David Nicholas and Stuart Stanek, a member of KPCW’s Board of Trustees, are history buffs and train enthusiasts. Nicholas said mining operated in Park City for 112 years and rail service came into town for 108 of those years.
He said the lecture will cover Park City’s economic changes from the mining days starting in the 1880s to present day when a very busy rail line was once used to haul supplies in and silver ore out of Park City.
“They needed each other to survive but without a way to get it to the regional and national and global markets, Park City would never have become a boom town,” Nicholas said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Thursday. “The fact that the transcontinental railroad came through Echo in 1869 was like a Godsend, in some ways, for the development of the mining industry here. And the passenger business was never a big entity here. By the early 1950s it was essentially over.”
A phosphate plant operated near the entrance to Browns Canyons Road between 1965 and 1986, representing 90% of the business on the line.
Nicholas said, just weeks after the plant closed, Union Pacific announced it intended to abandon the rail line or sell it. That opened an opportunity for what could have been a connection from Echo to Provo.
“There were a variety of entities interested in preserving the spur,” he said. “One of them was a combined effort by Wasatch County, Summit County and Utah County. It would have been a 67-mile-long short line, mixed use, commuter, tourist and industry. Unfortunately, they weren't able to raise the funding for that.”
Then a handful of Park City residents stepped up, creating what is today’s Rail Trail.
“In kind of a panic, there was a group of extraordinary people who came together, and those people had this vision of the importance of preserving the right of way and the property associated with it, which was 31 miles and a little over 400 acres,” he said. “They applied to the federal rail bank program and what was the Park City spur in 1992 became the first rail trail in Utah's history.”
The historic Echo Church is 30 miles from Park City on Interstate 80 near the division of Interstate 84 at exit 169. Built in 1876, the church is open Saturdays during the summer from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This free lecture is Saturday, July 12, at 4 p.m.
A second lecture Wednesday, July 16, will focus more on Park City than Echo. It starts at 5 p.m. at the Park City Museum's Education and Collection Center at 2079 Sidewinder Drive.
