State Route 196 is a north-south state highway located entirely in

Tooele County, Utah 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 Count ...

that begins at SR-199 and ends at

I-80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one o ...

. 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 to store nuclear waste.

Route description

SR-196 begins at the junction with SR-199 near the control gate at

Dugway Proving Ground Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a U.S. Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, and south of the Utah Test and Training Range. Location Dugway P ...

. The route travels north through the

Skull Valley Indian Reservation 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 reco ...

and past the ghost town of Iosepa; also, mostly the east side of Skull Valley, at the west foothills of the Stansbury Mountains. The route ends at the junction with

at the Rowley Junction interchange.

History

Skull Valley Road, then an unimproved dirt trail, was part of the

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913 ...

from its creation in 1913 until about 1920, when an improved

gravel road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the Unit ...

over Johnson Pass (present SR-199) was built with the help of a donation from

Carl G. Fisher Carl Graham Fisher (January 12, 1874 – July 15, 1939) was an American entrepreneur. He was an important figure in the automotive industry, in highway construction, and in real estate development. In his early life in Indiana, despite fa ...

. By the 1950s, Tooele County had constructed a paved

county road A county highway (also county road or county route; usually abbreviated CH or CR) is a road in the United States and in the Canadian province of Ontario that is designated and/or maintained by the county highway department. Route numbering can ...

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 Rand McNally is an American technology and publishing company that provides mapping, software and hardware for consumer electronics, commercial transportation and education markets. The company is headquartered in Chicago, with a distribution ...

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

began planning a nuclear waste storage facility in Skull Valley. At the urging of Governor Mike Leavitt, 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 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 ...

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 and county-maintained roadways branching off

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 Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...

branching off the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

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.

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