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Show RR TRACKS ARE MOVED FROM CENTER STREET Excerpt from Delila Gardner's journal: "History gave way to progress in Midvale, April 15, 1961 as a railroad track dating back to 1873 came to· a close. In a ceremony on the tracks, which divided Center Street, officials from Midvale, the Utah State Road Commission, D. & R. G. and Union Pacific sounded the death knell. Mayor Henry Beckstead traced the history of the tracks in his remarks at the ceremony and said the tracks will be removed to make room for construction of a modern four-lane highway. The Mayor said, 'Back in those days there was little planning for the future and it was only natural that a road (which became the city's main east-west road) should grow up along side the railroad tracks.' Constructed as a narrow gauge facility in 1873, the tracks served the mining area of Bingham Canyon and Garfield." Unloading at Smelter Bins. courtesy Henry Wahlquist From Delila Gardner's journal: "During the autumn of 1892 the railroad to Bingham Canyon completed. The tracks ran through the Gardner fields, right past Aunt Margaret's door. It killed every chicken, pig or that dog unluckily gut in its way. The coming of the railroad changed the labor status of the people in the community. They had worked as drivers and had outfits for freighting ore from was Wlllliam Howard Taft speaks to crowd at depot In Midvale, ca the Bingham mines to the smelter in Bingham Junction men had to look for other found work with the railroad. Now this railroad is routed to an overpass near the old flour mill and enters Midvale on the north side of town." (Midvale). After the railroad came, employment, some courtesy Leona Malstrom Muir 1913. 228 |
