The Train Depot is a building that is of historical significance in Price, a building that was located very near the railroad tracks running through Price City and the old Tavern location that was recently sold for a second chance at life.
The depot was the location where trains stopped in town. The former Carbon County Senior Center building was, at that time, a hotel and tavern that the visitors could temporarily reside in and was built on an angle with the south side lining up parallel to the tracks and the west side lining up with Carbon Avenue. The county took over ownership of the Tavern in 1938.
Carbon County Commissioner Larry Jensen remarked that the old train station was removed years ago without fanfare. This was completed without warning by the railroad company, giving the citizens of the area no chance to object.
Commissioner Jensen explained that there were times when prominent politicians rode the train across the country and stopped in towns such as Price to campaign. These stops would have been conducted at the depot as the railroad dropped loaded cars along the track from 100 West to 400 East, an area where empty cars were also stored.
“I think many people who migrated from Europe and around the world would have rode the train to Price, starting their new life stepping off the train in Price,” Commissioner Jensen said.
Commissioner Jensen continued with the depot’s history, stating that in the early 1900s, the elk population along the Manti-La Sal National Forest had dwindled and the state contracted to have 24 elk relocated from Yellowstone to Price on the train. The elk were loaded on wagons and hauled to Emery County.
The animals were then held at the mouth of the canyon below Joe’s Valley Reservoir. The elk were kept in a corral and fed through the winter. Cowboys from Orangeville then herded the elk onto the mountain the following spring.
“The elk population today is from the efforts back then. Without the train, this could not have happened,” Commissioner Jensen concluded.