Blue Creek is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in the
Blue Creek Valley in northeastern
Box Elder County
Box Elder County is a county at the northwestern corner of Utah, United States. At the 2020 United States census, the population was 57,666, up from the 2010 figure of 49,975. Its county seat and largest city is Brigham City. The county was n ...
,
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
, United States.
Description
The community was a
railroad
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
settlement that started as a
Union Pacific
The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, ...
camp during the final stages of construction of the
First transcontinental railroad
America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad), Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the exis ...
.
Located on the eastern slope of the
North Promontory Mountains and
Blue Creek Valley, southeast of
Snowville and west of
Tremonton on what is now
I-84
Interstate 84 may refer to:
* Interstate 84 (Oregon–Utah), passing through Idaho, formerly known as Interstate 80N
* Interstate 84 (Pennsylvania–Massachusetts), passing through New York and Connecticut
{{road disambiguation ...
, Blue Creek existed from the late 1860s
until it was abandoned in the 1900s.
The settlement was named for the ''Blue Creek Spring'', to the south. Initially a railroad camp, Blue Creek later became a
farming
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
community with a few scattered homes and a
post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
.
In his
autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...
, 19th century pioneer
Alexander Toponce wrote, "In April and May of 1869,
Corinne and Blue Creek were pretty lively places. At the latter place was a big construction camp generally known as ''Dead Fall'' and spoken of by some as ''Hell’s Half Acre''."
See also
*
List of ghost towns in Utah
This is an incomplete list of ghost towns in Utah, a state of the United States.
Classification
Barren site
* Sites no longer in existence
* Sites that have been destroyed
* Covered with water
* Reverted to pasture
* May have a few dif ...
References
External links
Photo of Blue Creek today on Panoramio
Ghost towns in Box Elder County, Utah
1869 establishments in Utah Territory
Ghost towns in Utah
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