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Providence Utah's Official Site

Situated immediately east of the confluence of Spring Creek with the Logan River, the town lies astride a delta at the mouth of Providence Canyon and beneath 9,000-foot (2,700 m) Big Baldy Mountain. The settlement was located on Spring Creek to take advantage of water, arable land, timber resources, and existing trails.

For more than a hundred years, the major activity of most of the people of Providence was farming. Irrigation canals were dug from the Spring Creek and from the Blacksmith Fork and Logan rivers. The livestock industry included the raising of beef cattle (1859), honey bees (1866), horses (1870), dairy cattle (1874), poultry (1918), and foxes (1928). The horticulture industry included growing grain and alfalfa; apple, cherry, pear, and prune orchards; and peas, beans, and sugar beets. Beginning in 1886 Joseph Alastor Smith established Edgewood Hall as a nursery and dairy operation on the bench overlooking Providence. After its twenty-eight-room manor burned to the ground on Labor Day of 1935, the 140-acre (0.57 km²) estate was acquired by Wall Street financier and Logan native L. Boyd Hatch. An elegant formal estate was created by Hatch, but he sold out in 1953 to cattleman Theron Bringhurst.

The commercial activities of Providence included private mercantile shops of Rice, Hargraves, and Theurer plus a ZCMI Co-op store (1869–1912). Many years after the Co-op structure burned, Watkins and Sons Printing established a business in a remodeled and expanded facility. Other enterprises included molasses mills, a sawmill, lime kilns, brickyards, blacksmith shops, and an early automobile service station. The sugar factory of David Eccles and Charles Nibley began refining sugar beets in Providence in 1901 and operated for twenty-five years. Millions of tons of limestone for this and other refineries in the Pacific Northwest were quarried from Providence Canyon. The Utah Idaho Central Railroad Company extended its electric interurban line from Logan and established a depot in Providence in 1912. The railroad hauled limestone, farm produce, and passengers throughout Cache Valley as well as to Corinne andOgden and beyond via a connection with the Oregon Short Line Railroad company. Accompanying the UIC were electric lights, the telegraph, and the telephone. The last railroad train ran through town in 1947.

With the coming of statehood to Utah and with the population exceeding a thousand in the 1890s, Providence was organized as a town corporation. In 1897 Hopkin Mathews became town board president. Providence became a third-class city on 19 July 1929, with James Hansen elected mayor.

Commencing with its first subdivision in 1962, Providence changed at an accelerating pace from a farming community into a "bedroom" suburb of Logan. Fields began to give way to developer tracts of individually owned, single-family houses on small lots. Although there is a spattering of home enterprises, most commercial activities have disappeared from Providence. A major employer of Providence citizens is Utah State University, which at its founding in 1888 seriously considered the Providence bench for its location. Other residents commute to Thiokol Corporation facilities or Hill Air Force Base as well as to smaller business firms and institutions in and around Logan.

Information provided by Wikipedia.org.