The mines needed dry shafts, so a railroad grew here

Coal trains reached Park City to keep mines dry

Water was the enemy underground here. Park City's silver mines flooded constantly. Keeping them dry took coal-fired pumps running around the clock. In 1880 the Utah Eastern Railroad built a narrow-gauge line connecting Coalville to Park City. Its job was simple: haul that coal in. A year later, Union Pacific built its own line next to it. It was called the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park. This broader-gauge spur could move more freight faster.

For decades the two lines ran side by side into town. Coal moved one direction. Silver ore moved the other. The trail you can walk today, starting right about here, sits on that same graded bed. It runs 28 miles northeast toward Echo Reservoir. It climbs and drops through Silver Creek Canyon along the way.

Union Pacific tracks became Utah's first recreational trail

Union Pacific pulled the last trains off this corridor in 1989. By then the mines the line had been built to serve were long past their peak. The tracks sat unused. Union Pacific worked with the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation. They also worked with A&K Railroad Materials. Together they stripped the rails. They remade the grade as a trail.

It opened to the public in 1992 as the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park. It was Utah's first non-motorized recreational trail. The Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park still manages it. Coal cars once ran here to keep water out of silver shafts. Now the path carries hikers, cyclists, joggers, and cross-country skiers. They travel over the same packed earth.

An explosion at Daly-West Mine killed thirty-two men

The mines the railroad served were dangerous long before they ran dry. At the Daly-West Mine, stored explosives detonated underground without warning. The blast killed two men outright. Thirty more died from afterdamp, the poisoned air a mine explosion leaves behind. Thirty-two dead made it the worst hard rock mining disaster in Utah's history. Lawmakers responded by banning underground explosive storage across the state. The coal that came up this rail line kept the pumps running. It did nothing to keep the men below safe.

Fire destroyed most of Park City's business district

Before the mines slowed, fire nearly finished the town they built. On June 19, 1898, flames tore through Park City and took most of its buildings with them. The Washington School survived, along with a handful of other structures, but the business district burned to the ground. The town rebuilt quickly on mining money, brick replacing the wood that had gone up so fast. Growth stalled for a season and then picked back up, the same silver economy that raised the town paying to raise it again.

A Collegiate Gothic high school became the town library

Park City High School went up on Park Avenue in February 1928. It cost $200,000. The building was Collegiate Gothic style. A town still running on mining wealth paid for it. Generations of students passed through it before a new complex opened on Kearns Boulevard in 1981, about 900 feet from where you stand. The old building on Park Avenue was not torn down. It became the Park City Library and the Jim Santy Auditorium, which now screens films during the Sundance Film Festival every winter.

Glenwood Cemetery still buries the town's dead

Silver miners platted Glenwood Cemetery in 1885, a burial ground for a town that was growing faster than it could bury its dead safely. It still takes burials today, holding more than 950 graves a half mile from this spot. The rail lines that hauled the coal and ore are gone. The mines that needed both have closed. The cemetery never got repurposed into anything else. It is still doing the one job it was platted for.

County records list this lot as tax-exempt land

Summit County lists this parcel, at 1300 Kearns Boulevard, as tax-exempt land running just over 35 acres. It sits apart from the houses the miners built a mile north on Norfolk Avenue and Rossie Hill. It sits apart from the graves at Glenwood. The county's own books mark it as a large public lot that is exempt.