I. Introduction

I. Introduction

A largely unknown national treasure rests within a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City. Tucked into the sparsely populated western expanse of Box Elder County, Utah, the ghosts of the United States' first transcontinental railroad still haunt 87 miles of abandoned original railroad grade on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM}, National Park Service (NPS) and, to a lesser extent, private land. Where once the heavy rhythmic chugging of steam engines and a regular scream of train whistles pierced the silence of such an open landscape, where not even a tree stands today, only the rumble of a solitary car or passing airplane disturbs the deafening quiet. Trestles, once bridges for tons of freight and hundreds of passengers each week, are now home to squawking ravens or a small and fleeting bit of shade for resting cattle. In the 1870s, a stroll through one of the railroad towns that dotted this part of Utah would have treated your ears to a mixture of languages, English, Cantonese, and Gaelic. By the 1880s and 1890s these languages grew to include Spanish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Bulgarian, and other Slavic tongues. But today, the visitor is confronted with overwhelming silence broken only by the ocean-like sound of wind and the occasional song of the meadowlark.

From nearly anyone's perspective, a trip down the BLM's Transcontinental Backcountry Byway is a step back in time; a time capsule capturing the American West in the formative years following the Civil War when expansion from coast to coast of North America picked up literal and figurative, steam. While no trains pass on the gravel and dirt railroad bed, where there are more sheep than people, this landscape and its embedded history can transport the visitor to 1868-1869 when there were few European­ Americans in this region, Native American tribes were being pushed further and further towards dispossession of lands and ways of life, and nature reigned supreme. Today, there are few reminders of modern life as you drive along the railroad grade built by immigrant workers over 150 years ago. One can drive nearly 30 miles without sight of a single cell phone tower, telephone pole or building.

It is this magical piece of American, and world, history that the Salt Lake Field Office of the BLM manages most for public use and enjoyment today. After the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed the Lucin ( or Great Salt Lake) Cutoff in 1904, the original transcontinental railroad line around the north side of the Great Salt Lake dropped to a lesser used route (often referred to as the "Old Line") until it was finally abandoned in 1942. Between the 1940s and the 1980s, the original railroad land grants from the 1860s slowly, and in pieces, were acquired either by private interests through sales or returned to federal management as originally agreed to by the railroads. Today the grade is managed by the BLM. Between 1987 and 1994, the Transcontinental Railroad in Box Elder County was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and from the nomination form it was listed because: "[t]his abandoned portion of the original railroad grade is physical evidence of the country's enthusiastic undertaking to connect the east with the west, an undertaking that resulted in the strengthening of the country's political and economic ties."

First printed in 1981, "Rails East to Promontory: The Utah Stations" by BLM archaeologists Anan S. Raymond and Richard E. Fike is perhaps the most effective and far-reaching public history publication on Utah's transcontinental railroad legacy. This BLM publication was so popular that it received the honor of a second printing in 1994 for the 125th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and the Driving of the Golden Spike. This publication is now online through the BLM website, in supplement to the hard-to-find hard copy version that adorns many professional and non-professional bookshelves alike. But why is it so popular? The answer it appears, is that this is not a normal history text, driven by a single overarching narrative with individuals and places used as place-settings or stage sets. Instead, this is a tour guide of important yet forgotten places and puts the tangible and physical locations as the leading story. Further, those traveling on the BLM's Transcontinental Railroad Scenic Backcountry Byway use this publication like a historian sitting in the passenger seat, keeping you on track with where you are, but also entertained with interesting little snippets of history. Ultimately, Raymond and Fike's publication has weathered the test of time and scholarship extremely well and will always be an important source of information for historians, archaeologists, and the public. Yet, we have learned much more about the history and the archaeology of the Transcontinental Railroad since 1981 and 1994. Several individuals and organizations have put a significant amount of labor to understand and document the forgotten archaeology and history of the Transcontinental Railroad, and some of those need to be named here as an explanation of how we gathered so much new data. Michael and Ann Polk, formerly owners of Sagebrush Consultants, have spent decades researching the Transcontinental Railroad, since completing initial Historic American Engineering Record documentation of trestles east of Promontory Summit. They also had the fortuitous opportunity to not only inventory what is now Golden Spike National Historical Park for cultural resources, but also to conduct test excavations on Promontory Station's Roundhouse in the early 2000s. Since that time, they have continued their research, particularly at several stations on the western end of the grade. In 2014, the Utah Division of State History (UDSH) in partnership with the BLM, applied for, and received, funds from the National Park Service's Underrepresented Communities Grant Program to complete the first systematic documentation of archaeological sites associated with the Transcontinental Railroad. Dr. Ken Cannon, of Cannon Heritage Consultants received this pass-through grant and completed documentation of several significant sites in Box Elder County and opened a Pandora's Box of potential research opportunities. Further, supplemented by an internal BLM funding opportunity, Cannon Heritage Consultants completed (2018), the first holistic mapping and photographic inventory of railroad features (trestles, culverts, etc.). Geophysical surveys at Bovine, Terrace, and the Terrace cemetery were completed by Dr. Molly Boeka Cannon and her Native American Summer Mentorship Program at Utah State University.

While academic research is important to our understanding of this history, there was a missing component in the previous two decades worth of investigation: public outreach and engagement. In the lead up to the 150th Anniversary of the "Driving of the Golden Spike" in 2019, a new coalition of interested parties formed around celebrating and preserving the tangible history of those pioneering Chinese, Irish, and other workers who constructed the Transcontinental Railroad. BLM, UDSH, and other parties noted earlier, partnered with the Governor's "Spike 150" committee to find collaborative ways to bring the public's attention westward from Golden Spike National Historical Park and to the nearly 90 miles of preserved railroad grade and features that meander all the way to the Nevada border on BLM administered lands. Key to this was a partnership between the BLM and UDSH to organize and lead over 40 automobile tours of the Backcountry Byway, getting over 600 people onto this austere and awe-inspiring landscape and helping them understand the historic importance of this feat but also to promote good preservation and stewardship of these stories and places.

Perhaps the most significant feat of this celebration was successfully organizing two tours for the Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association, bringing over 200 descendants, many from China, onto the railroad that their ancestors built and maintained, visiting the simple dugouts where they lived, and holding fragments of bowls and food vessels left on site over 100 years ago (Figure 1 ). This was a transformative experience for everyone, as it makes the historical stories sweeping across an entire globe, real and tangible. For the archaeologists on our team, who spend their careers studying and protecting the physical pieces of human history, this was an important reminder of why these places and stories need preservation. As it is not about us, archaeologists, but the various publics we serve, whose families lived and died to construct what we now see as the United States.

Even with all this positive success there are still issues out on the grade however, as the dual ravages of time and people have wrought significant damage to the remains of our collective past. In 2019 alone we identified new illegal digging by looters in several sites along our tour route displacing hundreds of artifacts that so many see as their personal heritage and deserving of protection, meanwhile several of the newly installed interpretive signs (paid for by public dollars) were shot by selfish individuals to a point where they are nearly unreadable. Protection of these sites on public lands, requires public participation and a shared stewardship ethic, as laws alone do not dissuade the most hardened person from doing permanent damage to our shared history. It is hoped through this publication and our other outreach efforts that all Americans, and our international visitors from Ireland to China, will be able to have a unique experience on the Transcontinental Railroad Backcountry Byway and enjoy the same thrill of discovery as previous generations.

This new version of Raymond and Fike's original work, now 26 years since its second printing, is not to replace their early and significant efforts but to include newly identified and collected information, and connect the story all the way to Ogden, the "Crossroads of the West". Hopefully, thousands of new visitors will use this guidebook to explore Utah's incredible railroad history and share these stories of strength, perseverance, and engineering feats to the next generation. Finally, it is hoped that all visitors to the Transcontinental Backcountry Byway will respect those who came before and honor their contribution to United States history.

In 2018, the Utah Historical Quarterly published an article on the efforts to protect and commemorate this nationally significant site and we cannot frame this story better.

Now, years after the sounds of steam engines and cosmopolitan voices have faded from the line in northwestern Utah, the BLM and its partners are trying to reawaken the American public to the material experience of the nation's first coast-to-coast railroad. The authors wish to challenge each reader to make the drive to Terrace, Kelton, or one of a dozen spots in northwestern Utah, take a deep breath, and imagine life in the 1870s in this austere landscape on the fringes of the rapidly industrializing United States. Archaeology is the past we can touch; historic places our lived experiences in broader context: both converge in Box Elder County to remind us of those who came before. 1