People Drive From All Over Utah Just To Drink From The Stump At Bicentennial Park
By Catherine Armstrong|Published May 06, 2020
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Catherine Armstrong
Author
Writer, editor and researcher with a passion for exploring new places. Catherine loves local bookstores, independent films, and spending time with her family, including Gus the golden retriever, who is a very good boy.
If you’ve had the chance to travel around the state of Utah, you may have found that the taste of the drinking water varies from one place to another. You might enjoy delicious water straight from your tap in Murray, but if you live in Magna, the water definitely has a less-than-ideal flavor.
One way to get tasty water is to find it from a spring or well. There’s a tiny little park in North Ogden that has water that’s so good that people drive from all over to taste it!
While the park offers a shady respite, people come from all over for a different reason. The water fountain you see here isn't just any ordinary fountain. It has a cool history, and holds a special place in the hearts of North Ogden residents.
Back in the early 1930s, Clarence Barker drilled a well for irrigation, and found that the water was clean, clear, and delicious. The owner of a nearby hamburger stand piped in the well water to his property, then dragged a large cottonwood tree stump there. The huge stump required the strength of four horses to put it in place.
The owner of the hamburger stand, Joe Baliff, installed a drinking fountain in the stump, and placed a sign advertising his business there. The sign read, "Good water, isn't it? Try our hamburgers."
Over the years, the hamburger stand and its sign went by the wayside, but the tree and its fountain still provided fresh, clean drinking water to the anyone who wanted to bring a container and fill it.
You can read all about the history of the original stump and its piped-in well water on the sign in front of the fountain.
In 1998, city leaders had a fiberglass version of the original tree created. The water still comes from a well on the Barker property, and it's tested for safety twice per month. Stop by for a sip at the fountain...
