St. Paul United Methodist Church

Church History

Beginnings

St. Paul United Methodist Church has a long, interesting history. The Church began in 1874 as the Bingham Canyon Methodist Church. The church was located in the town of Bingham Canyon, a copper mining community and served the residents there for many years. Another Methodist-sponsored church, the Highland Boy Community House served residents of the town of Highland Boy, also in Bingham Canyon.

The Bingham Canyon and Highland Boy congregations merged and consolidated at Copperton, Utah, and furnished the building with items, such as the organ, taken from the former church buildings. Those two towns were eventually abandoned and demolished as the Kennecott Bingham copper mine expanded onto the land that they occupied. Over the years, the name of the church changed to Saint Paul Community Methodist Church and then Saint Paul United Methodist Church. Click here for a magazine article about the church. And here is another old article that appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune a while back.

The black and white historical photos of Bingham Canyon listed below were found in the church records.

• Bingham Canyon Photo 1
• Bingham Canyon Photo 2
• Bingham Canyon Photo 3
• Bingham Canyon Photo 4
• Bingham Canyon Photo 5
• Bingham Canyon Photo 6
• Bingham Canyon Photo 7

Church Building

At the end of World War Two, the Department of Defense sold the church building to the congregation. The building had originally been built as one of several base chapels for Camp Kearns, an Army Air Corps installation closed at the end of the war. The chapel was used by multiple faith communities at Camp Kearns, including Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. The building was transported and placed at its current location on land donated by the Kennecott Copper Corperation. (A similar chapel is located at Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah near Ogden, and a congregation member found another sister chapel at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.)

Post card view of Army Chapel. Compare to present day photo on About Us page.

Historical photo of Chapel at Camp Kearns

Army Chapel number stenciled on wall in back room of building

Another historical photo of Chapel at Camp Kearns

A typical Religious Service card and photo of people worshiping at Camp Kearns is reproduced below, courtesy of Pam Todd of the Kearns Historical Society.

An interesting trivia tidbit is that the Army assumed that the buildings at Camp Kearns would only last about 7 years. Our building is over 60 years old and is still much the same in exterior and interior appearance as when it was first built.

The church houses memorial plaques dedicated to the members of those copper mining communities who served and died in World War Two. The bell from one of the old church buildings is also in the lobby. In February, 2007, our church building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Present Day

St. Paul's is a popular location for the makers of movies and television programs filmed in Utah. We have hosted several shooting sessions of the televison program "Touched By An Angel, including the final two episodes of the show, entitled Episode #921: “I Will Walk With You, Part One" and Episode #922: “I Will Walk With You, Part Two". If you click on the link for Episode 922 and look at the photos on the page, you can see the second and third pictures down on the right hand side were taken in St. Paul's sanctuary. Also, the two bottom photos in the left column were taken on the highway that leads up to Copperton from the Salt Lake Valley.

Updated: 2/28/2008