A Short History

Necessity is not only the mother of invention, it is also the begetter of railroads, including the snorting, twisting, puffing little Uintah Railway. Just 63 miles long, it lived only 35 years hauling Gilsonite.

On the Ute reservation in Eastern Utah in 1885, a resourceful man named Samuel Gilson was shown samples of a mineral, later named Gilsonite, a brittle, black, asphaltic mineral resembling solid petroleum. It was in vertical veins, and vertical is exact, up to 10 feet thick, which crossed the desert as far as the eye could reach. Gilson knew it was worth something, but at the moment he didn’t know what. Remembering the Utes were still touchy about their forced exodus from Colorado after the Meeker massacre in ‘79, Gilson high-tailed out of the country. With his ore sack full of the strange substance, he headed home.

Someone had guessed that Gilsonite could be used for chewing gum, but Gilson felt that it had more potential than that. Gilson learned that scientists could not agree if it was a mineral or organic in origin and they still argue the matter today. What did matter to Gilson was that his mystery ore was not only chewable but was actually more important as an additive to paint and insulating compounds. Gilson was told that there was plenty of demand for the black stuff. He also learned that there were problems getting it to market, not least of which was that the veins were only on the Ute reservation.

If and when mined, the nearest vein of Gilsonite in Utah’s Uintah Basin was nearly 100 rough and crooked miles from a going railroad, the Rio Grande Western at Price, Utah. Here was a fortune sitting in his lap if he could only get the stuff to market. Gilson’s associate, Bert Seaboldt, went to Washington, D.C., in 1887 and again in 1888 to petition Congress to remove the land from the Ute Reservation. In the meantime, what amounts they did pack out were small, and by 1902 the demand was so great that the Gilson Asphaltum Co. was unable to supply the demand.

In 1904, the Uintah Railway was being built over the 8,473-foot divide between the Green and Colorado river drainages, and an indirect rail link was coming between the veins and Gilsonite users. In 1905, the first 53 miles of track from Mack, Colorado, on the main line of the Rio Grande Western Railway, touched base at Dragon, Utah.

One railroad gandy dancer claimed the Uintah’s only straightaway had three curves in it. The Uintah featured some of the sharpest curves known; the snorting little engine seemed so close, the engineer could almost shake hands with the conductor in the caboose. On some of the steepest grades in railroading history, the brakeman could walk faster than the train moved.

The junction with the Rio Grande Western Railway (later the Denver & Rio Grande Western) was 22 miles west of Grand Junction, and was called Mack for John M Mack, president of the Barber Asphalt Paving Co. and the Uintah Railway. The railroad following snake tracks with rails only three feet apart headed in a general northerly direction. The first stretch of only 28.3 miles crossed 36 bridges between Mack and Atchee. The latter, named for a peaceful Ute chief in the area, was where the shops were erected and maintenance men lived.

Out of Atchee and over Baxter Pass the little engines climbed more than 2,000 feet in six miles and then dropped down the other side 1,500 feet in seven miles. From there, for 12 miles to the end of the line at Dragon, the string of cars crossed 37 bridges. In 1911 the railroad, with a few more bridges, was extended nine and one-half miles to Watson and four miles more from Watson to the Gilsonite mines at Rainbow.

The Uintah Railway, was all grade. The only level spot was at and near Mack and it had a couple of deep arroyos occasionally running flash floods. Its highest point was 8,437 feet on Baxter Pass, where the wind sometimes piled snow up as high as the windows of the passenger cars. The snorting, puffing little engines bucked snow and jerked up grades upward from one percent to an incredible five miles of constant 7-1/2 percent rise. That means it climbed up 7 1/2 feet in every 100. This grade was achieved over a series of curves and hairpin turns, the sharpest of which was 66 degrees.

Its combination mail, baggage, and coach took passengers on a 63-mile scenic thrill never to be forgotten. It also served as a dining car when the customers brought their own lunch.

Coal was hauled from a company-owned mine at Carbonera where tenders were spotted at the mine tipple and filled with coal. Water for all purposes was carried in tank cars from Atchee to points along the three-foot iron trail all the way from Watson to Mack.

Gilsonite is flammable and the Uintah carried it stacked in hundred-plus pound sacks on open flat cars. Occasionally a blazing cinder would drop amongst the burlap sacks half a dozen cars back. On a comparatively level stretch the train could be braked to an immediate halt, and the trainmen could usually confine the flames. It was a nuisance when the sparks flew on a grade where braking was difficult.

At the peak of operations the railroad owned eleven engines, two of them Mallets with side tanks. It boasted two combination baggage-passenger coaches, three former Pullman sleepers, 12 livestock cars, 24 gondolas, 18 boxcars, and 71 flat cars.

In 1939 the Uintah joined the once numerous Colorado narrow gauge carriers in the limbo of railroad history. Gone, save for a few miles of grade, is the Uintah from the face of the land. In the neighboring communities near Mack, Uintah narrow-gauge box and stock cars still serve as tool sheds and chicken coops. Some have been rescued and restored by the Rio Grande Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and are on display at the Cross Orchards Living History Farm at Grand Junction, Colorado. Several others have been rescued by private individuals and hopefully will be restored in the near future.

Adapted from Colorado West, The Sunday magazine of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, revised by Henry Bender, author of Uintah Railway; The Gilsonite Route

Additional Uintah Railway history may be seen at Utah Rails

Return to the home page