FIRST Utah Law Enforcement Officer to Die in the Line of Duty - Salt Lake City, UT
N 40° 46.526 W 111° 51.630
12T E 427385 N 4514185
Rodney Badger drowned while trying to rescue a woman and six children from the Weber River in 1853. He is the first Utah law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty, and he is buried in historic Salt Lake City Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WM12DQK
Location: Utah, United States
Date Posted: 05/06/2020
Views: 1
Rodney Badger is buried with other Badger family members. He has an interesting headstone, as the verbiage -- "was drowned" -- is a little more 19th century, and while it is obviously newer, it has a mid-19th century feel to it. It could be a replacement headstone, it could be someone's doing a remarkable job of channeling those times. It is a rectangular slab of red granite, with the top corners cut out a bit to provide some relief, with some ivy below the inscription. It reads:
In
Memory of
Rodney Badger
who was born Feb. 4th 1824
and was drowned while
trying to rescue
a woman and six children
from the Weber River
on the 29th of April 1853
Aged 29 Years
----*----
Rodney Badger was a person of local significance, important enough to merit a Wikipedia article. A statue honors him at the state capitol building in Salt Lake, and he has a page at the Utah's Fallen site. A Mormon convert -- he had lived with Hyrum Smith as a boy -- he was part of Brigham Young's Vanguard Company which arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, and he turned back on one occasion to help other travelers and rejoin his own family. He was very active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and served as a deputy sheriff in Salt Lake County. Findagrave notes that "Rodney Badger was the first Utah law enforcement officer to lose his life during the performance of his sworn duties. Of course, "Utah" didn't exist in 1853 -- it would not achieve statehood until 1896 -- but there hadn't even been settlement in the area by European-Americans for ten years when he drowned. That's fairly impressive that it took six years to lose a law enforcement officer.
In 1853, Badger was charged by Governor Brigham Young to travel to the Weber River to assist travelers from California. On April 29, he spotted a family whose wagon was stuck in the river, its members in the water. Badger swam out to them and was able to rescue the mother and four of the six children. For whatever reason, probably worn down by the raging current, Badger went under and drowned along with the other two children. Their bodies were found eighteen months later on a sandbar downstream.