The Sycamore district, and the courthouse hiding inside the courthouse.

Start at the oldest. The Alfred Stevenson House at 36 North Main Street is the earliest known building in the district, built as a single cell log and adobe house about 1853 and enlarged into a frame crosswing in 1875. A few doors north, the Williams Rock Barn at 56 North Main is a stone barn built in 1855 that later served as a livery stable and, as of the 2011 nomination, had been converted to commercial use as a gallery and reception center. Check the present tenant on the ground; a fourteen year old form is a reliable guide to a building and an unreliable one to a business.

Two blocks north is the fieldstone. The Farmington Rock Chapel at 272 North Main Street is a vernacular Greek Revival church of native fieldstone. The nomination dates the building 1863 in its description and records that construction began in 1862 to a design by Reuben Broadbent, who also supervised it, and that the community built it over two years in time taken away from work in their fields. It was enlarged in 1941 and 1980. The form calls it one of the oldest continuously used meetinghouses in the state, and that is the nomination's assessment rather than an independent one. It is also the building where Aurelia Spencer Rogers established the Primary organization in 1878, beginning with 224 children; the program was adopted more widely by 1880. Rogers was also a suffragist. The city records that a mural inside the chapel commemorates the founding.

Between the two runs the town's civic history. The Hector C. Haight House at 208 North Main Street is an unusual two story adobe double cell house of about 1857 that also served as the Union Hotel, individually listed in 1985 and clad in aluminum siding in the 1950s. The Farmington Tithing Office at 108 North Main, built in 1907 in Victorian Eclectic style with arched window heads, was individually listed in 1985 as well, was bought by the city for use as a city hall in 1917, and now holds the Farmington City Historic Museum. Current City Hall, at 160 South Main, was completed in 2010 in a deliberately historic idiom, and the nomination counts it as a resource of the district: a brand new building inside a federal historic district, listed as part of it.

The commercial corner is State and Main, and it is small and dense. The Farmington Commercial and Manufacturing Company opened for business in 1891 in a two part block at the north east corner, selling lumber, nails, fresh meats, hardware and shoes, with an addition in 1910. The telephone company building of about 1896 sits immediately east at 21 East State Street, with another one part commercial block at 23 East. Across the junction at 12 West State is the Davis County Bank building, organized by local merchants in 1891 in a rented room inside the new hardware store, moved to its own offices in 1930 and renovated and expanded in modern commercial style in 1960 with plate glass and native fieldstone. The nomination names Wells Fargo as its 2011 tenant; branches close, so confirm the current occupant on the ground.

Four more, if you have the time. The stone Haight and Hinman House at 121 West 600 North was built about 1867 and there is another Haight built stone house at about 145 West 600 North from around 1870, both of them at the district's northern turn toward Park Lane. The Oliver Lee Robinson barn at 67 West 100 North served as a barn from 1875 until it was transformed into a residence in 1897. The Robinson and Richards house of about 1902 at 68 West 100 North was home to James Henry Robinson, who worked at the hardware company for more than forty years and served two terms as mayor from 1904 to 1908. And a brick house of about 1893 at 125 South Main now houses the Davis County Children's Justice Center.

The nomination is unusually direct about why sixty six historic buildings are still standing here, and it is not a preservation story. Main Street carried the historic state highway route between Salt Lake City and Ogden. Then Interstate 15 was built to the west in the 1960s and moved the traffic off Main, and major commercial development went north of the historic core in the late 1980s. The form's own conclusion is that both events helped preserve the character of the district as major highway and commercial construction bypassed the downtown core. Nobody protected this street. It was simply left alone, and being left alone for sixty years turned out to be the most effective preservation policy available.

That is also why the district and the new west side are not in competition. The commercial weight of this city moved across the freeway decades ago and is still moving, which is a separate page. The consequence for the old core is that it is a residential street with a small commercial corner and a set of civic buildings on it, and a household buying into it is buying quiet, mature trees and a two lane road rather than proximity to shops.

The trees deserve their own paragraph because they are the second official name. The nomination describes a two lane Main Street with sidewalks, curbs, gutters and on street parking, lined with mature deciduous trees, predominantly sycamores, and calls the whole thing the Sycamore tree lined district. The Clark Lane form records the same habit a mile west and dates it: rows of trees have lined that street since probably the 1860s, replanted whenever they were removed. Two federal documents, written seventeen years apart by different people, both decided the trees were the defining feature. Farmington City's own history page says the same thing in its own words, describing the city as known for its tree lined streets.

The last practical note is about what is not yet documented here. The National Park Service has continued adding individual Farmington houses to the register in recent years, several of them on the 100 East and 100 North blocks a few minutes from City Hall, but the Park Service document server did not return nomination text for the most recent Farmington additions when it was checked in August 2026. This page therefore names only the listings whose nominations it actually read. If you are researching a specific house, the two places to go are the National Park Service and the city's Historic Preservation Commission, and the museum in the old Tithing Office is a working repository: the 2011 nomination lists it as one of the sources for its own research. Its hours and admission are not published anywhere I could find, so call the city first.