Utah's Livestock Industry and Utah Railroads
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This page was last updated on March 4, 2026.
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Overview
Little has been published about Utah's cattle industry, but the industry has been a foundational part of Utah's economy since the arrival of the first white explorers and Mormon pioneers. Initially brought by the pioneers as food (meat and dairy) and draft animals, the animal population grew to 7,350 head by 1850. Following the arrival of the railroad, large herds of beef cattle were driven to market to meet growing needs of the region and the nation.
While some individual herds reached 25,000 head, Utah is characterized by relatively small operations. In 1959 only 150 Utah cattle producers had over 500 head of cattle. On the other hand, nearly one-half of the total 14,000 cattle producers were small producers and had fewer than 19 animals each. Although small and not "Hollywood" glamorous, Utah's cattle industry was vital, often providing the primary economic income for many Utah counties. By 1961, cattle accounted for $44.4 million of Utah's agricultural receipts; more than any other segment of the state's economy.
Movement of livestock by railroad in Utah was mostly stock from Idaho, Montana, and Washington that moved through Ogden, and then eastward after the required 28-hour rest period. Most of the activity at Ogden was for the Swift packing plant (and its predecessor companies).
Like Ogden, livestock moving through Salt Lake City, mostly hogs and cattle, came from Idaho and Montana for the cattle, and from points eastward for the hogs. The Salt Lake Union Stock Yards existed almost solely to serve the adjacent Cudahy packing plant, until the post-war period when UP began running its Day Live Stock.
Ogden was where UP, SP, and D&RGW interchanged livestock. The first facility in Ogden was a corral jointly owned by Oregon Short Line and Rio Grande Western. Completed in 1898, it continued to grow until it was competing for space among the roundhouses and car shops of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. In April 1917, a new Ogden Union Stock Yards was opened for business. Located across the Weber River west of the old stock yard, it was owned by Ogden Packing & Provision Co., which was purchased in 1924 by American Packing & Provision Co., a large interstate corporation that controlled the slaughter and sale of livestock products, mostly beef and sheep. In 1935, a federal court ordered the breakup of this monopoly, and in 1936 Ogden Union Stock yards was sold to Denver Union Stock Yards. The facility grew and continued in operation throughout the late 1950s and 1960s as trucks took over the transportation of livestock. Ogden Union Stock Yards finally closed in 1970.
Ogden had 356 pens for all livestock, and 214 low pens for hogs only. The yards had 19 loading chutes for single-deck cars and 14 loading chutes for either single-deck or double-deck cars. In comparison, facilities at Denver were roughly three times the size of those at Ogden, with 1,000 pens and 79 loading chutes. Ogden was the largest stock yards west of Denver.
The peak year for numbers of animals was 1945, with almost 1.8 million head of sheep, 300,000 head of cattle, and 350,000 hogs. The year 1945 was also the peak year for livestock-related rail traffic, with 20,000 cars of sheep, 19,000 cars of cattle, and 6,000 cars of hogs being either unloaded at Ogden, or loaded after sale, or re-loaded after the prescribed five-hour rest period. Sheep and the processing of lamb and mutton was the reason Swift & Co. purchased the American Packing & Provision Co.'s plant in Ogden in 1949. The Swift plant in Ogden furnished almost all of that company's lamb and mutton meat for Eastern markets.
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake Union Stock Yards -- Information about the stock yards located near Salt Lake City, in North Salt Lake.
Salt Lake City Meat Packing -- Information about the larger meat packing plants in and near Salt Lake City.
Ogden
Ogden Union Stock Yards -- Information about the stock yards located in Ogden.
Ogden Meat Packing -- Information about the larger meat packing plants in Ogden.
Utah's Cattle Industry In The 1890s.
The 1890s were a decade of growth and stabilization for Utah's cattle industry, marked by a shift from the rough-and-tumble "Old West" era of open ranges to a more structured, commercialized system. This was the same year Utah achieved statehood (1896), and the cattle business was a cornerstone of its new economy.
The railroads played a vital role in the growth of the cattle industry, with Union Pacific-controlled companies extending through the Nephi and Delta/Milford areas, and the Rio Grande Western extending into the San Pete valley (Manti) and Sevier valley (Richfield and Marysvale). The railroads provided low-cost transportation for the movement of the herds to market.
By the 1890s, the "Texas Invasion" — the influx of massive herds of Longhorns driven up from the south — had already peaked. Ranchers were moving away from self-sufficiency and toward commercial agriculture.
Milford became a vital shipping hub. The railroad eliminated the need for cattle drives of hundreds of miles, allowing ranchers to ship "fattened" cattle directly to major meatpacking centers like Chicago.
The following comes from "Milford" by Martha Sonntag Bradley.
Cattle-raising was also important in Milford's development. In the early 1870s three brothers settled at Pine Grove in Pine Valley west of Milford and established a cattle ranch. Within a few years several cattle companies had stock grazing in the land surrounding Milford. B.F. Saunders of Salt Lake City owned Utah's largest cattle herd - the Pike Springs Ranch - and he made Milford his shipping point. Cattle grazing was possible on nearby public domain land year round. Meadow grass covered the Beaver and Milford valleys from Hay Springs to Black Rock and supported as many as 20,000 head of cattle and 5,000 head of horses.
During the 1880s Milford became the railroad terminal for the Southern Utah Line, and it was particularly important as a loading place for the cattle of southern Utah.
While many Mormon settlers ran small "co-op" herds, the 1890s saw the dominance of "Cattle Kings" like P.T. Farnsworth and B.F. Saunders, along with the McIntyre brothers. These men operated on a massive scale, often controlling tens of thousands of head of cattle.
(Read about the McIntyre's moving their cattle from Texas to Utah)
The decade wasn't all prosperity; it was defined by intense competition between cattle growers competing with sheep growers for dwindling resources. Sheep numbers skyrocketed in Utah during the 1890s (reaching nearly 3.8 million by 1900). Sheep graze much more "closely" than cattle, often leaving ranges barren for cows. This led to violent confrontations between "cowmen" and "sheepmen" over grazing rights. The sheepmen responded by moving their flocks to Utah's plentiful steep hillsides, where their horizontal trails remain today.
Severe droughts and harsh winters in the late 1880s and early 1890s caused heavy livestock losses. Some got bigger as corporate enterprises, and others sold out to smaller, local Mormon "pools" or cooperatives.
Large areas in central and southern Utah held expansive rangelands that many considered to be at "full capacity." This included the Goshen valley, the Tintic valley, and the areas around Nephi, Richfield, Delta, Milford, Fillmore and Beaver. The lack of fencing meant cattle from different owners often mixed, leading to the massive regional roundups, moving the large herds to locations to the railroad at such as Milford for loading into entire trains of railroads stock cars.
The so-called "Roundup" was the most critical event of the year. Cowboys from various outfits would converge to gather cattle from the open range, sort them by brand, and brand the new calves.
Chicago and Omaha were prime destinations for Utah beef. In what was known as "condition for the Chicago market," cattle were held on the range until they reached a specific weight and health standard to fetch top dollar on the Omaha and Chicago markets.
Among the key figures in Utah's cattle industry of the 1890s were the McIntyre brothers in the Tintic valley, and P. T. Farnsworth and B. F. Saunders in the Beaver area. Farnsworth was also a well known mining magnate and a leader in Salt Lake City business community.
H. J. Faust (1883-1904)
From Utah-Historical-Quarterly_Volume-32_Number-3_1964_Cattle-Industry
One of the most vocal of breed improvers was H. J. Faust, a man who seems to have lost no opportunity to speak and write for better cattle. Early in the summer of 1884, he visited the Wyoming Hereford Cattle Association at its 30,000 acre ranch near Cheyenne. At this time the Association boasted about 500 imported Herefords of all ages, including the great bull Rudolph. "These cattle," Faust told the Salt Lake Daily Herald, "are all whitefaced, [with] four white feet, brisket white and bush of tail white, the sides red. Think of 500 cattle all in uniform. Everywhere you look you see clean, whitefaced cows and calves, male and female."
In January 1885, prime steers sold for between $30.00 and $40.00. In Tooele County, at a cost of "many thousands of dollars," W. C. Rydalch and H. J. Faust had also imported shorthorns from Canada. In 1885 Faust reported that Rydalch's herd, improved with quarter, half and two-third graded cattle, was "without doubt the best stock in Utah." Included in the Rydalch herd were 75 full-blooded shorthorns.
Faust continued his own efforts, bringing into Utah fine cattle of other breeds. In March 1885, he shipped from Missouri "thirtysix head of pure Galloway yearling bulls, twenty pure blood Galloway yearling heifers, one imported Galloway bull, one imported cow and calf, one Short-horn bull, one Jersey bull, five grade yearling Galloway bulls and heifers," in addition to other stock. Observed the Cheyenne Livestock Journal: "This is the largest shipment of fine stock ever made to Utah."
Beaver County Hog Growing
From the late 1940s until the early 1990s, there were almost daily shipments of hogs through Utah on the Union Pacific. Until the stock yards in Ogden and Salt Lake City closed in 1970, some hogs were shipped from Utah growers on this daily train. The HOGX stock car movements on Union Pacific came to an end in 1994. In 1988, the Clougherty Packing company had formed a partnership with a California hog farmer, then took over the entire operation in 1994. In 1992 Clougherty Packing company also started buying hogs raised in northeastern Arizona, which were trucked to California.
(Read more about shipping hogs by rail)
The decentralization of the slaughter industry and the rise of the trucking industry was the factor in the building of the Salina Livestock Auction (official name: Producers Livestock Marketing Association - Salina) by the Utah Farm Bureau in the 1970s to serve the Utah cattle and sheep industry, with animals arriving from the north and south via US-89. The Salina Livestock Auction remained the largest and possibly only livestock auction operating in Utah today.
When Smithfield Foods began operating Circle 4 farms in the Milford and Minersville area, they also had plans to build a slaughter house in Milford and process the hogs locally. As an interim measure they hired Gurney Trucking out of Aurora, Utah (near Salina), to ship their finished hogs to Clougherty Packing company in Los Angeles. That arrangement worked out very well, resulting not a single pig was ever shipped by rail, and the Milford packing plant and its promised employment was never built.
Livestock on UP's LA&SL
Livestock On UP's LA&SL -- The text from pages 164 and 165 of Mark Hemphill's book about UP's Los Angeles & Salt Lake route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The book was published in 1995, and the text is used here with permission. Includes comments from late 2018.
On UP's LA&SL mainline between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, in Utah there were loading pens at almost every siding and station area, with at least a single pen that could hold less than 10 animals and had at least a single loading chute. The larger facilities were at Modena, Lund, Milford, Black Rock, Clear Lake, Oasis and Delta. Each was furnished with water and feed facilities, and Milford had scales. Modena, Milford and Black Rock had dipping vats and shearing pens for sheep.
North of Delta, there were pens large enough to hold at least 25 animals at Jericho, Faust, St. John, and Warner. On the Provo Subdivision between Lynndyl and Provo, there were large pens at Soma, Nephi, Payson, Provo, Draper and Sandy. Cedar City had 9 pens that could hold 120 animals, and Iron Springs had 5 pens that could hold 24 animals.
Newspapers carried stories of the larger ranches shipping thousands of head of cattle, taking up multiple entire trains of stock cars. In theses cases, the herds were held in the near vicinty of the stock pens and loading chutes, with groups of cattle being loaded as soon as space permitted during the period of loading.
The 28 Hour Law
First passed in March 1873, the law was repealed due to the lack of adequate facilities, i.e., inadequate fencing, inadequate provisions for feeding and watering, and no requirement for a dry location for animals to rest.
New law passed in June 1906, with more complete description of facilities needed to rest animals.
The 28-hour rule could be extended to 36 hours with the written permission of the owner or custodian of the live stock shipment. The permission for the extension was to be carried as part of the documents for the shipment itself.
The 28 hour law did not apply to livestock movements by truck until September 2005. And since this is relatively recent, there are lots of on-line sources with discussions both pro and con. And many of these sources include some background about the history of livestock movements in general.
Surprisingly, the 28 hour law is barely mentioned in "Prime Cut, Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the United States, 1607-1983" by Jimmy M. Skaggs. It's a good book but it barely mentions the 28 hour law except in passing.
The Livestock Business
The following humorous note was among Kenneth Knowles' personal papers:
The Livestock Business
Livestock are animals that are bred and raised to keep the producer broke, the commission man confused and the buyer crazy. They are born in the spring, pastured in the summer, mortgaged in the fall and given away in the winter.
They vary in size, color, weight and market grade. The man who can guess nearest to their weight and market grade is called a bonded livestock buyer by the public, a robber by the rancher and a poor businessman by his banker.
Among buyers and sellers, some say the market will go up, and some say it will go down. What actually happens is that it goes up after you sold and down after you have bought.
When you have light cattle, the buyers want heavy ones. When you have heifers, they want steers. When they are thin, they should be fat, and when they are fat, the tallow market goes to hell.
There is only one thing of which you can be sure: The commission man will always say, "You should have been here yesterday."
(Kenneth Knowles was secretary-treasurer of the Ogden Union Stock Yards from July 1961 until it closed in January 1971.)
More Information
Text of 28-Hour Law, at Cornell University (current law); includes 36-hour extension.
Text of 1906 28-Hour Law -- PDF of text of 1906 law available through Google Books
Triple-deck Union Pacific hog car -- A page describing the UP stock car preserved at the Pacific Southwest Railroad Museum in Campo, California.
Wikipedia article about railroad stock cars
Utah's Cattle Industry -- An article in the Utah History Encyclopedia about the cattle industry in Utah.
The Cattle Industry of Utah, 1850 to 1900 -- Text of an article in a 1964 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly.
UP's Day Live Stock Train -- Text of Mark Hemphill's excellent article about Union Pacific's DLS (Day Live Stock), from his book "Union Pacific Salt Lake Route," published in 1995; used with permission.
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