U T A H ' S C O A L R O A D I N T H E A G E OF UNREGULATED
COMPETITION
BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON*
O
NE OF THE important problems in the development of the Mountain W e s t was the shortage of fuel. Colonists were compelled to build elaborate wagon roads, at great cost of human effort, to tap sources of timber in the mountain valleys and canyons. The lack of timber also stimulated a desperate search for coal deposits, the development and marketing of which usually depended on adequate transportation facilities. Four minor railroads figured in the history of the transportation of coal from a number of important deposits near Coalville, Utah, to Salt Lake City: The Coalville and Echo, the Summit County, the Utah Eastern, and the Echo and Park City railroads. Officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were instrumental in promoting the first three. The history of these roads, largely untold, is a despairing chronicle of financial loss and failure; nevertheless, it sheds light on the attitudes and objectives of Mormon leaders, and illustrates the callous disregard of powerless public interest which often typified big business in the Gilded Age of American capitalism. While the state of Utah is underlain with extensive supplies of low-grade bituminous coal, this fact was not known by the Mormon pioneers for many years. The church-commissioned Southern Exploring Expedition discovered outcroppings of coal near Cedar City late in 1849, but Brigham Young and his associates decided to dedicate this coal to the working of the iron deposits located nearby. A vein of coal much closer to Salt Lake City was discovered shortly thereafter in what is now Sanpete *Dr. Arrington is a member of the staff of the department of economics at the Utah State Agricultural College, Logan. He is a frequent contributor to the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical and educational periodicals.
