State Route 196 is a north-south

state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

located entirely in Tooele County, Utah that begins at SR-199 and ends at I-80. It passes through Skull Valley, and was added to the state highway system in 1998 to prevent the

Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians The Skull Valley Indian Reservation ( Gosiute dialect: Wepayuttax) is located in Tooele County, Utah, United States, approximately southwest of Salt Lake City. It is inhabited by the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah, a federally re ...

from using their

reservation __NOTOC__ Reservation may refer to: Places Types of places: * Indian reservation, in the United States * Military base, often called reservations * Nature reserve Government and law * Reservation (law), a caveat to a treaty * Reservation in India, ...

to store nuclear waste.

Route description

SR-196 begins at the junction with SR-199 near the control gate at Dugway Proving Ground. The route travels north through the Skull Valley Indian Reservation and past the ghost town of Iosepa; also, mostly the east side of Skull Valley, at the west foothills of the

Stansbury Mountains The Stansbury Mountains are a long mountain range located in eastern Tooele County, Utah. It is named for U.S. Army Major Howard Stansbury, a topographical engineer, who led an expedition that surveyed the region. The range trends north–sout ...

. The route ends at the junction with I-80 at the Rowley Junction interchange.

History

Skull Valley Road, then an

unimproved A road surface (British English), or pavement (American English), is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, hoggin, cobbl ...

dirt trail, was part of the Lincoln Highway from its creation in 1913 until about 1920, when an improved gravel road over

Johnson Pass Johnson Creek Summit is a mountain pass through the Kenai Mountains in Southcentral Alaska. It is 23 miles long, and the maximum elevation of the pass is 1450 ft. There is a backpacking trail traversing the entire pass, with access from the so ...

(present SR-199) was built with the help of a donation from Carl G. Fisher. By the 1950s,

Tooele County Tooele County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 58,218. Its county seat and largest city is Tooele. The county was created in 1850 and organized the following year. Tooele County ...

had constructed a paved county road through the valley.

Utah State Road Commission The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is an agency of the state government of Utah, United States; it is usually referred to by its initials UDOT (pronounced "you-dot"). UDOT is charged with maintaining the more than of roadway that co ...

( Rand McNally), Utah Official Highway Map, 1956 In the early 1990s, the

began planning a

nuclear waste storage Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons re ...

facility in Skull Valley. At the urging of Governor

Mike Leavitt Michael Okerlund Leavitt (born February 11, 1951) is an American politician who served as the List of Governors of Utah, 14th Governor of Utah from 1993 to 2003 in the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, as Administrator of the E ...

, the

Utah Transportation Commission The Utah Transportation Commission serves as an independent advisory committee within the State of Utah, United States with the responsibility of deciding how available transportation funds are spent and prioritizing transportation projects within t ...

added the road to the state highway system in January 1998 as SR-196, and in February the state legislature concurred and added the new route to the highway code. Utah Department of Transportation
Highway Resolutions
, updated November 2007, accessed May 2008 Signs were posted in March prohibiting transport of high-level nuclear waste on the new state highway except by permit. The next year, the commission designated two "statewide public safety interest highways" - State Routes 900 and 901 - each consisting of several low-quality

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

and county-maintained roadways branching off I-80 and SR-196, respectively. Unlike a typical state highway, the roads were not to be improved to higher standards; the purpose of the designation was to prevent construction of a waste-carrying rail line branching off the Union Pacific Railroad's

Shafter Subdivision The Shafter Subdivision is a rail line owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad in the U.S. states of Nevada and Utah. The line begins as a continuation of the Elko Subdivision at the Elko freight yards, and travels east to the junction w ...

(ex-

Western Pacific Railroad The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route dire ...

), which would cross these roads. Utah Department of Transportation
Highway Resolutions
, updated December 2007, accessed May 2008 Utah Department of Transportation
Highway Resolutions
, updated December 2007, accessed May 2008

Major intersections

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:State Route 196

196 Year 196 ( CXCVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Dexter and Messalla (or, less frequently, year 949 ''Ab urbe condita ...

196

Utah State Route 196 State Route 196 is a north-south state highway located entirely in Tooele County, Utah that begins at SR-199 and ends at I-80. It passes through Skull Valley, and was added to the state highway system in 1998 to prevent the Skul ...