Following outbreaks
of typhoid fever and diphtheria, voters bonded for a $10,000 culinary
water system, which was completed in 1912. In 1913 construction began
on a new LDS meetinghouse. Mendon students went to South Cache High
School in Hyrum on the interurban electric railroad (which looped through
Cache Valley all the way from Mendon to Hyrum and thence north to Richmond via Logan ). Electric interurban service began in 1914. A connecting
line was run from Mendon to Brigham City.
The railway was used to haul sugar beets to the refineries. Following
peak production in 1920, local sugar beets fell victim to duty-free
cane sugar imports, and the interurban railroad ceased operation in
1947.
The local May
Day celebrations date back to 1874 and feature the selection of a queen
and a dance of maidens around a maypole. Since World War II Mendon has
increasingly become less of a farming village and more of a "bedroom"
community for residents who commute to work in Logan or elsewhere.
See: Doran J.
Baker, Charles S. Peterson, and Gene A. Ware, Isaac Sorensen's History
of Mendon: A Pioneer Chronicle of a Mormon Settlement (1988).
Doran J. Baker