Utah State Route 196

State Route 196 is a north-south state highway located entirely in Tooele County, Utah that begins at SR-199 and ends at I-80. It passes through Skull Valley, and was added to the state highway system in 1998 to prevent the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians from using their reservation to store nuclear waste.

State Route 196
Route information
Defined by Utah Code §72-4-125
Maintained by UDOT
Length36.92 mi[1] (59.42 km)
Existed1998–present
Major junctions
South end SR-199 in Dugway
North end I-80 in Rowley Junction
Highway system
  • State highways in Utah
← SR-193→ SR-198

Route description

SR-196 begins at the junction with SR-199 near the control gate at Dugway Proving Grounds. The route travels north through the Skull Valley Indian Reservation and past the ghost town of Iosepa; also, mostly the east side of Skull Valley, at the west foothills of the Stansbury Mountains. The route ends at the junction with I-80 at the Rowley Junction interchange.

History

Skull Valley Road, then an unimproved dirt trail, was part of the Lincoln Highway from its creation in 1913 until about 1920, when an improved gravel road over Johnson Pass (present SR-199) was built with the help of a donation from Carl G. Fisher.[2] By the 1950s, Tooele County had constructed a paved county road through the valley.[3] In the early 1990s, the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians began planning a nuclear waste storage facility in Skull Valley.[4] At the urging of Governor Mike Leavitt, the Utah Transportation Commission added the road to the state highway system in January 1998 as SR-196, and in February the state legislature concurred and added the new route to the highway code.[5][6] Signs were posted in March prohibiting transport of high-level nuclear waste on the new state highway except by permit.[7] The next year, the commission designated two "statewide public safety interest highways" - State Routes 900 and 901 - each consisting of several low-quality Bureau of Land Management and county-maintained roadways branching off I-80 and SR-196, respectively. Unlike a typical state highway, the roads were not to be improved to higher standards; the purpose of the designation was to prevent construction of a waste-carrying rail line branching off the Union Pacific Railroad's Shafter Subdivision (ex-Western Pacific Railroad), which would cross these roads.[8][9][10]

Major intersections

The entire route is in Tooele County. [11]

Location[11]mi[1]kmDestinationsNotes
Dugway Proving Ground0.0000.000 SR-199Southern terminus
Rowley Junction36.82859.269 I-80 – Wendover, Salt Lake CityNorthern Terminus; I-80 exit 77
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

References
  1. "State Route 196 Highway reference". Utah Department of Transportation.
  2. Kevin J. Patrick and Robert E. Wilson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Lincoln Highway Resource Guide Archived 2011-02-09 at WebCite, August 2002 (submitted to the National Park Service for the National Register of Historic Places): Chapter 15: Lincoln Highway in Utah DOC, accessed January 2012
  3. Utah State Road Commission (Rand McNally), Utah Official Highway Map, 1956
  4. Jim Woolf, Salt Lake Tribune, San Juan, Goshutes Consider Building Giant Radioactive-Waste Complex, July 13, 1992, p. B1
  5. Jim Woolf, Salt Lake Tribune, Panel OKs Skull Valley Road-Transfer Bill, February 20, 1998, p. B1
  6. Utah Department of Transportation, Highway Resolutions: "Route 196". (604 KB), updated November 2007, accessed May 2008
  7. Hilary Groutage, Salt Lake Tribune, A Sign of the Times: No N-Waste Here, March 22, 1998, p. C1
  8. Jim Woolf, Salt Lake Tribune, State Absorbs 2 County Roads to Block Nuclear Waste Shipments; Tactic would halt shipments of radioactive matter on rail spur that crosses highways, February 13, 1999, p. D1
  9. Utah Department of Transportation, Highway Resolutions: "Route 900". (841 KB), updated December 2007, accessed May 2008
  10. Utah Department of Transportation, Highway Resolutions: "Route 901". (842 KB), updated December 2007, accessed May 2008
  11. "State Highway Map". Utah Department of Transportation. Retrieved 28 May 2008.


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