Castle Gate, Utah: Butch Cassidy's Payroll Robbery, 173 Dead Miners, and a Town Razed for a Power Plant

Castle Gate, Utah is a ghost town in Carbon County. The first mine opened in 1886. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad built tracks through the site in 1888, and a town grew around the coal operations. A diverse population of Latter-day Saints and European immigrants — Italians, Greeks, Austrians — worked the mines.

01The Butch Cassidy Robbery

On April 21, 1897, Butch Cassidy and Elza Lay waited at the Castle Gate railroad station. The Pleasant Valley Coal Company payroll had arrived by train and was being transported to the town's bank. Cassidy and Lay held the transporters at gunpoint and seized about $8,800. To guarantee their escape, they had cut telegraph and phone lines in advance and arranged a relay of fresh horses at intervals along their escape route — allowing them to ride at high speed for hours before word of the robbery could spread.

The robbery made Cassidy a national figure and demonstrated the planning sophistication of the Wild Bunch gang.

02The 1924 Mine Disaster

At 8:00 AM on March 8, 1924, three violent explosions ripped through Utah Fuel Company's Castle Gate Mine #2. Coal dust and open flames — the combination that killed more miners in America than any other cause — detonated through the underground workings. 173 people died. It took nine days to recover all the bodies. The disaster ranks as the tenth worst mining disaster in United States history.

The human toll went beyond the death count. Hundreds of children were left fatherless. Dozens of women were pregnant with children who would never meet their fathers. The immigrant communities that had built their lives around the mine — Italian, Greek, Austrian families — were devastated.

03Kaiser Steel and the End of Castle Gate

In 1950, Kaiser Steel purchased the mining operation and built a coal-fired electrical generating plant at Castle Gate. In 1960, Kaiser razed the entire townsite to make room for the plant, forcing all remaining inhabitants to relocate. The company town that had existed for over seventy years was demolished by the company that owned it.

In 2000, the last operating mine experienced an explosion that killed two people, leading to permanent closure. In 2015, the power plant itself shut down — unable to meet modern environmental standards. The once-productive coal settlement became a desolate site with nothing left: the town razed, the mines closed, the power plant dark.

04What Remains of Castle Gate Today

The sandstone gate formation still stands at the mouth of Price Canyon — the geological feature that outlasted everything humans built around it. The town, the mines, and the power plant are gone.