The museum Syracuse
Five buildings on one block, run by a city and a service club, with a collection that is partly the town itself
The Regional Museum, and the seven markers standing around town.
It opened on 10 May 2002 after years of work by the Syracuse Historical Committee, and the city runs it in partnership with the Syracuse Lions Club. The complex is a main building, a barn, the Waite Barbershop and a one room log cabin that was built in Farmington and moved here, with a fifth room whose ribbon was cut in June 2026. Hours are published to the quarter hour and admission is published nowhere. And the best of it is outdoors: seven historical markers around the city, each with a narrative the museum wrote and nobody else has.
Southern Utah is where I actually work, four hours south of the west shore of Davis County, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is issued: the city's own history, parks, museum, fire, police, secondary water, fireworks and recreation tax pages at syracuseut.gov; Utah State Parks on the island's fee card and its own dated history; the state road layer and the Utah Department of Transportation's 2024 traffic counts for the three routes that end at the causeway; the Census geocoder for the city line; the United States Geological Survey elevation service for the ground itself; the Church's own media kit for the temple; and the operator's own site for the farm. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
What is in the Syracuse Regional Museum, and when is it actually open?
The museum's own page, checked in August 2026, publishes the hours exactly and there is no need to guess at them: Tuesday through Friday from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon, Saturdays from ten to two, with other times available by appointment and a request that groups of ten or more call ahead. The address is 1891 West 1700 South, the phone is 801-614-9674, and the curator is named on the page. It is worth stating plainly because the practical city guide on this site hedges the hours and tells the reader to verify before a visit, and the city publishes them to the quarter hour.
What is there is a complex rather than a building. The city describes the museum as the Main Building, the Barn, the Waite Barbershop and the historic Wilcox Cabin, opened on 10 May 2002 after years of work by the Syracuse Historical Committee, and operated by the City of Syracuse in partnership with the Syracuse Lions Club. Its own statement of what it collects is one sentence: it tells the story of the early social, economic and cultural development of Syracuse and the surrounding areas. As of June 2026 there is a fifth building, and the ribbon was cut on it at eleven in the morning on Saturday 20 June during the city's June week.
The part that makes this worth a page rather than a line is outside the fence. The museum has installed seven historical markers at locations around the city, each with a published narrative on the city's own site and an interactive story map, and every one of the seven is about something that no longer exists. A one room school of 1885. A general store with the town's first telephone. A wooden Buddhist temple of 1925. A diner that was the meeting point for the opening morning of pheasant season. A service club that built a rodeo ground out of the old city dump. A first furrow cut by a fourteen year old. That is a museum whose collection is partly the town itself, and the index of them is on the city site.
The museum, in numbers
10 May 2002
the day it opened, after the Historical Committee's work
5
buildings on the site, the newest from June 2026
7
historical markers the museum has put around the city
Tue to Sat
open, ten to five on weekdays and ten to two on Saturday
The seven markers
A museum that put its collection outdoors, one panel at a time, on ground where the buildings used to be.
Each of the seven carries its own narrative on the city's website, and the narratives are unusually good: dated, specific, and about ordinary commercial and civic life rather than founders. Here is what each one commemorates, checked in August 2026. The city publishes an interactive story map of the locations rather than a list of addresses, so the map is the way to find them.
| Marker | What it commemorates | The dates the city publishes | The detail nobody else carries |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Furrow | David Cook working the first ground under the Homestead Act of 1862 | First furrow sown in 1876; his family joined him in 1879 or 1880 | He was fourteen years old and living alone, and the city's own marker page says he befriended a local bird that summer |
| First School House | The first official schoolhouse in Syracuse | Built 1885; first class, a Sunday school, that December; first formal class January 1886 | One teacher, Thomas H. Phillips of Kaysville, taught all eight grades in one room, with a stable at the back for the horses children rode in on |
| Walker Brothers Store | The general store bought by James T., Daniel H. and Ephraim Walker | Purchased 1891; the first telephone line installed 1901 | The line cost $300 and connected to Hooper, and James T.'s two young daughters took the messages and delivered them to their recipients |
| Buddhist Temple | A wooden temple built on the Barnes estate for Japanese farming families who arrived from 1915 | Dedicated 26 April 1925; merged with the Ogden congregation in March 1980; the building demolished in 1990 | About 20 feet by 40, built of wood by two named carpenters, on land donated by Claude T. Barnes, and used for social gatherings, film nights, farm organisations, judo and teaching Japanese |
| Jim's Sports Center | A diner and hangout also known at one point as the Syracuse Cafe | Run by Jim Rentmeister for 32 years; the pool room lost to storage by 1979 | From the 1960s to the 1980s the whole town gathered here for breakfast on the opening morning of pheasant season, came back for lunch, restocked shells and went out again |
| Syracuse Lions Club | The service club that is still the museum's partner | Chartered 1951; clubhouse built 1970 and 1971 | Before the elementary school took the ground, the club had put tennis courts, baseball diamonds, restrooms and a bowery on it, and one anonymous member lent the clubhouse $10,000 interest free |
| Lady Lions Club | The women's service club alongside it | Established 1963, with leadership changing every two years | Quilting, visits to retirement homes, and sponsorship of the pageant that opens the city's June week |
From the museum's historical markers index and the seven individual marker narratives on syracuseut.gov, all checked in August 2026. The city publishes a story map of the locations rather than street addresses, so no addresses are given here. One further marker at the museum site itself, for the Wilcox Cabin, is transcribed in the Historical Marker Database from a dated photograph and is described in the next section.
The Lions Club, which is the museum's other half
The museum is run by the city in partnership with the Syracuse Lions Club, and the club's own marker narrative explains why that partnership exists rather than being a courtesy line. The club was chartered in 1951 with James Rentmeister as its first president and immediately began providing recreational facilities in a city that had been incorporated for a year. Before the elementary school was built on it, the ground the club used carried tennis courts, baseball diamonds, restrooms and a bowery, all provided by the club and most of it removed when the school went in.
It also published the town's history. Working with Cora Bodily Bybee, the club handled the publishing and sale of a book covering the years 1877 through 1965, which is the underlying source for a great deal of what circulates about this city. The clubhouse went up in 1970 and 1971 under president Clyde Barber, with Helen Barber providing the land and much of the interior and Vern Dickerson the engineering and construction, and one member lending $10,000 at no interest to get it built. Since then, in the city's own words, the club has worked with the city to convert the old city dump into a rodeo ground and to install ground sockets at the city cemetery so that flags can line the driveways for occasions like Memorial weekend.
The details
Getting there
The museum sits on the north side of 1700 South, which is Antelope Drive, between 1800 West and 2000 West, directly opposite Founders Park and a block north of the Community Center. From City Hall it is a two minute drive or a walk of a few minutes. The whole civic block, City Hall, the Community Center, the park and the museum, sits inside about three hundred yards, which is why one Saturday a year the ribbon cutting, the auto show and the parade finish can all happen without anybody moving a car.
Before you go
- Call before driving out for a specific building. The complex has five structures and the city does not publish which of them are open on a given day.
- Groups of ten or more and any visit outside the published hours are handled by appointment, and the museum asks for a call rather than an email for both.
- The seven markers are spread across the city rather than clustered, and the city's story map is the practical way to find them.
- The Waite Barbershop is named on the city's page as one of the four original buildings and nothing else about it is published: no date, no builder, no original location. That is a real gap and it is the museum's to fill.
The cabin
One room, four families, two counties and a grandson with a restoration project in 1972.
The best documented object in the collection is the Wilcox Cabin, and the documentation is on a marker at the museum rather than in any catalogue. The inscription, transcribed in the Historical Marker Database from a photograph, opens with William H. Wilcox's own diary: on 4 March 1905 he and Emily Barber Wilcox moved to Syracuse with everything they owned in an old iron tyred wagon, their furniture consisting of a new bedstead and a dresser, with a cupboard, table, chairs and kitchen stove all handed down from their parents, and unloaded it into a one room log house.
The house was older than the family and older than the town. It had been built by a pioneer of Farmington and later moved here, which is a routine thing to have happened to a log building in nineteenth century Utah and a startling thing to read on a plaque. William's father James Henry Wilcox deeded him the house along with the 160 acre farm he had bought from Christopher Layton on 20 May 1885 for $1,800. William and Emily lived in the one room until 1911. They had ten children, eight boys and two girls, and two of them were born in it.
The marker also lists who else lived in it, which almost no local monument does: an Argyle family, the Will Thurgood family in 1901 and 1902, and the James Barber family from 1902 to 1905. Then it names the people who saved it. Milton and Joyce Wilcox donated the log home to the museum grounds, and the inscription credits Milt's foresight and dedication in restoring it in 1972, which is thirty years before there was a museum for it to stand in.
That is the shape of this whole institution. A one room house from Farmington, moved twice, occupied by four families, restored by a descendant three decades before the museum existed, and now one of five buildings on a block that also holds a barn, a barbershop, a main hall and a room whose ribbon was cut in June. What it does not have, and what would turn a good local museum into a documented one, are dates and origins for the barbershop and the barn, and any National Register status for any of the five. No issuing body publishes any of it, so none of it is asserted here.
A log house built in Farmington, moved here, lived in by four families, and restored in 1972 by a grandson thirty years before there was a museum.
Three things about this museum are unpublished, and one of them is the thing most people want to know before they drive over. The first is admission. The city publishes hours to the quarter hour and no price at all; the June open day was advertised as free, which describes an event rather than a policy, so ring 801-614-9674 rather than assume. The second is the newest building. The city named it in its June schedule as a ribbon cutting for a new annex and, on the same page, as a museum expansion, while the museum's own page still describes a complex of four buildings; nothing about the room's size, cost, contents or funding source is published anywhere. The third is provenance. The Waite Barbershop and the Barn carry no date, no builder and no original location on any city page, and no National Register listing was established for any structure on the site. Those are gaps in the record rather than problems with the museum, and the institution that can close all three is the one at 1891 West 1700 South.
Living with it
A city museum open five days a week on the same block as the park, the hall and the offices.
The practical value of this place to somebody living here is that it is open on ordinary days rather than only on festival Saturdays, and that it is on the block everything else is on. Four civic addresses sit within about three hundred yards on the 1700 to 1900 South stretch between 1891 and 1979 West: the museum, Founders Park, the Community Center and City Hall. A city of thirty two thousand with a walkable civic centre is not a given in north Davis, and this one has it by accident of where the bench put the town in the 1890s rather than by planning.
For a household with school age children the marker programme is the part worth knowing about. Seven panels around the city, each with a narrative published online, make a genuinely usable afternoon that costs nothing, and the subjects are the kind children remember: a fourteen year old alone on a homestead, a telephone that cost three hundred dollars and was answered by two girls who then walked the messages round, a diner where everyone met before pheasant season. The city's story map is the practical tool for it.
For anybody researching a property, the museum is also the right first phone call for anything about the ground. It holds the local material on the 1887 resort and the railway, which has its own page here, and it is the institution that would know about a specific farm, a specific canal or a specific building. The city's history page is good and short; the museum is where the long version lives, and its curator is named on the city site rather than hidden behind a general enquiry address.
What this page will not do is retell the June week, because that is a different subject with its own schedule and its own closures and it is on its own page. The one line that belongs here is that the museum has its biggest day of the year on the final Saturday of that week, with blacksmith demonstrations running every hour, pioneer games and museum tours from noon to five, and a model train display in the park across the road. The other three hundred and sixty four days it is a quiet complex on the north side of Antelope Drive.
The one big day
The Founders Park Week
Eight days in June across the street, with the closures and the schedule hour by hour.
Read the guideThe oldest subject
The Bathing Resort
The 1887 railway and the four seasons of beach, dated to the newspapers that reported them.
Read the guideThe newest building
The Syracuse Temple
Granite from Italy, glass from Italy, and the lake's own wetland plants in the windows.
Read the guideMoving here
Living on the Bluff
Why the town centre ended up on the high side, and what an address here signs up for.
The mover pageThe practical side
The Syracuse city guide
The figures half of an address, which is a different page for a different question.
Open the guideThe wider county
Davis County on The Local
Fifteen towns on this run of the lake shore, and the shared subjects written once.
The region hubKeep reading
More of Syracuse on The Local.
The road
The Causeway
Seven miles of county road, and a tollbooth standing just inside the city line.
Read the guideThe week
The Founders Park Week
Eight days in June, a six way roundabout, and the tax that paid for the park.
Read the guide1887
The Bathing Resort
A railroad built to reach a beach, and a lake that took the beach back by 1891.
Read the guideThe temple
The Syracuse Temple
Italian granite, Italian glass, and the wetland's own plants in the windows.
Read the guideThe harvest
Black Island Farms
Eight acres of maze, four more of them haunted, on the flat ground west of town.
Read the guideMoving here
Living on the Bluff
A hundred and twenty feet of fall across four miles, and a road that follows it.
Read the guideThe companion
Syracuse, in full
A county road west, a tollbooth inside the city line, and a town selling the trip since 1887.
Read the pageQuick answers
The museum, answered.
Tuesday through Friday from 10:00am to 5:00pm and Saturdays from 10:00am to 2:00pm, with other times available by appointment. The city asks that tours outside those hours, and any group of ten or more, be arranged by calling first. The address is 1891 West 1700 South, Syracuse, and the phone is 801-614-9674. Those hours are published on the museum's own city page, checked in August 2026; the practical city guide on this site hedges them and tells the reader to verify, which is unnecessary because the city prints them exactly.
The city publishes no admission price anywhere, which is a genuine gap rather than a hint. The one price statement in circulation describes the June open day and hands on history afternoon as free, and that is an event statement rather than an admission policy. The honest instruction is to ring 801-614-9674 before driving over, particularly if you want a specific building open, because the complex now has five structures and the city does not publish which of them are staffed on a given day.
On 10 May 2002, after what the city describes as years of hard work by the dedicated members of the Syracuse Historical Committee. It is operated by the City of Syracuse in partnership with the Syracuse Lions Club, and its own statement of purpose is that it tells the story of the early social, economic and cultural development of Syracuse and the surrounding areas. A fifth building was added in 2026: the city's June schedule listed a ribbon cutting for it at eleven in the morning on Saturday 20 June, describing it on the same page as both a new annex building and a museum expansion.
The city lists the Main Building, the Barn, the Waite Barbershop and the historic Wilcox Cabin, and a fifth room opened in June 2026. The cabin is the best documented: a one room log house built by a pioneer of Farmington and later moved to Syracuse, deeded to William H. Wilcox by his father along with a 160 acre farm bought from Christopher Layton on 20 May 1885 for $1,800, lived in by the Wilcox family from 4 March 1905 until 1911 and by three other families before them, and restored in 1972 by Milton Wilcox, who then donated it to the museum grounds.
Seven panels the museum has installed at locations around the city, each with its own narrative published on the city's website and an interactive story map for finding them. They commemorate the first furrow, the first schoolhouse, the Walker Brothers Store, a Buddhist temple, Jim's Sports Center, the Syracuse Lions Club and the Lady Lions Club. Every one of the seven is about something that no longer stands, which makes the marker programme the museum's most interesting holding: a collection that is partly the town itself, at the addresses where the buildings used to be.
The first person to work this ground under the Homestead Act of 1862. Syracuse City's history page records that he plowed in the spring of 1876 and sowed grain that fall, and that Joseph Bodily homesteaded eighty acres and built the first log cabin in 1877. The museum's own First Furrow marker page adds the detail nobody else carries: Cook was fourteen years old at the time and lived alone until his family joined him in 1879 or 1880. The practical city guide on this site dates settlement to 1878 in three places, and the city's own two pages say 1876 and 1877.
Yes, from 1925 to 1980, and the museum marks the site. The city's marker narrative records that Japanese families came to Syracuse between 1915 and 1919, many of them working on the Barnes estate; that Claude T. Barnes donated land for a building; that the building was about twenty feet by forty, made of wood, with Mr Akasaka and Mr Yamada as the main carpenters; and that the dedication was held on 26 April 1925. It was used for social gatherings, film nights, farm organisations, judo and teaching the language as well as for services. The congregation merged with Ogden's in March 1980 and the building was demolished in 1990.
More of this city than the club's name suggests. Its own marker narrative records that it was chartered in 1951 with James Rentmeister as first president and began providing recreational facilities immediately; that before the elementary school was built on the ground, the club had put tennis courts, baseball diamonds, restrooms and a bowery on it; that it published and sold a history of Syracuse covering 1877 to 1965, working with Cora Bodily Bybee; that its clubhouse was built in 1970 and 1971 with an anonymous member lending $10,000 at no interest; and that it has since worked with the city to turn the old city dump into a rodeo ground and to install flag sockets at the cemetery.
It is a small city museum and it behaves like one, which means the answer depends on what you want. If you want an hour with the local record of an 1887 lakeside resort, a canning town and a farming bench, it is the only place that holds it and its curator is named on the city site rather than hidden behind a general enquiry line. If you want a full afternoon, pair it with the seven markers, which are free and spread across the city. What is not published, and would materially improve the visit, is admission, the newest room's contents and the dates and origins of the barbershop and the barn.
Five buildings on one block and seven markers spread across a city.
A museum that opened in 2002 with a committee behind it and a service club beside it is a fair description of how this city does most things, which is quietly and with volunteers. What that means for somebody moving here is that the record of the ground is reachable: a named curator, published hours, five buildings and seven panels around the town that between them cover a first furrow, a one room school, a general store, a wooden temple, a diner and two service clubs. If you are researching a specific street, a specific farm or a specific canal in this city, that is the first phone call and it is a local number. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works this end of the county, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.