Echo: Where the Railroad Was Born in Utah

Long before the railroad arrived, Echo was a crucial rest stop. In eighteen fifty-three, the Weber Stage Station was built here, the most important stop between Fort Bridger in Wyoming and Salt Lake City. Pony Express riders carried mail through Echo and down the canyon for eighteen months starting in eighteen sixty.

Then in October of eighteen sixty-eight, as the Union Pacific pushed its transcontinental grade through Echo and Weber Canyons, the railroad set up a construction boomtown called Echo City. Before Christmas there were barely half a dozen buildings. Four weeks later, more than fifty had gone up.

Brigham Young's son purchased the valley and named it Echo City. The first locomotive reached Echo City on January fifteenth, eighteen sixty-nine, met with celebration. In later years Echo City was home to over three hundred railroad employees.

Construction through these narrow canyons was the hardest work on the entire Union Pacific route. Today the canyon is quiet, but the grades those laborers cut still carry trains through the Wasatch.