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 8,881-foot (2,707 m) Big Baldy Mountain.

As directed by LDS President Brigham Young, on July 24, 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.

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.

Plans were made for the immediate resettlement from North Ogden to Cache Valley of the Campbell and other families, but the move was interrupted by the approach of the U.S. Army with orders to force a military occupation of Utah Territory.

Arriving first were Ira Rice, a 65-year-old War of 1812 veteran from Massachusetts, and a 35-year-old Welsh coal miner, Hopkin Mathews, accompanied by his teenage daughter Elizabeth.

In 1860 John Theurer persuaded a number of fellow Swiss LDS converts (whose last names were Alder, Fuhriman, Kresie, Loosli, Naef, Stucki, and Trauber) to come to Spring Creek with its alpine setting.

On November 23, 1862, in the foothills just outside Providence, a two-hour skirmish was fought by 60 soldiers under the command of Major Edward McGarry of the U.S. Second Cavalry against 30 or 40 Shoshone under Chief Bear Hunter.

[7] The objective was to recover livestock and a ten-year-old white boy taken during the Utter Party Massacre on the Oregon Trail in August 1860.

The horticulture industry included growing grain and alfalfa; apple, cherry, pear, and prune orchards; and peas, beans, and sugar beets.

Beginning in 1886 Joseph Alastor Smith established Edgewood Hall as a nursery and dairy operation on the bench overlooking Providence.

After its 28-room manor burned to the ground on Labor Day of 1935, the 140-acre (0.57 km2) estate was acquired by Wall Street financier and Logan native L. Boyd Hatch.

The commercial activities of Providence included private mercantile shops of Rice, Hargraves, and Theurer plus a ZCMI Co-op store (1869–1912).

Many years after the Co-op structure burned, Watkins and Sons Printing established a business in a remodeled and expanded facility.

Other enterprises included molasses mills, a sawmill, lime kilns, brickyards, blacksmith shops, and an early automobile service station.

The Utah Idaho Central Railroad Company extended its electric interurban line from Logan and established a depot in Providence in 1912.

Other residents commute to Thiokol Corporation facilities or Hill Air Force Base as well as to smaller business firms and institutions in and around Logan.