Providence City is located in Cache County, two and one-half miles south of Logan on state highway 238. Its 1990 census population was 3,344. Situated immediately east of the confluence of Spring Creek with the Logan River, the town lies astride a delta at the mouth of Providence Canyon and beneath 9,000-foot Big Baldy Mountain. The settlement was located on Spring Creek to take advantage of water, arable land, timber resources, and existing trails.

As directed by LDS President Brigham Young, on 24 July 1855 Captain Briant Stringham, Simon Baker, Andrew Moffat, and Brigham Young, Jr., located headquarters for the Elkhorn Cattle Ranch on a spring of water near the west bank of the Blacksmith Fork River, immediately southwest of the present site of Providence. Subsequently, in the early spring of 1857, Samuel, Joseph, Aboile, and Nephi Campbell, and John Dunn, crossed the mountains from North Ogden into Cache Valley seeking a new place to settle. To them, the town they called "Ogden's Hole" was becoming too crowded. They pitched camp at the present site of Providence, at a spring and pond where a creek from a canyon in the Bear River Range entered the alluvial lowland. To assess the fertility of the soil, the explorers broke sod and plowed a long furrow.