Photo by Geoff Liesik
The headstone of 14-year-old William E. Randall stands in the Woodside Cemetery on July 27, 2012 in Woodside, Utah. The family that owns the 700-acre townsite has put it up for sale. They are seeking $3.9 million. Woodside once bustled with about 300 residents in the early 1900s when it was a water stop for steam engines. Now the town sits empty. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Geoff Liesik) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; PROVO DAILY HERALD OUT; MAGS OUT
Photo by Geoff Liesik
A llamas walks freely in Woodside, Utah, in Emery County on July 27, 2012. The family that owns the 700-acre townsite has put it up for sale. They are seeking $3.9 million. Woodside once bustled with about 300 residents in the early 1900s when it was a water stop for steam engines. Now the town sits empty. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Geoff Liesik) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; PROVO DAILY HERALD OUT; MAGS OUT
Photo by Geoff Liesik
Associated Press
A gas station sits empty in Woodside, Utah, in Emery County. The family that owns the 700-acre town has put it up for sale, seeking $3.9 million. Woodside once bustled with about 300 residents in the early 1900s when it was a water stop for steam engines. Now the town sits empty.
SALT LAKE CITY — The real estate listing reads like a Wild West exhibit: An old gold mine, a geyser and a supposed hideout of famed outlaws.
It’s all in a middle-of-nowhere ghost town for sale three hours southeast of Salt Lake City. Listing price? $3.9 million.
Woodside once bustled with about 300 residents in the early 1900s when it was a water stop for steam engines. Now the town sits empty — of people, that is. Two free-range llamas come with the deal.
There’s a geyser, too, but it no longer shoots high after being jammed by vandals. Once, the cold-water spout shot up 75 feet and was a popular tourist attraction known as the Roadside Geyser. No entry fee required.
Even though the town has seen better days, real estate agent Mike Getzer said the property is full of potential for someone with an entrepreneurial, Wild West spirit.
“You can be the sheriff, the judge and executioner of your own town,” he joked. “You can be mayor. You can be whatever you wanted. It would be amazing.”
A service station also still stands on the property with a post office inside.
“You can be your own postmaster, too,” Metzger chuckled.
Woodside sits along Route 6 in Emery County, surrounded by the Book Cliffs — desert mountains given their name because of the area topography that looks like bookshelves. The town itself is flat, surrounded by brush and bisected by the Price River.
It’s also a place with a legendary past.
Historians believe Butch Cassidy and his gang once used the remote canyon country of the San Rafael Swell near Woodside as a hideout.
“And nobody’s ever found it — at least that they’re admitting,” Metzger said.
The town’s owner, Roy Pogue, 63, is selling it, in part, because he can’t take care of the land anymore and said his wife “likes people and we didn’t have neighbors out there.”
Pogue bought the property in 1990 from a doctor in Provo. He planned to farm and ranch on the land with the water rights that come with it. Instead, he found himself more often helping travelers whose vehicles broke down, so he refurbished the old service station and opened it for business. Because of its proximity to the tourist hub of Moab, about 80 miles south, he had plenty of people stopping by.
“Just being at that little station, for the years that I had it opened … there’s no country in the whole world I never met people from,” Pogue said.
There were also treasure seekers.
The first resident of Woodside is believed to have been Henry H. Hutchinson, a prospector who arrived in 1881 and, local legend has it, found a Spanish gold mine near the town. Pogue said over the years visitors would come with treasure maps and books trying to find the old mine.
“Nobody ever knew where it was,” he said. Western ghost towns are the stuff of American folklore, and it’s not uncommon lately to see one up for sale.
In remote, southern Wyoming, Buford — population 1 — was sold at auction this year for $900,000. The place was advertised as the smallest town in America.