Jackson 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 western desert of

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. It lies on the western end of the

Lucin Cutoff The Lucin Cutoff is a railroad line in Utah, United States that runs from Ogden to its namesake in Lucin. The most prominent feature of the cutoff was a railroad trestle crossing the Great Salt Lake, which was in use from 1904 until the l ...

, just west of the

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, partic ...

. Jackson was never much more than a railroad siding, named by the railroad for a

prospector Prospector may refer to: Space exploration * Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962 * ''Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft Trains * Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ra ...

who operated a mine in the area. On February 19, 1904, during a collision between two

Southern Pacific The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names ...

trains, a carload of

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern German ...

exploded, wrecking everything within an radius, including the majority of lives within the town of 45. The effects are credited to concussion, although officials at the time were surprised by the disaster's magnitude.

Notes

Ghost towns in Box Elder County, Utah Ghost towns in Utah {{Utah-geo-stub