Samuel Sharp Walker, Joseph Robinson Walker, David Frederick Walker, and Matthew Henry Walker immigrated from England with their family in 1850, spent a short time in St. Louis, and reached Utah in 1852, where they worked as clerks and errand runners for merchant William Nixon in Salt Lake City, Fairfield, and other Utah towns. In 1859 they started their own store in Fairfield after obtaining a wagon load of surplus goods on credit, then sold the merchandise to soldiers at Camp Floyd at a huge profit. In the store's first year, they bought the only safe in Fairfield from a passing wagon train, and the youngest brother, Matt, age 14, managed bags of gold dust, money, and other valuables in the strongbox before expanding the service into full banking operations. When Camp Floyd closed in 1861, the brothers bought the camp's surplus bacon, shovels, fence rails, rifles, horses, and other goods for pennies on the dollar and resold them at a premium; some sources credit them with creating the nation's first army surplus store. Their success financed mining, hotel building, and political interests, and their bank grew into one of the largest financial institutions in the western states. The Walker Brothers Store and Bank continued operating in Fairfield through 1865, and although other businesses later used the building, city officials demolished the abandoned structure in 1939.