Clear Creek is a
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...
on the western edge of
Carbon County,
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. It is located at the south end of
State Route 96 and the
Pleasant Valley Branch of the
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, 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 Stat ...
(previously the
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad
The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad , often shortened to ''Rio Grande'', D&RG or D&RGW, formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, was an American Class I railroad company. The railroad started as a narrow-gauge line running south fr ...
).
History
Clear Creek was founded in the 1870s as a
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucks[lumber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...]
to the nearby mining town of
Winter Quarters.
About twenty years after Clear Creek was founded,
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal i ...
was discovered beneath the town and a mine was developed. In 1898, the
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad
The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad , often shortened to ''Rio Grande'', D&RG or D&RGW, formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, was an American Class I railroad company. The railroad started as a narrow-gauge line running south fr ...
built a spur line from
Scofield to the mine at Clear Creek. Two years later, the Utah Fuel Company built 25 homes, a hotel, a store, a hospital, a schoolhouse, a workshop, and a water plant in the town.
From 1910 to 1920, 2,000 tons of coal was being mined per day, and Clear Creek had about 600 residents. In 1930, the need for coal began to decrease, and by 1955, the mine had cut production and the town's population had decreased to 150.
According to the
2010 Census, there were four people residing in town.
The town is currently used as a recreation and camp area for various schools and programs, with cabins, a restroom and shower area, and a recreation and eating area.
Climate
Clear Creek has a
warm-summer humid continental climate
A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...
(
Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer
* Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan
* Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...
''Dfb''), bordering on
subarctic
The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of hemiboreal regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Fennoscandia, Northwestern Russia, Siberia, and the Cair ...
(''Dfc''). Summertime is generally mild to warm, with nights dropping into the 30s and 40s (°F), and wintertime is cold and snowy, with a yearly average of 237 inches (603 cm) of snow accumulation. Wintry days may be observed as late as June or as early as September due to the Town's location in the mountains of the
Wasatch Plateau
The Wasatch Plateau is a plateau located southeast of the southernmost part of the Wasatch Range in central Utah. It is a part of the Colorado Plateau.
Geography
The plateau has an elevation of and includes an area of . Its highest point is So ...
.
See also
*
List of census-designated places in Utah
This article lists census-designated places (CDPs) in the U.S. state of Utah. At the 2010 census, there were 81 CDPs in Utah. That number dropped to 79 in 2016 when first Dutch John then Millcreek incorporated, and to 74 when five in Salt La ...
*
Coal mining in the United States
Coal mining is an industry in transition in the United States. Production in 2019 was down 40% from the peak production of in 2008. Employment of 43,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. Generation of electricity is the l ...
References
External links
Clear Creek, UT at lat long.com
Census-designated places in Utah
Census-designated places in Carbon County, Utah
Mining communities in Utah
Logging communities in the United States
{{Utah-geo-stub