Floodgap Roadgap's Summer of 6 -- U.S. Highway 6, Part 7: US 6 in Utah (Interstate 15 to US 89; Utah County)

Spring Lake was also the birthplace of Ute leader Antonga Black Hawk, who led sixteen Ute, Paiute, Apache and Navajo tribes against the Mormon settlers between 1865 and 1872 in the Black Hawk War. The Utes, expelled to the Uintah Reservation in 1864, were apopletic at their mistreatment by the Mormon settlers and the starvation conditions in Uintah. In 1865, Black Hawk formed a band on the reservation and in their first of 150-odd skirmishes killed thirty-two settlers and stole over 2,000 cattle and horses. Despite their efforts, however, the population of the Utes shrunk to less than half as the Saints and the territorial Nauvoo Legion, fearing for their safety and their pleas unheeded by the federal government, indiscriminately massacred even those who had no part in the Indian raids. For that matter, profiteers such as Isaac Potter even led some nominally Ute raids to steal cattle; his throat was slit in revenge by a Mormon lynch mob in 1867.

In 1866, Black Hawk was badly wounded at a raid in Gravelly Ford when he was shot in the stomach. (His lieutenant Tamaritz was also struck, but survived to continue to conduct raids for at least two years more.) Falling ill with tuberculosis and fearing the worst for his people, he sued for peace with the settlers and the federal government became involved. However, despite months of negotiations with the assembled chiefs, the fighting did not stop; Tamaritz himself did not surrender until August 1868. Black Hawk succumbed to his infirmities in 1870, and was buried in Spring Lake.

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US 6/US 89

U.S. Highway 89 is another major north-south highway, linking seven national parks in the Mountain West including the famous Grand Canyon. An original 1926 highway, until 1992 it actually reached both borders all the way to Nogales, Mexico and near Babb, MT at AB 2, to which it was extended in 1934. In 1971, Arizona finished Interstate 17 from Flagstaff to Phoenix and, in 1978, the famous "metric" Interstate 19 from Tucson to Nogales (we reach I-19 on the way back). By this point US 89 was almost totally superfluous south of Flagstaff, being entirely routed over other existing highways except for the remnant AZ 89 between Wickenburg and Williams, and ADOT truncated it. Modern US 89A traverses an old US 89 alignment between Bitter Springs, AZ and Kanab, UT; there is another old 89A in Arizona that is now AZ 89A.

North of Flagstaff, however, much of US 89 is unmolested except for brief concurrencies with I-70 and I-15 and in Utah it retains its preeminence as the main drag in most of the communities it serves. Connecting Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, it enters Idaho and then Wyoming, where it reaches Grand Teton Nat'l Park and finally Yellowstone, where it temporarily becomes unnumbered park road (see also US 20). Entering Montana, it connects to the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road as seen in The Shining and the original theatrical cut of Blade Runner, and finally reaches the Canadian border. Today it is still a sizeable 1,252 miles.

In the aftermath of the Black Hawk War the remaining Ute inhabitants were forcibly relocated in the early 1870s and the town of Thistle was established in 1878 when the Utah and Pleasant Valley Railway was built, serving the local coal mines. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW) purchased it in 1882 when the Railway went bust, changed it from narrow gauge to standard and connected it to their Denver line. Thistle thus served to service the steam locomotives, offered meal service until the advent of the dining car, and maintained helper locomotives for the steep ascent. In 1917, the town had 600 residents and several service businesses in addition to the railroad.

Gradually the steam locomotive gave way to the modern and more powerful diesel locomotives, which also required less maintenance, and Thistle shrank. After the post office closed in 1974, most of the residents left and only a few families remained, including the fifth-generation Pace descendants, to maintain their homes and ranches.

In retrospect, the geology around Thistle had long been questionable. Not only was it the confluence of the two forks of the Spanish Fork River (Thistle Creek and Soldier Creek), but it also marks the junction of two major cross-mountain routes formed by both the Spanish Fork River and, to the east, the Price River (Part 8). The steep grades, long history of landslides and relatively sandy soil made it an odd choice for building the railroad upon, but the subtleties of the terrain were apparently lost on the U&PVR and D&RGW at the time; while there were several reports of unstable ground downstream from Thistle for years, damage to the track was not substantial enough to justify rerouting it, and nothing was done. In a like fashion the early roads in the region were developed near the existing tracks, and became US 50 and subsequently US 6.

Such was the backdrop when the remnants of Hurricane Olivia caused record-breaking levels of precipitation in the autumn and winter between 1982 and 1983. When the snow melted in the spring, the mountains became saturated with the water and the ground visibly started to slide in real-time. On April 13, 1983, both US 6 and the rail line were closed: the tracks were buckling as trains passed, and a Utah Highway Patrol officer was thrown into the roof of his cruiser as the road shifted beneath him. Three days later the tracks were completely buried and the day after that, the landslide blocked the Spanish Fork River, which immediately started to rise. The remaining inhabitants of Thistle were evacuated, and by April 18 the town was completely submerged. On the 19th, US 6 itself was under 50 feet of soil as the entire side of the mountain continued to shift down at over three feet an hour. Residents in the city of Spanish Fork were told to be prepared to evacuate as the impounded lake grew to nearly 200 feet in depth; they would have less than 45 minutes' warning if the water broke through the landslide dam.

The scope of the disaster could really only be appreciated from the air, as the 1983 USGS photograph at right demonstrates. Governor Scott Matheson appealed for federal aid, and President Reagan issued Utah's first presidential disaster area declaration. Utah installed a pumping station to start reducing the water level and by autumn had successfully dug tunnels to drain what was then called "Lake Thistle." The second of these tunnels still continues to pass river water through today; the slide was simply far too large to remove. While the state worked on stabilizing the water level, D&RGW railroad crews graded a new path and a 3,000' tunnel and rapidly constructed a new track alignment, opening on July 3, but not reconstructing the lower-volume damaged branches.

In the meantime, US 6/89 was closed for over eight months, cutting off much of southeastern Utah from the rest of the state and devastating the rural economy. Cars mobbed the road the day before it was scheduled to open on December 31, 1983, and UHP gave up and opened the highway early. Several unstable temporary cuts had to be realigned afterwards and the completed realignment was not finished until November 1984. In all, the direct and indirect economic costs of the Thistle slide were estimated as high as $400 million ($947m in 2014 dollars), making it the most costly landslide in the history of the United States.

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