Train wrecks, suicides, murders, heart attacks, strokes, explosions, decapitation, all have happened at Ogden's Union Station or nearby.

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This book Chronicles the deaths that have occurred at the station or were brought to the station.  

There were  thousands of  deaths along the  Transcontinental Railroad route as men were laying  tracks, blasting through the mountains, and grating the land.  These men worked hard, but also played harder.  ​

   The temporary tent cities, known as “Hell On Wheels”,  followed right along with the construction gangs.  They were made up of gambling houses, saloons,  general stores, and ‘ladies’ that would show you a good time(. . . If you paid them), “and all other dens of iniquity.”  Alexander Toponce said of the camps just east of Promontory, “It seemed for a while as if all the toughs in the West had gathered there.  Every form of vice was in evidence.  Drunkenness and gambling were the mildest things they did.  It was not uncommon for two or three men to be shot or knifed in a night.” Reminiscence of Alexander Toponce Pioneer.  (Lore of Box Elder County: Sons of the Utah Pioneers)

     Uinta County, Wyoming, states in their history: “It is believed that the cost in lives during the construction of the grade through Uinta County was ten men to a mile.  Often their bodies were buried, without ceremony, in the roadbeds.”

      As the two railroad companies advanced closer to their connecting spot, the men from several countries came within sight of one another.  There were the Irish camps from the East and the Chinese camps from the West. The Chinese had already lost hundreds of men in the avalanches of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. ‘"Crocker's Pets" is what they were dubbed by the Irish, who hated the little yellow men.  When the gangs met, the Irish laid a "grave" of dynamite on the Centrals tracks, and a whole crew was killed.  The Chinese wisely laid a "grave" on the Chinese line, and the fun was stopped by mutual consent.“

    Overworked and unused to the rigors of the climate, the Chinese died like flies when smallpox struck the camps in the winter and fall of 1868-69. Hundreds of their graves are scattered among the sage along the right of way through Nevada and western Utah.

       After the last spike was driven,  the celebration over, and the dignitaries were gone,  the men, still at Promontory, waited for their pay. During this time,  only one man per night was killed and buried  in unmarked graves. This was the end of the Hell on Wheels that had followed the Union Pacific west from Omaha.”

    (Lore of Box Elder County: Sons of the Utah Pioneers)​

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The same year the railroad was completed a Cholera epidemic swept through Utah, hitting railroad camps hard due to the close quarters and unsanitary conditions.   Men were buried in mass graves.

(Brigham city Cemetery web site)

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Utah 1869

    Brigham Young made a deal with each railroad company for the Mormons to work on the grading and blasting through Echo Canyon and down into the Ogden Valley and on to Promontory, but at less pay than the Greeks and Italians were getting.  Brigham Young couldn’t persuade the railroad to go through Salt Lake, but he knew that it would happen in time.   Brigham Young called his men to work. When the payroll didn’t come, he encouraged the men to keep working and see it through.

  It is difficult to estimate how many deaths there would have been during the construction of the railroad through Weber County, but the above narratives let us know there were probably hundreds.

The Deseret News was the only newspaper printed from 1850-1870.  The Salt Lake Tribune was established in the early 1870’s.   Ogden did not have a news paper until 1879.  News was slow to arrive, so most of the news was either word of mouth or by telegraph.  Here are a few of the news articles that related to the Ogden Union Depot from that period of time.

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First Deaths

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1969, a lady was bludgeoned to death in her tent between the new Ogden Depot and the Weber River.   The men who made her brains ooze out of her head, had heard she held $300 to $400 in a locked box in her tent. They found 35 cents. They were 19 years old and wanted in 3 other states for similar crimes.

5 months after the celebration at Promontory, an immigrant train ran into the back of a work train that had gone off the track and didn’t bother to put up a signal warning flag.