Staycation Idea #2: Find a Ghost Town
Did you know some people say there are over 1,000 ghost towns in Utah? I can only find about 125 of them on a map (check it out here http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ut/ut.html). Every county has at least one except Davis County, Morgan County, and Weber County. Have you ever walked through a ghost town in Utah? It's a fun way to explore a little Utah history, and to think about our recent past.
Have you heard of Thistle? If you've
lived here long enough, you may remember Thistle. Thistle is a ghost
town 15 miles east of Spanish Fork, and as ghost towns go, it has one
of the more interesting (and tragic) stories. Most ghost towns are
old mining or railroad communities. When the mines dry up or the
railroads consolidate, the towns die too. But that's not what
happened to Thistle.
Back in the day, it was a railroad
town. It used to be home to 600 people, railroad workers servicing
the old steam engines, farmers, ranchers, there was a store and a
schoolhouse and a post office. By 1983, only about 50 people lived
there, but they weren't planning on leaving anytime soon. One woman
and her son had even built their dream home there, in the fall of
1982 (check out other survivor stories in “Thistle … Focus on
Disaster” by Oneita Burnside Sumsion).
But even that fall, state officials
were worried about the amount of rain Utah had been receiving. The
wet fall was followed by a warm winter, so instead of building up
snowpack, the mountains got saturated (1983 is the same year as the
flooding in Salt Lake forced them to turn State Street into a
temporary river). Railroad officials walked the lines almost daily
checking for slips and slides in the steep mountains. Highways
6 and 89 meet just above Thistle, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad passes through Thistle, and two streams merge into Spanish Fork River
at Thistle. They all formed a delicate balance.
This is the sequence of events
according to Oneita Sumsion:
 |
| [You can still see the slide from a turnoff on Highway 6.] |
April 13th, they noticed the railroad track being pushed out of line. They fixed it, but it continued to shift. They called in reinforcements and both companies worked around the clock trying to keep the tracks clear.
April 14th, highway 6 developed a huge bump. They worked on it all day, but had to shut down highway 6 by evening.
April 15th, the railroad was closed as well and all the crews shifted their efforts to keeping Spanish Fork River flowing. Three other contracting companies were called in to help.
April 16th, the slide was moving a foot an hour and water was rising behind it at about six inches an hour. Thistle residents were advised to evacuate.
April 17th, the slide began to move faster and Thistle residents were ordered to evacuate. One family, who thought the lake wouldn't reach them, had tried to buy flood insurance. The water reached them two hours before their insurance would have taken affect.
May 31st, the slide was 240 ft. deep. The lake (which Thistle was under) was 3 miles long and 200 ft. deep. It would have kept rising, but they had drilled a tunnel so the water could finally begin draining. They considered leaving the lake, but eventually decided to pump it dry.
 |
| [The house roofs floated around the lake until it was drained. They dot the sides of the canyon now.] |
The U.S. Geological Survey lists the Thistle mudslide as the most costly landslide ever in the United States. Mostly because the railroad was closed for three months and highway 6 was closed for 8 months while they were rebuilt. The railroad alone was losing $1 million a day every day their line was closed. No lives were lost.
Check out this quote from the Deseret News:
“The new alignment of US-6 was opened
on December 30, 1983. The dedication was planned for the next day,
but lines of cars formed at the barricades as soon as news broke that
the highway was complete. Some were residents anxious to see the area
or visit relatives they had not seen since the slide; others were
truck drivers frustrated by long detours. The highway patrol
requested the ceremony be canceled and the highway opened early, as
they were unable to disperse the crowds.”
 |
[This is the old schoolhouse. I hiked all over the mountains looking for it, before I realized it was right by the road, just more broken down than I had thought. I was still looking for an arch and walls.] |
And who says history isn't interesting!
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