Woodside began with prospector Henry H. Hutchinson, who settled there in 1881, and with other homesteaders who arrived the next year, dug an irrigation canal, and founded Lower Crossing, a settlement supported by relatively abundant water and cottonwood groves and also home to some Chinese laborers brought in to build the narrow gauge railroad. As the town grew with stores and a blacksmith shop, it took the name Woodside; by 1900 its population was 114, cattlemen used it for mail and freight, and sugar cane was raised for sorghum and molasses. By 1910 Woodside had schools, saloons, and a large hotel, and its population reached 328, then fell to 300 by 1920. In the late 1920s, the loss of livestock shipping facilities and the railroad station when operations were consolidated in Helper, followed by severe droughts in the 1930s, reduced the population to 30 by 1940. In the 1940s, a railroad-dug well from the 1880s that had become a cold bubbling mud pot driven by pressurized carbon dioxide gas was developed into a cold water geyser with a filling station, store, and café, making Woodside a minor tourist attraction. In 1924, Utah Oil & Refining drilled the Woodside #1 well about three and a half miles southwest of town and found a large flow of helium-rich gas rather than oil; President Calvin Coolidge then set aside the Woodside Dome Field as United States Helium Reserve #1, and it remains untapped. Tourist visits later declined after billboards along U.S. Route 6 were removed under the Highway Beautification Act in the 1960s, and after the café and store burned around 1970, only the geyser and filling station remained, with the geyser now much lower than its former 75-foot height. West of Woodside, the harsh Price River country of floods, heat, cold, and predators still supported ranching around the turn of the century. Alma and Annabelle Marsing established the Red Cliffs Ranch there, raised their family in isolation, and left a cattle brand recorded by Alma Marsing on July 23, 1900 that remains in use; Annabelle was buried on the ranch in January 1919, and nearby places included the Grimes place and the Newkirk place. A few miles downstream, Henry and Charity Dickman operated Tunnel Ranch, using an abandoned D&RGW narrow gauge tunnel as a head-gate and diversion ditch for irrigation while coping with the Price River's erratic flow; Charity Dickman also served as postmaster of the Woodside Post Office from October 1935 to November 1945, and the ranch remains active though uninhabited. Between Tunnel Ranch and Woodside, the Silvagni Ranch also depended on the Price River and remains active, though sometimes left fallow for lack of water. The D&RGW narrow gauge railroad, incorporated in Colorado in 1870, was extended into Utah after the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad was organized in July 1881 under William Jackson Palmer. The chosen route followed the Price River and Price Canyon toward Salt Lake, and between Woodside and Grassy Siding the line crossed the river 18 times in six miles. To avoid adding an extra mile around a sandstone fin, builders cut a short tunnel through 98 feet of rock, bridged the river, and continued upstream. Used from 1882 until the line was converted to standard gauge and realigned in 1890, this was the only narrow gauge tunnel on the main line in Utah, and it now serves as a water diversion point for the Tunnel and Silvagni ranches.