Passing Through

Passing Through. . At City of Rocks we were met with all kinds of Christmas greeting ... we sat down to a Christmas dinner that only youth and vigor could do justice to.... Jim has erected a Christmas tree, and decorated it with cranberries and pop corn, and on it branches hung little tokens of remembrance to each one present. -- C.S. Walgamon, driver for the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Compay, describing Christmas at the City of Rocks stage station, about 1876 , Picture a Shoshone hunting party working its way toward you, or a wagon train plodding westward, or perhaps a stagecoach swiftly passing a laboring string of freight wagons. At times in the past you could have seen any of these passing through here. , The gap in the ridge in front of you is Emigrant Canyon, a key portal for western travel. In fact, the Salt Lake Alternate, a major branch of the emigrant wagon route to California, passed through Emigrant Canyon and joined the main California Trail a short distance to your right. , But perhaps the most interesting features were the stagecoach line through Emigrant Canyon and the state station that stood just a few hundred yards in from of you. From 1869 to 1883 the City of Rocks Home Station served passengers and employees on the Kelton stage route, which connected the railroad at Kelton, Utah, with booming mining towns in Idaho.