By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
A little-spoke-of history within Castle Country is the impact of the Buffalo Soldiers. Building infrastructure connecting Carbon County to the rest of the state while patrolling the roads of the Carbon Corridor, the Buffalo Soldiers’ heritage is all around us.
To honor this heritage, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, in conjunction with local governments, is kicking off a new Buffalo Soldier Trail across the state. To commemorate the new trail, SHPO is hosting Buffalo Soldier Heritage Trail tours in Salt Lake City, Vernal and Price on June 6 and 7.
To discuss the Price portion of the event, Price City Councilmember Layne Miller, along with Ian Wright and Lexi Little from SHPO, joined the KOAL Newsroom to provide more background information on the trail.
“It will be taking place in the Price City Civic Auditorium. We’re going to be talking about Buffalo Soldiers. That’s a topic that I’m not sure there are a whole lot of people who know about them,” explained Miller of the first day. “I became familiar with them as I researched the history of Nine Mile Canyon, and I learned that it was the Buffalo Soldiers, a troop of black soldiers, who built that road. But after meeting Lexi and Ian, I learned that not only did they build the road, they played an important role in several ways in the history of Price and Carbon County.”
Diving deeper into the history of the Buffalo Soldiers, Wright shared,” The 9th Cavalry was stationed at Fort Duchesne. The 24th Infantry of Buffalo Soldiers was at Fort Douglas. And these guys were involved in over half the state. Anything from guarding the annuities from the train station up to Niagara Canyon, Gate Canyon into Fort Duchesne, or one of the first big joint military exercises west of the Mississippi around Strawberry Reservoir.”
He continued,” Our real goal with this trail is to take people to the actual site where these things happen and let them experience for themselves to connect the tangible and the intangible history. And just to give you a quick example, when we were digging into this, one of the things we found out is that a guy named Benjamin O. Davis was stationed at Fort Duchesne, and he got dropped off in Price at the train station, taken up on a horse-drawn stagecoach up to the fort. And he was just a young cadet then, or a young man at the time. And he would become the first black general of the United States Army.”
Little jumped in to speak on the behind-the-scenes process of creating the trail,” This was a huge collective effort to make this project happen. Because the trail is located on many different land management agencies, we involve museums and other locations. There are so many stakeholders that were necessary to make this project a reality. It’s a multiyear project, and I think that these presentations and the tour is going to involve a lot of these partners and showcase just how many people have come together to tell this story and make people more knowledgeable when they’re out there recreating in these areas and giving them an opportunity to learn about history.”
Day one of the event kicks off at 5 p.m. on June 6 with free admission to the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum. A presentation on the history of the Buffalo Soldiers will follow at 6:30 p.m.
Day two starts at 8:30 a.m. in front of the Price City Auditorium. Participants from across the state will engage in a tour culminating at Fort Duchesne. The Price group will explore Nine Mile Canyon and Gate Canyon before making their final approach to Fort Duchesne. The tour is expected to last approximately six to eight hours.
“I need to mention that it’s not only Price City involved in this, but Tim Riley and the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum is behind this,” said Miller. “This is one of those events where, as I talk with folks about it, it was easy to get people involved. Part of what I like about living in Price is our history. Our history goes back 65 million years to the dinosaurs, and then on through the Fremont Indians, the river runners and all the history in the Swell. And this just adds to why we should be proud of who we are and where we live.”
In closing, Wright stated,” This will be a fun opportunity for the whole family. We will have professional historians and archaeologists from different agencies sharing this history. We will make sure we give everybody who comes a little bit of that history that they can take home with some educational materials. And we’ll also have some actual artifacts that people can see that are associated with this story.”
Little added,” There’s so much world-renowned outdoor recreation. And this trail is just another way to enhance that experience that people can have when they’re out there utilizing the areas and feel more connected on a personal level when this history is included in their experience.”
The Buffalo Heritage Trail kickoff will take place on Friday, June 6, and Saturday, June 7. More information and registration are available online here.