("Violent River") by Spanish traders who had a violent encounter with Ute warriors there.  A little more than a decade later, an American explorer, Jedediah Smith, named it the Ashley River after fur trapper and Rocky Mountain Fur Company founder William Henry Ashley, who had explored the area previously, but the name Rio Severo is the one that stuck and from which Sevier is derived.  At 385 miles long, it is the longest completely within the state of Utah, forming in at Long Valley in Kane County and emptying at Sevier Lake in Millard County.  Established in 1862, the new county was created with territory from Sanpete County.

Fremont Indian State Park, Sevier County

Wasatch
Established in 1862
Wasatch is a Ute Indian word believed to mean "mountain pass" or "low place in the mountains," and has been attributed to the entirety of the Wasatch Range of mountains that fills much of the valley.  A prominent feature of the county is the Heber Valley, through which Ute Indians had a route over the mountains between the Uintah Basin and the Utah Valley.  Established in 1862, the new county was comprised of territory from Salt Lake, Sanpete, Utah and Summit counties.

Cascade Springs, Wasatch County

Kane 
Established in 1864
Named for Thomas L. Kane, a heroic figure in Utah and Mormon history, although not a Mormon himself, who attempted to mend the rift between the Mormons and the U.S. government through the creation of the Mormon Battalion, helped establish an agreement for Mormon camps in preparation for the westward migration to Utah, and played the crucial role in mediating a peace agreement between Brigham Young and U.S. Army troops based at Fort Bridger in 1858, preventing the outbreak of fighting in the Utah War.  He was raised Presbyterian (although he harbored doubts about the Christian faith) and initially considered following in his father's footsteps by going into law but as an abolitionist was dismayed by the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act and pursued a career in the military instead.  During the Civil War, Kane led the 13th Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment, nicknamed the "Bucktails," and made a brigadier general in the Army of the Potomac.  He was made a Brevet major general in 1865 for his service at the Battle of Gettysburg, and later in life maintained a friendship with Brigham Young and other Mormons in Utah, sometimes offering them legal counsel.  Kane died of complications related to pneumonia in 1883 in Pennsylvania.  Kane County was created in 1864, comprised of territory from Washington County.

Paria Ghost Town, Kane County

Rich
Established in 1864
Named for Charles C. Rich, an apostle of the LDS Church under Brigham Young, who founded a number of settlements in the Bear Lake Valley under Young's instructions, including Paris, Montpelier and Garden City, among several others, as well as San Bernadino in California.  An early convert to the faith in 1832, Rich followed the Mormon migration from his birthplace in Kentucky to Caldwell County, Missouri, where he fought in the Mormon War at the Battle of Crooked River in 1838, and was a member of Joseph Smith's secret Council of Fifty in Nauvoo, where plans were arranged to set up the political Kingdom of God when secular governments ceased to function.  A polygamist, Rich had six wives and a whopping 51 children between them.  He died in Paris, Idaho in 1883 from a series of strokes.  One of his grandchildren was Laraine Day, a contract star for MGM in the 1930s and 40s, who played the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock's FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.  Established in 1864, the county was originally called Richland before the name was changed in 1868.  It was created from a portion of Cache County.

Bear Lake, Rich County

Piute
Established in 1865
Named for the Southern Paiute American Indians who occupied much of southern Utah, including the Grass Valley inside the county.  Established in 1865, the new county was created with territory from Beaver County.

Grass Valley, Piute County

Emery
Established in 1880
Named after George W. Emery, the 11th Governor of the Utah Territory.  Appointed in 1875 by President Ulysses S. Grant, Emery had just previously come from the even more unpopular position of Supervisor of Internal Revenue (tax collector) in the post-war southern states.  The relationship between the majority Mormon population and the United States government had been tenuous going back to the formation of the Utah Territory, flaring up particularly badly 18 years earlier when the Mormon theocracy governed by Brigham Young was put down and replaced by a series of secular governors appointed by the U.S. President (Young himself had been appointed by Millard Fillmore and reappointed by Franklin Pierce before he was forced to step down), but by all accounts, relations during Governor Emery's 5-year term went well.  After he left office in 1880, and perhaps in part to spite his replacement, Eli Murray, whose policies were explicitly more hostile to controversial Mormon practices like polygamy, the territorial legislature named a new county after him.  The new Emery County was created with land from the counties of Sanpete, Sevier and Piute.

Goblin Valley State Park, Emery County

San Juan
Established in 1880
Named for the San Juan River, a 400-mile tributary of the Colorado River that flows through San Juan County and in Southern Colorado.  Traditionally a boundary between the Ute to the north and the Navajo to the south, the San Juan River was named by Spanish explorer Juan Maria Antonio Rivera in 1765, in honor of San Juan Bautista, aka "John the Baptist."  The new county, established in 1880 was created from parts of the counties Kane, Piute and Iron.

Monument Valley, San Juan County

Uintah
Established in 1880
This name is attributed to a band of the Ute people called the Uintah, sometimes taken to include a number of Ute communities in the Utah Territory including the San Pitch from the Sanpete Valley, the Pahvant from the Sevier Valley, and the Timpanogos from the Utah Valley.  The Uintah Valley Indian Reservation was designated in the area in 1861 by President Abraham Lincoln (now called the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation) and likely influenced the naming of the county, however, the county is also in the Uintah Basin and the Uintah mountain range, named after the native people at an earlier point.  When it was formed in 1880, Uintah County was created from parts of Sanpete, Summit and Wasatch.

Fantasy Canyon, Uintah County

Garfield
Established in 1882
Named in honor of the 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield, whose assassination only a few months into his presidency (he was shot on July 2, 1881, four months after his inauguration and finally died on September 19 from the wound, infected by incompetent doctors) had shocked the nation the year before the county was established.  The county was created from part of Iron County.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Garfield County

Grand
Established in 1890
At the time the county was created, the section of the Colorado River flowing through the region was called the Grand River, which was where the county took its name.  The Colorado River existed at this time, and when the Territory of Colorado was created and named in 1861, it was popularly believed that the Colorado River originated in the area, but only a couple of years earlier, Captain John Macomb's U.S. Army topographical expedition had determined that the Colorado actually began 80 miles west of what would become Colorado Territory near Moab, Utah in what would become Grand County.  The river that began in Colorado, in between the Green River out of Wyoming and the Gunnison River in Colorado was called the Grand River.  The junction of the Grand and the Gunnison in Colorado was named Grand Junction, and the Grand continued southwest of Moab where it joined with the Green River, forming the Colorado.  In 1921, Colorado's U.S. Representative Edward Taylor petitioned the Congressional Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce to change the name of the Grand River to include it as part of the Colorado River and so that the river they named his state after would actually originate there, but even after the change, the remnants of the river's original name continue in the names of multiple landmarks in the area.  Grand County was created from a portion of Emery County.

Arches National Park, Grand County

Wayne
Established in 1892
This one is a bit weird.  Wayne County, Utah was probably named after Wayne County, Tennessee.  A settler in the area, Willis E. Robison, was thought to have named the new county after his deceased son, Wayne, who died at age 11, but since young Wayne died in 1896, four years after the county was created, it's most likely that the son and the county were both named after the county in Tennessee where Willis Robison had worked as a Mormon missionary a decade before.  There is some precedent for this sort of naming in the area in that one of the earliest settlements founded in 1878, Loa, which later became the county seat, was named by Franklin W. Young after the volcano Mauna Loa in Hawaii, where he served as a missionary.  Robison's experiences in Wayne County, Tennessee also bore a particular influence for him since two other missionaries had been mysteriously killed during his time there, and he had to escort the bodies back to Utah.  In addition to naming a son Wayne, he also named two of his sons after the murdered missionaries.  The county in Tennessee was named for General "Mad Anthony" Wayne, a Pennsylvania native who served in the American Revolutionary War and Northwest Indian War.  Fort Wayne, Indiana was also named after him.  Wayne County, Utah was created from part of Piute County.

Capitol Reef National Park, Wayne County

Carbon
Established in 1894
Emphasizing the area as an industrial region, Carbon County was named in reference to the substantial coal deposits in the area that are still a major factor in their economy today, despite suffering some of the worst mining accidents in United States history, including the Scofield Mine disaster of 1900 (200-246 killed) and the Castle Gate Mine disaster of 1924 (172 killed).  The county was created from part of Emery County.

Nine Mile Canyon, Carbon County

Duchesne
Established in 1913
The first new county created after statehood in 1896, the county is named for the Duchesne River that flows through it, which had already given its name to the fort designated to maintain the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, but how the river got that name is no longer known with any certainty.  The river is thought to have been named by William Henry Ashley, co-owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, or one of his fellow trappers that explored the area in the 1820s, and they may have named it in honor of Mother Rose Philippine Duschesne, a French nun who served in the Midwestern United States frontier in, or they may have named it after Fort Duquesne, a stronghold in the French and Indian War in what later became Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Others have speculated that it's the corruption of a Ute leader or a Ute word meaning 'dark canyon.'  It was created in 1913 from part of Wasatch County, and had been part of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, but the reservation was reduced and the land opened for settlement, grazing and mining.

Indian Creek Pass, Duchesne County

Daggett
Established in 1918
The most recent county created in Utah, Daggett County was named after Ellsworth Daggett, a Utah Surveyor General who is also attributed with developing irrigation in the area, but his specific significance that resulted in the county's naming is unclear.  Daggett County was originally part of Uintah County, but for residents on the northern side of the mountains from the county seat in Vernal, the journey to attend to county business was far too impractical in 1918.  The road over the mountains was dangerous and often subject to inclement weather (today, it's still a very steep, winding mountain road, albeit now an asphalt one), so travelers typically had to make a trip several hundred miles long, going by rail from Wyoming to one of the train stations in either Salt Lake City, Price, or Mack in Colorado, and from there take a stagecoach to Vernal.  In a 1917 election, the residents of Uintah County voted unanimously to create a new county from this region on the northern side of the mountains, where Manila, just south of the Wyoming border, became the county seat.

Flaming Gorge, Daggett County