CHAPTER 7
TRANSPORTATION
T.
oday, motorists on Interstate 80 dash past the two-story sandstone building without giving it a thought. But in the 1860s it was a welcome sight for westbound travelers weary from the jarring stagecoach ride u p Silver Creek Canyon. Built in 1862 by William H. Kimball, eldest son of Heber C. Kimball, counselor to Brigham Young, Kimball's Hotel has been a witness to great changes in transportation. Standing near the head of the canyon on the Overland Stage route—between today's Silver Creek and Kimball lunction freeway exits—the eleven-room sandstone structure is said to have welcomed such famous guests as Horace Greeley, Walt Whitman, and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). The hotel was renowned for its dinners of trout, wild duck, sage hen, beef, and mutton. About two decades after its construction, Robert Taylor Burton used the hotel for his headquarters during the construction of the Utah Eastern Railroad. And, when the Lincoln Highway Association chose a route for the first transcontinental highway in 1913, it selected the old Overland Stage route, right past the front door of the old sandstone hotel. Later, during the 1960s, the construction of 121
