Kelton in It's Hayday

I always thought that Kelton was in Idaho but looking at the map, it was just right across the boarder in Utah. Kelton was a thriving community from 1870 to 1942.  It was in '42 that the railroad left and that a 6.6 earthquake hit killing two people. It was about 1960 when the highway was changed making it a true ghost village.

Kelton Hotel

My great Uncle Louis wrote the following:

When father would go to Kelton, I’d beg him to take me with him.  If he wouldn’t, I’d follow him down the road bawling till he’d stop and take me with him. My mother used to put me up to it all the time.  I’d cry when he’d leave so she would say “just go follow your father and beg him to take you with him.”  So that is what I’d do.  There was a two-story hotel in Kelton called the Crandle where we would stay.  I thought that was funny that this man and woman had the same name as my brother and I asked him if he was our boy.  Mrs. Crandle was the cook and Mr. Crandle ran the hotel.  There would be a big room downstairs with a long table where everybody would set to eat.  They would only serve meals at a certain time and if you weren’t there, you didn’t get to eat.  He had a big long shed out back for your horses and hay already in the mangers.  They would have to ship the hay in by train from Brigham City, Utah.  

Kelton had several saloons and other buildings.  It was a town on the Southern Pacific Railroad where the railroad skirted the northern end of the Great Salt Lake, and was a freight terminal for goods and supplies and for people heading for Boise or the Northwest by stagecoach.  It was a booming town until the Oregon Short Line (now the Union Pacific Railroad) was built across southern Idaho in 1883.  The road to Kelton was along the Raft River and down through the “Narrows” where a stagecoach station was located.  Then it went up along the foothills past Naf and Clear Creek to Kelton Pass or Strevell Pass or Cedar Creek to Kelton.  

Kelton Cemetery