Bovine

Bovine, at mile 691.6 from San Francisco, was reached by track-laying crews on March 28, 1869, and became a section station. In 1869, facilities here included a section house, train car body, Chinese bunk and cook house, and a water tank, and a freight platform was added in 1885. The site took its name from Bovine Mountain directly north, and from herds of feral cattle in the area that had apparently been lost or abandoned by emigrants. Its freight business suffered a massive blow with the construction of the Utah Northern Railroad in 1871, built by Mormon people to capture the market supplying mining fields in northern Idaho and Montana. After the silver panic of 1873, the Utah Northern Railroad was sold to the Union Pacific, and as silver prospecting ended, demand for supplies shipped by rail dwindled significantly. The section station was abandoned after completion of the Lucin Cutoff, though the siding continued for a time to be used by area ranchers. The site has been extensively looted, but visible features still include a bake oven cut into the side embankment of the railroad grade and a brick walkway leading from the rear of a house foundation to an old outhouse.

Utah · United States