Idaho's First Railroad

When Brigham Young first sent Mormon farmers into the Cache Valley in 1856, he knew transportation would be a problem for the settlers. The long valley stretched from modern day Hyrum, Utah to Clifton, Idaho and was hemmed in by mountains on all sides. Travel in the summer months was not too difficult with horses and wagons, but such transportation was slow when bringing produce to market in Salt Lake City. Worse, during the winter, heavy snows often isolated the valley completely.

As Idaho became a territory in 1863, work on the first transcontinental railroad began with a planned route through northern Utah. Young was less than pleased when he found out the railroad would bypass Salt Lake City and instead run north to Promontory Summit. He soon began planning a north-south railroad that would join Salt Lake City with the transcontinental road as well as the northern settlements.
 

It was eight long years before plans to run the railroad north into Cache Valley became a reality. The Utah Northern Railway was organized on Aug. 23, 1871, with Brigham Young’s son, John W. Young installed as President and General Superintendent. Groundbreaking first occurred at Three Mile Creek (just south of Brigham City) on August 26.

The planned railroad was uniquely conceived, with the vast majority of labor to be supplied by farmers who would then reap the benefits of the railroad. “Amid the firing of cannon and ringing of bells” the project commenced with “shovel, pick, plow and scraper”.

John Young’s plan was to drive the railroad through Cache Valley and north to Soda Springs, Idaho Territory. By Nov. 4, 1871, the roadbed was being prepared in Cache Valley. It was not until the next spring that the first spike was driven, at 11 a.m. on March 25, 1872. It took until 1874 for the little railroad to reach Logan, Utah.

That same year, the narrow-gauge Utah Northern arrived in Franklin on May 2, making it the first railroad in Idaho. Enough rail was supplied to run the road another 25 miles. With at least three engines and 16 new freight cars, the road was running regularly from Ogden to Franklin.

Unfortunately, the railroad ran into numerous problems. While the farmers did their best to make the railroad bed, they were still farmers, not railroad men. It was not long before the roadbed began to heave and settle. One intrepid passenger wrote that the road was so rough that after a particularly hard bump the passenger car jumped the track and began to bounce off the ties. The engineer kept the little locomotive running at full steam. Eventually the car hit a tie hard enough that it bounced back onto the rails!

More worrisome for the company was its poor financial position. There simply was not enough traffic to make the railroad profitable. The terminus of the railroad remained at Franklin until November of 1877 when it moved only 10 more miles.  On Feb. 6, 1878, a notice appeared in the “Ogden Junction” newspaper announcing that the little railroad was up for sale.

On March 23, 1878, the railroad built a bridge over the Bear River just north of where Preston, Idaho is today. A small town sprouted there named “Battle Creek” near the location of the 1863 Bear River Massacre. The bridge was the first railroad bridge in Idaho, a portion of which still stands today. The Battle Creek roundhouse was also the first in Idaho.

There things stayed until the railroad was purchased and reorganized as the Utah & Northern. The purchase of the company was made by Mr. S.H.H. Clark of the Union Pacific, who made the buy for the robber baron Jay Gould. The farmers who had retained stock in the Utah Northern company received only a few pennies per share of stock.

Construction began again in 1879. The old plan of running the road to Soda Springs was abandoned. Instead, Gould had his eye set on the mines in Montana Territory's southwest corner. Track was laid north through Swan Lake, into Marsh Valley and on to the Snake River Plain.

By April 15, 1879, the railroad was completed to Eagle Rock (today’s Idaho Falls). Just one year later the railroad made it to the Montana Territory line.

The Utah & Northern was eventually absorbed by Union Pacific and converted from a narrow-gauge railroad to standard gauge. Massive railroad shops built at Eagle Rock were moved to Pocatello, making Pocatello the key junction of the Utah & Northern with the Oregon Short Line.

The little town of Battle Creek, Idaho’s first railroad town, disappeared from the map as the nearby town of Preston grew in prominence.