Chesterfield, Utah

Miscellaneous
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Just heading to sleep after getting home very late from a wonderful evening with old friends.

I’ll follow up with my own thoughts and comments late tomorrow (as I have commitments for most of the day), but I’m curious to know if anyone on the board knows of, lived in, or has any personal stories or recollections of Chesterfield, Utah.

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Same Chesterfield that was just off West Valley City? Back in the day, it was pretty scary when reading meters.

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Sorry for starting an odd thread and leaving it vacant for so long…

Yes, @Ute_With_Dogs, exactly that Chesterfield…

Chesterfield is an unincorporated small area of Salt Lake County, with an unusual and interesting history (A Brief History of Chesterfield — West Valley City History).

It is located in the northeast corner of West Valley City, bounded roughly by:

  • N/S: Interstate 201/3100 South
  • E/W: Jordan River/Redwood Road

which likely means most of you are completely unfamiliar with it.

My familiarity with Chesterfield, and the humor it represents to me are defined as follows:

  1. At age 14, when I met my (much later to become) wife, her father would often say to his 3 daughters, If you can’t act better than that, we’ll have to sell our house and move to Chesterfield.
  2. At age 17, I had a wonderful half-Hispanic girlfriend whose parents were divorced and whose (somewhat derelict) non-hispanic father lived in Chesterfield. Meeting him at his home was my first venture into the area.
  3. In my early 30’s, when I was involved in a computer technology startup in the late 80’s with offices a handful of miles away, I and my hard working young staff of developers would run through the area late in the afternoon, to revive our energy to work late into the evening (it paid off). I formed my mixed impression of the area as a beat-up downtrodden, crime-ridden area with a fascinating collection of historical homes (in various states of disrepair).
  4. In my 50s, I had an elderly neighbor, Wally (life-long Ute fan) in his early 90’s whose wife also in her 90’s had chosen a much younger “cleaning lady”, named Deborah, as her most important life companion. When Wally introduced Deborah as my wife’s cleaning lady from Chesterfield, Utah, Deborah would “correct him” by saying, “No, Wally, I’m from Murray, remember?”. He’d wink at me as he was sure I knew what he meant.

I’m sure there have always been a lot a great people that have lived at some point in their lives in Chesterfield Utah, but if someone introduces you as being from there, it is likely not a complement.

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Being an old person and think there’s some TV shows, I hear the term Chesterfield and I automatically think of a particular model of sofa or couch

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Enjoyed reading your remembrance, for some reason it elicits the narrative of Dr. Evil about his childhood. Do you make meat helmets in the springtime?

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Yes, back in the late 1990’s, when I was first hired on with RMP, the Chesterfield route was like falling back into another era. Some of the houses still had dirt floors. I’m not sure which was eerie-er, Chesterfield or Swede Town.

Swede Town I’m more familiar with as my Great Aunt Nina was raised there and they often walked the RR tracks looking for coal to heat their very “cozy” home. It’s still there. Talk about a step back in time, during present day.

*Edited to correct some spelling. It’s not leather town.

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Yeah Swede Town, so named because it was settled by Nordic immigrants. Landmarked for years by the infamous Swede Town Pub, which to my knowledge didn’t shut down until pretty recently.

I’d say like 99% of folks have no idea that the neighborhood exists, tucked away between tracks, refineries and industrial buildings. As far as I know the park is still there and the old church building/community house is still standing.

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Ah, Swede Town… that’s another favorite of my father-in-law, and my grandfather, who worked his entire life for the Union Pacific Railroad. They never met each other, but If anyone in either of their families ever complained about the family’s home, or living conditions, they would each reply, “at least we don’t live in Swede Town!”.

Salt Lake also had Japantown, Little Italy, Greek Town, Plumb Alley, where Chinese immigrants congregated, and I’m sure others I’ve never heard of.

And like every city in the country at the time, there were red light districts, the first being Commercial Street (now Regent Street), later moved for a time to a city constructed Stockade, on west Second South, both of which have well documented histories. When my father was a young Police Officer in the early 60s, he was for a time assigned to the Vice Squad, and prostitution was then largely limited to the bars in the area where the Stockade had been located.

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