Re: Shipping via the Uintah Railway 1910 (yawn)

I would be interested in where you got the pole, and more on the information about Ft. Duchesne. My info is second hand, from two different scources. One was a nephew of an old frieghter, the other was a daughter of a miner at Dragon. This fact was also supported in the book "Builders of Uintah", 1947, by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. ( the Uintah in the title was the name of the county - but it gives a good history of many things including the telegraph line, and the railway........)
The first telegraph line was built in to Ft. Duchesne from Provo, Utah in 1893, and extended to Vernal in 1894. The Uintah Railway built their first line, a "single circuit grounded wire from Fruita and Mack Colorado to Dragon, Utah in 1903-04". They then changed to telegraph and telephone lines and extended in to Vernal in June of 1905, to the upstairs of the "Colthorp Building". Later that year the Uintah Railway completed construction of a brick office and wharehouse building on Vernal Avenue and moved the exchange and wires to the new building ( as pictured in my second volume, have to wonder how many other RR out there had frieght wharehouses sixty miles from the end of the tracks?).
----- "A branch was built from Bonanza to Ft. Duchesne in 1905. At first the wire was put on poles. These had to be replaced with pipes, however, because the frieghters would chop them down and use them as firewood."--------
It seems that most of the Uinta Basin was on a another private telephone system by 1918, and the Uintah's system was more or less used for their purposes only.
I to have heard rumors of the poles being burned by the Utes, and there fore needed rplaced by steel poles. It all depends I guess on where the pole came from. If it were from between Bonanza and Ft. Duchesne, then I would say it had little to do witht the Army or indians. If from anothe rlocation, then that might well be the case. By the time the Uintah Railway was built in to the area, the Ute "problem" had died down, and very little of my research has ever found anything about the Utes, other than respect from the railroaders and their families. The Meeker Masacre and the Calavary were stilla apart of the scene and thought about, but nothing really ever happened during the Uintah's years in the basin.