26 Thursday Jul 2018
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Bonneville Salt Flats
From Wikipedia: The Bonneville Salt Flats is a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. The area is a remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and is the largest of many salt flats located west of the Great Salt Lake. The property is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the “Bonneville Speedway”. Access to the flats is open to the public.
31 Wednesday Jan 2018
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Willow Springs Pony Express Station was established April 3, 1860 on the route of the Pony Express between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. It was discontinued October 27, 1861 when the transcontinental telegraph line was opened.
An overland stage station was operated here from 1859 to 1870.
Note: The Willow Springs Home Station, located at the Bagley Ranch on the western end of Callao, shows evidence of a well-used station. The monument and the buildings, which comprised the home station, are still standing and are in good condition. This station is one of the best-preserved stations in the U.S., and is the only existing home station maintained on private property. This station, because of its existing structures, is one of the most interesting and most frequently visited in Utah.
11 Saturday Feb 2017
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Callao is a small farming community in northern Snake Valley, along the border of Juab County and Tooele County. It was part of the original Pony Express overland route, and was first called Willow Springs in 1860.
See also:
11 Saturday Feb 2017
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historic, Juab County, Pony Express, Ruins, Tooele County, utah
Round Station/Canyon Station
This stabilized fortification, known in modern times as Round Station, was built in 1863 to serve the Overland Stage. It was probably the third incarnation of Canyon Station, the first two having been burned by Indians. The ruin at Round Station is that of a structure probably used for defense, and the foundation of the station is visible to the south and east across the parking lot. The interpretation is the product of a cooperative agreement among the BLM, National Park Service, and the Utah Division of the National Pony Express Association.
Of the canyon ahead, now called Overland Canyon, Burton observed: “Nothing, certainly, could be better fitted for an ambuscade than this gorge, with its caves and holes in snow cuts, earth-drops, and lines of strata, like walls of rudely piled stone; in one place we saw the ashes of an Indian encampment; in another a whirlwind, curling, as smoke would rise, from behind a projecting spur, made us advance with the greatest caution.”
(*)Information provided by Patrick Hearty, NPEA Utah, 2005.
29 Tuesday Nov 2016
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Grantsville was first known by the name Twenty Wells, due to the many sweetwater artesian springs in the area. It was first settled in 1848 as a seasonal livestock grazing site for stock owners in Salt Lake City. The first permanent settlers arrived in 1850 to establish one of Brigham Young’s more than 350 Mormon colonies throughout Utah Territory. By then, the fortified town was known as Willow Creek. Three years later, with almost 30 families living in the settlement, it was renamed Grantsville in honor of George D. Grant, the leader of a detachment of the Nauvoo Legion militia sent to control hostile Native Americans in the Tooele Valley. Grant is also known for leading a group to rescue members of the Martin Handcart Company. The later years of the decade brought many hardships to Grantsville’s citizens, including drought, grasshopper infestations, and the settlement’s temporary abandonment in advance of the arrival of Johnston’s Army. Ironically, the arrival of the army and its construction of Camp Floyd in nearby Cedar Valley ended up greatly benefiting Grantsville’s settlers as they were then able to trade with the army for many needed provisions. By the end of the next decade, the 1860s, Grantsville had become a largely self-sufficient oasis of orchards and shade trees at the edge of the Territory’s western deserts. Brigham Young himself visited Grantsville on several occasions, both officially and unofficially, and dedicated the first permanent church building in 1866. The building stands today, though it is no longer owned by the Church. The Lincoln Highway passed through the city in 1925 after it was realigned to the north, spurring business along Main Street.
19 Saturday Nov 2016
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Located just off of I-80 in Utah’s west desert is the Knolls Recreation Area. With nearly 36,000 acres of sand dunes, hills, and mud flats, this place is the perfect OHV play area. The dunes are not as large as Jericho but just as fun. If your looking for speed the mud flats are the place, you can drive long distances on these flats and rarely feel a bump.(*)
09 Friday Sep 2016
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16 Monday May 2016
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This area was first settled beginning in 1856. In 1934, a large area of some 33 square miles, comprising the settlements of Clover, St. John, and Vernon, was incorporated into a town called Onaqui. The incorporation was essentially a bureaucratic tactic to secure federal aid for development of municipal infrastructure, including from the Rural Electrification Administration. When the people of Vernon were granted a petition to incorporate separately on 22 February 1972, the remaining town was renamed Rush Valley.
23 Thursday Jul 2015
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Ghost Towns, Ruins, Tooele County, Topliff, utah, West Desert
The town was built about 1875 around the mining of Lime Rock which was used by area smelters. The town died in 1937. (These Photos were taken May 16 1990). No one lives here.
Submitted by Bob Bezzant.
Topliff began in 1875 as a joint venture between the local smelters to find a source of Limestone. After the rock was found, a rail line was run down to haul out the crused limestone, a trainload/day. When the quarry was shut down in 1937 all of the homes and rail lines were torn up and hauled up north to Fairfield.
Submitted by Ed Topliff. – (source)
19 Friday Jun 2015
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Iosepa, (with the I like an English Y) is a ghost town in Utah’s Skull Valley, located approximately 75 miles (120 km) southwest of Salt Lake City in Tooele County. Once home to over 200 Polynesian members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or “Mormons”), Iosepa was inhabited during the period 1889–1917. Today it is the site of an annual Memorial Day gathering that draws islanders and others from all over the Western United States.
Mormon missionaries were sent to Polynesia starting in the 1850s. Many of their converts wanted to emigrate or “gather” to Utah with the main body of the Church, but were restricted by law, particularly in Hawaii. In the 1870s the Hawaiian government began to allow emigration, and by 1889 some 75 Native Hawaiians had gathered in the North Salt Lake area. Despite their common faith, the immigrants experienced significant culture shock, as well as mistreatment by the white majority. The Polynesians were barred from staying in white-owned hotels and were refused service at restaurants in Salt Lake City. Church leaders began searching for a location to set aside as a Hawaiian enclave, but 40 years of settlement had occupied most of the desirable land in the Salt Lake area.
In 1889 a group of three Hawaiian converts and three returned missionaries was assigned to choose a location. After considering possibilities in Cache, Weber, and Utah counties, they selected a 1,920-acre site in Skull Valley, known as the Quincy Ranch or the Rich Ranch, as a gathering place for the South Sea Islanders. The colony was organized as a joint stock company, the Iosepa Agriculture and Stock Company, owned by the LDS Church. The first 46 settlers arrived at the new townsite on August 28, 1889 and drew lots for land. August 28 was later designated as Hawaiian Pioneer Day.
The name Iosepa, a Hawaiian form of Joseph, was chosen in honor of Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918), one of the first missionaries from the Church to serve the Hawaiian people, and also in honor of his uncle, Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–1844), founder of the Church. The Iosepans’ main reason for coming to Utah was to be near the Salt Lake Temple. After it opened in 1893, they traveled there as frequently as possible to participate in religious ceremonies.
