Salt Lake & Denver Railroad
By Don Strack
Ray Fike wrote:
> The following originally appeared on the Railroad list
>
> "A couple weeks back I had the opportunity to drive part of US 40
> through Northwestern Colorado along part of the original Denver & Salt Lake
> route. I really am not familiar with the history of this line and am
> curious what the planned route would have been west of Craig, CO had
> the line been completed. Would it had more or less followed US40 through
> Vernal,UT and on to Salt Lake, or was there another route planned?
I have the original incorporation papers for the Salt Lake & Denver Railroad, "The Uintah Basin Route." The road was organized in 1919 by Simon Bamberger to build from Provo to a connection with the D&SL at Craig. The route was basically south-southwest from Craig to the White River, along the White River to its meeting with the Green River, then up the Duchesne River and the Strawberry River to the Wasatch Mountains. It was then to cross the Wasatch Mountains and head west down Hobble Creek Canyon to Provo. Its major business was to be agricultural and oil, including oil from shale, with a bit of coal and timber, plus taking away the entire Gilsonite traffic from the narrow gauge Uintah Railway. A large portion was also to be bridge traffic between Denver and Salt Lake City
The line was never built, or even seriously planned, much like the original DNW&P or later D&SL. In the case of the SL&D the ICC hearings of July 1925 were unproductive, showing that the line would not make any money. These ICC hearings are interesting in that they are quite detailed about the potential traffic (or lack thereof) for any road operating across the Uintah Basin. The ICC denied the application based on the lack of need, and the anticipated completion of the Dotsero Cutoff, which it saw as taking away the bridge-traffic component of the proposed line's traffic base.
Pure fiction follows...
Now, let's have some fun ... let's turn Don's fertile imagination loose on the subject. Let's say that the potential agricultural traffic was a bit more, and the coal traffic was better, with a coal mine or two actually in the basin itself, and the oil traffic was more developed. The line was completed in 1925, and the bridge traffic grew rapidly with the completion of the Moffat Tunnel. The Dotsero Cutoff was never built because D&RGW was still deep in receivership.
The line meshed nicely with the D&SL, and the two roads successfully compete head-to-head with the D&RGW, and its Pueblo-Tennessee Pass Route. Throw in some legal entanglements from the Uintah-Ouray tribe over some improper right-of-way across its reservation. After settling with the tribal fathers, the SL&D is financially exhausted and is completely reorganized as the Uintah-Utah Transportation Company, with the tribal council in complete control. They contract with a protectionist consortium of competing and connecting roads to run the line, kind of like the way UP and NP ran the Camas Prairie. By the late 1950s, the Uintah-Utah is running with a mixture of UP, SP, WP, and D&RGW equipment. It's a nice trick to ensure that I can operate prototype models of first generation power for all of my favorite roads.
Throw in some more fiction that has United States Fuel Company (the real world operator of many of Utah's big coal mines, and owner of the real Utah Railway) building a connection between its home base at Martin, north to a connection with SL&D at Duchesne, and the operation of regular coal trains. In addition to the new rail connection, U. S. Fuel builds a couple coal mines in the Basin where real-world studies have shown large coal deposits that have not been developed due to the lack of good transportation. This allows the fictional railroad to run lots of coal loads east via the UUT and D&SL connection.
A major change had come in 1937 with the completion of Strawberry Tunnel, a combined railroad and water tunnel that brings water from the Colorado River drainage into the Great Basin-Great Salt Lake drainage (akin to the similar Moffat Tunnel-Denver City water arrangement). (Note: the Central Utah Project actually completed a water-only tunnel in 1982). The Strawberry Tunnel runs for five miles under the top of the Wasatch Range from Strawberry Reservoir to the top of Diamond Fork. The accompanying rail line runs west down Diamond Fork to a connection with Utah Railway in Spanish Fork Canyon, completely replacing the original SL&D line in Hobble Creek Canyon. A new Strawberry Yard was built in 1943 at Duchesne as a central marshalling point for eastbound coal and oil, and westbound coal, oil, and phosphate ore, and to serve as a central blocking terminal for all bridge traffic. Now this is railroading!
Rule Number 1: This is my railroad.
Rule Number 2: While illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, in the event of perceived anachronisms, detail discrepancies or operating errors, see Rule Number 1.
D&RGW has always been a favorite road. I really enjoy studying the real D&RGW, but sometimes history needs to be bent and tweaked here and there to have some fun.
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