As a discarded place
from the past the ghost town of Kelton, located on the north shore of the Great
Salt Lake, is one of the many small towns upon Utah's landscape that have faded
into inexistence; barely more than a memorial dot on a map. However Kelton was
once far greater than the slightly altered desert landscape it has become.
The town of Kelton
was founded over 150 years ago in April 1869, when the Central Pacific Railroad
arrived at Kelton's location laying tracks in an effort to complete America's
first transcontinental railroad. Kelton was originally establish, less than a
month before the railroad's completion, as a tent city for the railroad's
predominately Chinese work crew.
Due to its ideal
position along the Transcontinental Railroad Kelton quickly grew from its
makeshift work camp beginnings into a prosperous rail-town. A post office was
established less than six months after the arrival of the town's first
residence and soon the town had all the trappings of any decent western
rail-town including fine hotels, gambling halls, saloons, stores and homes.
For Kelton's first
15 years it thrived as a vital link between the Transcontinental Railroad and
the resource rich American north-west. In the 1870s and early 1880s Wells Fargo
ran a stage coach route between Kelton and several gold mines in Idaho and
Montana. For a time this stage line even held the dubious honor of being the
most robbed stage coach route in the American west. However the very thing that gave Kelton life
was also the destructive force that eventually stripped it of its ability to
survive.
As spur lines from
the Transcontinental Railroad quickly began to be laid across the American west
from locations that did not include Kelton the town's importance began to
decline as evidenced by its stage coach service being discontinued in the
mid-1880s.
At the turn of the
Twentieth Century, almost 20 years after Kelton had lost its stage coach route
a far more damaging hit to Kelton's survival came when the Transcontinental
Railroad was rerouted across the Great Salt Lake. This new route cut several
small rail-towns north of the lake,
including Kelton, from the transcontinental route. The new lake route also cut
from the rail line its most famous and historic landmark, promontory summit,
where 35 years previous to the rerouting, the golden spike had been driven to
celebrate the completion of America's first transcontinental rail line.
Because Kelton no
longer lay upon one of the western United States' most traveled rail routes it
slipped into obscurity and irrelevance and although the tracks that had made
history still ran through Kelton they were only used by local farmers and
ranchers from that point on.
Although in decline,
Kelton still managed to survive almost 40 years after being cut from the
Transcontinental route and the town even made history during its decent. On
March 12, 1934, Kelton experienced a 6.6 magnitude earth quake, the largest
earth quake ever recorded in Utah.
Kelton's final
demise came 73 years from it founding when in July of 1942, while the nation
was in midst of World War II, the Southern Pacific Railroad dismantled the rail
line that ran through Kelton to collect the badly needed steel for use in the
war effort. With the rail line stripped from the town, little reason was left
for the few remaining residences to stay and the town was quickly abandoned;
several of the town's final residences took their houses with them.
