Railroad Ghost Town

Ever since I read "Nothing Like It in the World," the Stephen Ambrose history of the building of the transcontinental railroad, I've been interested not only in the railroads but in the towns that grew up and died with the rail lines. On October 24, Randy and I drove out to a couple of those ghost towns and drove on several miles of the old rail bed.

The main town we wanted to find was Kelton, with Terrace not being too far away from there. To get to Kelton, we drove to Wendover, then another 30 miles to the recent ghost town of Oasis (http://mastlefamily.blogspot.com/2009/03/wendover-to-oasis.html) and turned north. We stopped in Montello (http://mastlefamily.blogspot.com/2009/01/ron-tello-of-montello.html) for gas but decided it was way too expensive and hoped we could get to the ghost towns and on to Snowville on what we had. The road to the ghost towns cuts off the highway shortly after the Utah border.

You know you're on the right highway when you see the Snuffleupagus.

These towns were booming at one time.

Today they're mostly scattered bricks and a few foundations.

With an occasional structure still in place. I think this was the only building we found that still had its walls standing, sort of.

I bought an inexpensive metal detector before we went and played with that a bit. I found a porcelain door knob, a railroad spike, and a whole lot of .22 shell casings, nails, and tin cans.

This is a cutaway the Chinese workers made in the rock for the Central Pacific Railway coming from Sacramento.

Several trestles are still standing. The road is built on the old rail bed, but it makes detours around each of the trestles. I think this was the biggest one we saw.

My toy truck driving across the trestle.

It's still in pretty good shape for being more than 100 years old. Coming from the Nevada direction, this trestle is on the rail trail before Kelton. This line was completed in 1869 with the driving of the Golden Spike, and it was abandoned about 1904, when the Lucin cutoff made a shortcut across the Great Salt Lake.

The trestle is built with some heavy-duty bolts that although rusted are still hanging in there.

Birds have built numerous nests in the trestle spaces.

It seems like the cemeteries are all that survive when towns die.

On the way to Snowville we spotted these prong horn antelope in a farmer's field. I think I counted 51.

We took a little detour from Snowville back past ATK on the way home. This is a Minuteman missile.

And the ending sunset.