Peter Skene Ogden, born in 1794, was an experienced trapper and mountain man who remained with the Hudson's Bay Company after its 1821 merger with the Northwest Fur Company. In November 1824 Ogden was appointed leader of the Snake River Country Expeditions by John McLoughlin, and he was instructed to continue the British policy of creating a "fur desert" between American territory and the southern Columbia River drainage to discourage American trappers from coming into the area.

Ogden, with a brigade of 131, pushed south from Flathead House toward Utah in December 1824. Accompanying the British was a small group of Americans directed by Jedediah Smith. By April the expedition had reached the Bear River, where the two outfits parted company. Ogden continued south along the Bear River to Cub Creek in present Cache Valley, where he learned from Snake Indians that Americans (John H. Weber's brigade) had already trapped the area. The British continued south through present-day Smithfield, Logan, Hyrum, and into the Huntsville area via Paradise Canyon. After trapping the Ogden Valley region, Ogden took his brigade across the divide south of Huntsville and established his southernmost camp near present Mountain Green. Records seem to indicate that Ogden himself did not enter the area of the present-day city which now bears his name, nor is it positively known if he even saw the Great Salt Lake at this time. However, men of his brigade did return from their trapping with accounts of these areas, and it is quite possible that Ogden did observe them.