Matlin 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 northeastern end of the

Great Salt Lake Desert The Great Salt Lake Desert (colloquially referred to as the West Desert) is a large dry lake in northern Utah, United States, between the Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the ei ...

in western

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 former town was established by the

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North Americ ...

(CPRR) on April 5, 1869.

Chinese railroad workers The history of Chinese Americans or the history of Overseas Chinese, ethnic Chinese in the United States includes three major waves of Chinese emigration, Chinese immigration to the United States, beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigra ...

built a small community and facilities to support the track section. The town relied on the railroad through its entire history. In 1904 the site was abandoned when 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 ...

was finished. Records indicate that the population was 15 people in 1870 and 25 in 1876. These numbers most likely did not include

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

residents. All that is left of the town is the profile in the rail grade of a wye built in 1900. In June 2020, the Matlin Fire (a

lightning Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...

caused

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

, which started June 4) eventually burned about in the area surrounding Matlin. The fire damaged some, and destroyed many other, significant artifacts that had previously remained at the site. In describing the area after the fire, Chris Merritt (a historic preservation officer for the Utah Division of State History) stated, "It just looked like this giant shadow across the land, like driving into

Mordor In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional continent of Middle-earth, Mordor (; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is a dark realm. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and to the south of Mirkwood. Mount ...

References

External links

Ghost towns in Utah Ghost towns in Box Elder County, Utah Populated places established in 1869 1869 establishments in Utah Territory {{Utah-geo-stub

Description

See also

References

External links