Camp Floyd and the Stagecoach Inn

In 1858, after President James Buchanan sent an army to Utah to deal with a feared Mormon rebellion, General Albert Sidney Johnston led some 3,500 soldiers to the dry valley of Fairfield, west of Utah Lake, and founded Camp Floyd, named for Secretary of War John B. Floyd. The Utah War had ended without a battle, so the soldiers spent their time in garrison, building about 400 structures and guarding the overland routes. At its height the camp was the largest concentration of US troops in the country, and the nearby town swelled to around 7,000 people, with a rough fringe of saloons and a red-light district nicknamed Frogtown.

The camp was renamed Fort Crittenden after Floyd resigned in December 1860, and the troops marched off to fight in the Civil War in July 1861. Most of its buildings were sold, wrecked or moved, and Fairfield shrank to a village. What survives is the military cemetery, a commissary building and the nearby Stagecoach Inn, also called the John Carson House, which served as a hotel and stage stop until the transcontinental railroad opened in 1869 and was a Pony Express station in 1860–61. The Carson family gave it to the state in 1958, and the park opened in 1964.

Stories of ghosts have been told at the park for decades. Staff and visitors have described rocking chairs moving on their own, an apparition at the old schoolhouse, odd voices, and the smell of perfume, cigarettes and cigars. One person said they saw a dress hanging in mid-air. In June 2003 the Paranormal Society of Utah, a team from Ogden, spent a night investigating the schoolhouse, the inn, the commissary and the cemetery as a follow-up to an earlier visit; members reported three voice recordings, a dozen orbs on camera and flashing electromagnetic meters, and said their results suggested at least three ghosts. Park manager Mark Trotter joined them, telling a reporter that he was not afraid and thought it was neat.

The park has since embraced the stories as an autumn attraction. It opened a paranormal investigation to the public in October 2008, and later managers have run guided ghost evenings in which visitors learn to use cameras and recorders. Reporters who have covered them note that the park does not claim proof; the manager in 2008 said he did not necessarily believe the tales but found the investigations fun. The names of the soldiers, travellers and townspeople said to be behind the activity are not given, and the tales have the character of local legend.

Rocking chairs said to move by themselves, an apparition at the schoolhouse, voices on recorders and EMF meters, unexplained perfume, tobacco and cigar smells, orbs in photos, and a dress seen floating in mid-air.

The Stagecoach Inn, the old Fairfield schoolhouse, the surviving commissary building and the army cemetery.

The Fairfield site is well known to Utah history lovers as the home of Johnston’s Army and the Pony Express, and the ghost events fit a long tradition of Halloween programming at western state parks. Regional writers repeat the Camp Floyd stories in collections of Utah ghosts.