1930 Union Pacific stockyard offices turned county mental health clinic and morgue, now abandoned and listed as one of Utah's most endangered historic structures
2410 Washington Blvd, Ogden, UT 84401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Not open to the public; exterior viewing only from the street
Access
Limited Access
Urban sidewalk; building interior is not publicly accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1930 · National Register of Historic Places · Ogden Union Stockyards History · Weber County Mental Health History · Preservation Utah Most Endangered 2025
The Exchange Building went up in 1930 as part of the Ogden Union Stockyards complex, one of the West's major livestock trading hubs during the railroad era. The building housed the administrative offices of the stockyard exchange, where buyers, sellers, and brokers conducted the cattle and sheep transactions that moved through Ogden's rail junction. The stockyards themselves made Ogden a regional economic center throughout the early twentieth century.
In 1959, Weber County purchased the property and repurposed the building as the Weber County Mental Health Institute. For the next several decades it operated as a mental health services clinic, with the basement continuing to serve as the county morgue. The combination of institutional uses layered a second chapter of tragedy — suicides, deaths from natural causes, and at least one documented triple homicide in the 1940s — onto the already fraught history of the stockyards.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural and historical significance to Ogden's commercial past. By the 2000s it had been vacated and left to deteriorate. Ogden City acquired the property in 2013 and spent years seeking developers willing to take on the restoration. A 2022 agreement with a developer collapsed before work began. In April 2026, the City Council approved a new land transfer agreement aimed at preserving and restoring the structure. Preservation Utah placed it on its 2025 Most Endangered list, noting the bones of the structure remain salvageable despite years of neglect.
Sources
The Exchange Building began attracting paranormal investigators in the mid-2000s, when the combination of its morgue basement, its years as a mental health clinic, and its reported history of violent deaths made it a target for local investigation teams. The Paranormal Illumination Society documented a 2011 investigation in which team members captured photographic anomalies in the hallways and EVP recordings they described as voices interacting with each other — not simply responding to investigators' questions but apparently conducting their own conversation.
The Stranger Dimensions site in 2019 highlighted an older EVP from the building in which a voice appears to describe a drowning, a detail that investigators tied speculatively to the morgue's history of processing drowning victims from the Great Salt Lake region. Visit Ogden's official haunted-places page lists the building alongside the Ben Lomond Hotel and Union Station as one of Ogden's three most-cited paranormal locations.
As of 2026 the building remains vacant and inaccessible, and no commercial ghost hunt events are offered there. Independent investigators have historically accessed the building through the property owner; public trespass is not sanctioned.
The Exchange Building stands vacant at 2410 Washington Blvd, currently awaiting restoration after Ogden City approved a preservation agreement in April 2026. The exterior — a sturdy 1930 commercial block — is visible from the street. The interior is not open to the public.
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