On any given day, hundreds of University of Utah students might pass by Building 655 tucked between mature trees on the eastern edge of upper campus without giving the modest one-story house a second glance.

It doesn’t command attention like the sandstone buildings of Fort Douglas or the sweeping views from Presidents Circle. The sagging porch railing and cedar-shingled roof reveal little about its extraordinary past.

“You have a national treasure,” said Chris Merritt, Utah’s state historic preservation officer, during a recent tour of the building. “This is the oldest building on campus. The last remaining building from the original Camp Douglas.”

For more than 160 years, Building 655 has been witness to the transformation of the land it stands on—from a frontier military outpost to Utah’s flagship research university. It predates statehood by more than three decades. It stood long before the transcontinental railroad was completed in Utah, and it sheltered military members before electricity, automobiles and the invention of the telephone.

And it’s where the story of why the U is here at all begins.

The history of Building 655 began in October 1862. The Civil War was entering its second year, and the federal government was concerned about the American West. California’s gold fueled the Union economy, and the overland trails connecting the coasts had become strategically important.

Utah Territory sat squarely in the middle.

“The U.S. Army and the president still saw Utah Territory as a major concern,” said Merritt. “It was a major thoroughfare connecting California eastward.”

The Army dispatched California Volunteers under Col. Patrick Edward Connor to establish a military presence overlooking Salt Lake City.

His reasons for selecting this hillside above the city were both strategic and political.

“They wanted to be closer to the territorial capital,” Merritt said, “and keep an eye on those folks at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Winter arrived before permanent buildings could be built, so soldiers dug shelter directly into the hillside. When contractors were restoring Building 655 just a few years ago, they found one of those original soldier-dugouts hidden beneath the floorboards. Now, a trapdoor opens to a steep ladder leading to a tiny room barely tall enough to stand up. It’s one of the few surviving physical reminders of Camp Douglas’ first winter.

“This is one of those cool things no one even knew existed until the 2000s,” said Merritt.

By spring 1863, the soldiers began replacing temporary shelters with adobe buildings, and Building 655 became the post commander’s residence where he oversaw supplies, mail, contracts, merchants and the day-to-day operations that kept Camp Douglas running.

The original structure was a modest T-shaped adobe house built using locally made sun-dried bricks. Inside, the exposed 1863 adobe brick chimney is still a central component of the house as it stands today. Kitchens, bedrooms and porches were added over the years as Fort Douglas expanded.

Despite its frontier appearance, Building 655 represented cutting-edge infrastructure.

Its thick adobe walls naturally regulate indoor temperatures, remaining cool during Utah summers and retaining heat during winter.

“I’ve been in here when it’s been 102 degrees outside,” Merritt said. “It’s still probably 80 degrees in here.”

Most Salt Lake City residents hauled water from wells during the 1860s. Fort Douglas had plumbing. Wooden pipes carved from solid logs with holes bored through their centers were joined together to create one of Utah’s earliest water systems, created by diverting Red Butte Creek.

“These buildings had running water a decade or more before most residents in downtown Salt Lake City,” said Merritt.

As Camp Douglas became Fort Douglas in the 1870s, the building changed to accommodate various needs, with active-duty personnel occupying the house until 1979.

Even today, original doors, fireplaces, framing and flooring survive beneath layers of later renovations.

The fort that created the U

Without Fort Douglas, which stretched a mile in every direction, there likely would not be a University of Utah campus overlooking Salt Lake City.

When Congress authorized the Base Realignment and Closure process in 1990, nearly all of Fort Douglas was transferred to the U.

“You cannot have the University of Utah without Fort Douglas,” said Merritt.

In truth, nearly every student who attends the U learns, studies or lives on land once occupied by the U.S. Army.

“If the military reservation hadn’t been here,” said Merritt, “this would have been homesteads and farms.”

For decades after the Army left, Building 655 served as a house museum leased by the Fort Douglas Military Museum.

When Merritt first entered it in 2024, however, it had become something like an attic filled with broken furniture and garbage. Forgotten was the dugout where Union soldiers once slept through winter and the fireplace that warmed families before Utah became a state.

Long before lecture halls, research labs and residence halls filled Salt Lake’s foothills, Building 655 stood watch over a frontier military camp that would eventually become one of America’s leading public research universities.

As the U prepares to receive the final acres of Fort Douglas on Aug. 8, Building 655 is an example of an extraordinary past hiding in plain sight, with rooms that have witnessed nearly every chapter of Utah’s modern history.