More on Val Holley's Book, (Cont.d) Oct. 13, 2013 And ladies, according to local legend, weren't the only ones who thought the street was unsavory. "You have the story that Al Capone came here because he wanted to expand his mafia empire, walked 25th Street, and said, 'It's too rough a town for me,' and left," said Sarah Langsdon, associate curator of special collections at Weber State University. In the 1950s and beyond, parents were still warning their kids to stay away from 25th Street — so of course, local teens went to check it out. "We would drive through town, and 25th Street was just kind of a thrill ride with your windows rolled up," said Lee Witten, who works in the Union Station archives. "We'd see drunks, and there was an alley between 24th and 25th streets where we could drive behind the buildings — we'd go see if you could see red lights in the windows in the tenements." I Culture clash The key to explaining 25th Street's notoriety, according to Holley, is understanding how the coming of the railroad changed Ogden. The city was settled by Mormon pioneers, but the railroad brought newcomers who were not members of the church. "So many of the hell-on-wheels people from Corinne came down to Ogden, after the railroad abandoned Corinne," said Witten. "There were some legitimate businesses — hotels, restaurants and mercantiles — but there was also the darker element." The prostitutes, gamblers and alcohol peddlers were shocking to the original settlers, but it was the legitimate businessmen who really shook things up. "You had the dominant religion struggling to retain political dominance, while at the same time the lif eblood of Ogden's economy, which was the railroad, was leveling the playing field," said Holley. "Beginning in about 1887, Ogden was discovered by investors, capitalists, entrepreneurs.... As a railroad town, there were enormous possibilities there, so the demographics were really changing — the number of non-Mormon voters in Ogden was increasing." The U.S. government tipped the scales by passing the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which banned polygamy. Practicing polygamists were no longer allowed to vote, and neither were their wives or daughters — the Edmunds- Tucker Act removed women's voting rights, which had been recognized by The Church of Latter-day Saints of Jesus 210 Fred J. Kiesel was Ogden's first non-Mormon mayor. Photo courtesy Special Collections, WSU Christ-led territorial legislature in 1870. "In 1889, Ogden became the first major city in Utah to have a non-Mormon government," Holley said. "The Liberal Party came to power in Ogden. The entire city government went Liberal — the council, aldermen, judges, everything." Fred J. Kiesel was the new mayor. He and his political allies set out to, as they put it, make Ogden "an American city." The change in leadership didn't sit well with the LDS settlers, who ran candidates through the People's Party. "That is the point at which 25th Street became notorious, because the People's Party used 25th Street as a political cudgel to discredit and disparage the Liberal Party. It became such a political hot potato that later generations mistakenly believed that the Liberal Party relaxed the municipal ordinances and allowed gambling and prostitution to flourish." Holley says the minutes of city meetings show that the new leaders did not relax those laws. "There are all sorts of examples, well-documented examples, of the Liberal Party doing its job of enforcing municipal laws in Ogden," he said. "In their first two years, they increased the size of the police force many times, as you would expect in a city growing in population. What's more, twice the Liberal city council voted down proposals to extend the hours of operation of saloons." In spite of their efforts, the political fighting gave Ogden a black eye, and caused 25th Street's reputation to swell.