As directed by LDS President Brigham Young, on July 24, 1855, Captain Briant Stringham, Simon Baker, Andrew Moffat, and Brigham Young Jr., located headquarters for the Elkhorn Cattle Ranch on a spring of water near the west bank of the Blacksmith Fork River, immediately southwest of the present site of Providence. Subsequently, in the early spring of 1857, Samuel, Joseph, Aboile, and Nephi Campbell, and John Dunn, crossed the mountains from North Ogden into Cache Valley, seeking a new place to settle. To them, the town they called "Ogden's Hole" was becoming too crowded. They pitched camp at the present site of Providence, at a spring and pond where a creek from a canyon in the Bear River Range entered the alluvial lowland. To assess the fertility of the soil, the explorers broke sod and plowed a long furrow.