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Erda, Lake Point, Stansbury Park, Tooele, Tooele County, utah
Erda is in Tooele County, Utah located just south of Stansbury Park and just north of the county seat of Tooele. The population was 4,642 at the 2010 census, a significant increase from the 2000 figure of 2,473.
Marilyn Shields, a member of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers who works at the nearby Benson Grist Mill, said there are two stories about how Erda, settled in 1851 and originally called Batesville and Rose Springs, earned its official name.
In one version, Shields says, a wheat and alfalfa farmer named Pierre Apollinaire DeRoubaix, who moved to the area in 1870, called it Erda after a town in France where he once lived. Even though there is no city or town in France named Erda, there is a small village named Erdeven which could have been Pierre Droubay’s home town.
“The other more well-known story is that the San Pedro-Salt Lake Railroad that ran along the Oquirrh Mountains named the town Erda after a German word that means earth,” says Shields.
So which story is correct?(*)
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Pierre Apollinaire Droubay is born on January 1st, 1835 in Walincourt (a small village close to Cambrai, North of France). His family lived there for at least 2 centuries. Erdeven is a small town South of Morbihan (South of Brittany, France). There’s no connection between Droubay and Britanny.
Jean-Paul DOUGLAS, do you know about the other theory on the origin of the name (namely that a worker from the San Pedro-Salt Lake Railroad running along the Oquirrh Mountains to the east of Erda named the town after a German word for earth)? I have heard that, but I have not seen written evidence…I am curious as I live in Erda.