Wahsatch, Utah
Utah
In one spring, this abandoned railroad camp sheared seven hundred thousand pounds of wool.
Wahsatch started in 1868 as a construction camp for the first transcontinental railroad, and for about a year it was a rough place. Hundreds of laborers dug a tunnel seven hundred and seventy-two feet through the Wasatch Mountains just west of here. They spent their wages the day they earned them, in tent saloons. Shootings were common. There was no cemetery, so the dead went into makeshift graves on the hillside. Then the railroad finished the line and moved its operations to Evanston, Wyoming, eleven miles east. The population collapsed. Most of the buildings came down.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
During the tunnel construction in 1868–1869, Wahsatch was known as a wild and lawless place. Laborers spent their wages immediately in tent saloons.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Wyoming State Hospital 9.6 mi For decades, every new wing at Wyoming's state hospital was named after one of the state's counties.
- Grass Creek, Utah 17.9 mi A Utah coal camp of fewer than two hundred people had its own Chinatown, and a railroad with three rails.
- Piedmont, Wyoming 25.3 mi A Wyoming railroad camp ended up named after a region of northern Italy, because of who the founders had married.
- Fort Bridger 38.3 mi A rider carrying letters found the Donner Party on the trail, promising a better road to California and a guide waiting at Fort Bridger.
- Joe Quinney Winter Sports Center 41 mi This museum spent the 2002 Winter Olympics as an office for officials and reporters, with nothing on display inside it.
- Fort Douglas 48.1 mi A German warship crew stranded at Guam in 1914 ended up imprisoned in the foothills above Salt Lake City.