ragtown history

Magna was founded in 1906 as a farming community, but later expanded when the Utah Copper Concentrate Mill was built here. Because the population explosion happened so quickly, the as yet unnamed town received the nickname of "ragtown". Why Ragtown? Prospectors, drifters and miners moved in and set up tents and shanties, or lived in dugouts - sometimes for years at a time - as a result, it looked like a bunch of rags. When the mining company finally decided that it should house its workers in proper homes, most of magna's 300 structures were built. The mining company then began to call the town "pleasant green", but due to large numbers of "pleasant greens" in Utah, the town was later named Magna after the newly built Magna mill.