denver rio grande

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    Cisco, Utah

    ByDarrel Bishop

    Cisco began in the 1880s as a Denver & Rio Grande water stop in the high desert — then reinvented itself as a livestock-shipping center, an oil town, and a highway stop before diesel locomotives and Interstate 70 stripped away every reason it existed. It never fully vanished: trains still pass, pumpjacks still nod, and an artist residency now restores its ruins. Here’s the documented history, the legends worth checking (including that Johnny Cash song), and how to see it.

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    Castle Gate, Utah

    ByDarrel Bishop

    Castle Gate was a railroad-and-coal company town built in the 1880s beside the twin sandstone “gate” of Price Canyon — home to Butch Cassidy’s 1897 payroll robbery, Utah’s bitter coal-labor wars, and the catastrophic 1924 mine explosion that killed 171 miners and a rescuer. It wasn’t abandoned: a later owner bought the town, hauled off the houses, and cleared the ground for coal machinery in 1974. Here’s the documented history, the legends worth checking, and how to see what’s left.