By Julie Johansen
Thirty-five miles east of Castle Dale, the School Institutional and Trust Lands Administration has spent the last few days building a kiosk and rail fence at the historic Spirit Railroad sight at the base of Cedar Mountain.
This project in on the administration’s 31,000-acre Cedar Mountain block. SITLA employees, county officials and volunteers have installed buck and rail fencing and a kiosk, which will hold instructional and informational data to educate visitors at the historic site.
Spirit of the Railroad refers to a railroad line that was never completed. In 1880 the Denver and Rio Grande Railway began building a narrow-gauge rail line through the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Utah. The railroad was to travel through Cottonwood Wash and Buckhorn Flat to the Castle Valley Junction located east of Huntington. From this junction, the rail line would travel south through Castle Valley to Salina Canyon. The other branch would go north through Price Canyon. Although started immediately, the branch through Castle Valley going south was never completed. The remains of the route can be traced and in places even followed across Buckhorn Flat and down Cottonwood Wash. It is on one of these sites that the commemorative complex is being constructed.
Directions to the site are to head north out of Castle Dale for a little less than a mile and turn east at the old stock corrals onto a county unimproved gravel road to the San Rafael Swell. Stay headed east on this road for about 31 miles to the base of Cedar Mountain. When Chimney Rock is directly north look for a sign that says “Historic Spirit Railway Complex,” that directs northward. Follow a two-track road about 1.3 miles to the newly installed fence and kiosk.
SITLA employees and volunteers from the Utah Rock Art Research Association, Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum and the Bureau of Land Management are also working to preserve pictographs at Temple Mountain. This panel depicts both Fremont and Barrier Canyon style pictographs and petroglyphs. This site is a few miles north of Goblin Valley. SITLA has been involved in numerous transactions and projects that have protected more than 560,000 acres of Utah land. These trust lands are held for public school funds.