Utah & Northern Railway

The more direct route was built to standard gauge. In 1890 the Oregon Short Line and Utah Northern laid 48.5 miles of new line between Dewey, north of Brigham City, and Oxford, Idaho, through the Bear River canyon, and opened it that October for through trains between Salt Lake and Butte. The old narrow-gauge line from Mendon through Logan to Preston was widened at the same time and kept as the Cache Valley Branch. North of Preston, the climb over this hill was given up, and its grade is what the sign points to.

What the plaque says

Utah & Northern Railway One mile south and directly west of this highway, an old 1878 railway grade, still is visible, although trains have not used it since 1890. Jay Gould--a nationally prominent financier and Union Pacific owner--extended Utah and Northern service north from Franklin to Montana by 1880. A narrow gauge line until 1887, it helped build up Cache Valley and accounted for many new Idaho cities and towns farther north. But small, wood-burning locomotives had a hard time ascending this hill. After a more direct route 4 miles west of here was completed, service north of Preston was abandoned on this grade. 257 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Boa Ogoi (Bear River Massacre Site) — steps away
  The Northwestern Band bought back the ground where its people were killed in 1863, and is turning farm fields back into the river bottom they knew.
• Preston and Napoleon Dynamite — 3.9 mi
  A farm town in the north end of Cache Valley that a former student turned into a set in the summer of 2003, without changing much of anything.
• Minnetonka Cave — 20 mi
  Found by a grouse hunter, named first for a porcupine and then in a language from the far side of the Rockies. Five kinds of bats winter inside.
• Tony Grove Lake — 22 mi
  A glacial alpine lake at 8,100 feet surrounded by wildflower meadows

More markers nearby

• Bear River Massacre — steps away
• Old Delta Sediments — 4.4 mi
• Hatch House — 10 mi
• Idaho's Oldest Town — 10 mi