A place study · Emery County, Utah

Castle Dale
c. 1890

A reconstructive town model

Interactive historical interpretation

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Reading the reconstruction

The streets and block numbers follow the 1880 town plat. One 1889 house has a documented lot; the other homes and most gardens are interpretive. Terrain is shaped from the later topo map and vertically exaggerated to show the creek shelf.

1890 is a time slice. The two-story brick courthouse (1892), dedicated academy building (1899), and school shown on the 1917 Sanborn sheet are intentionally absent.

Camera

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Layers

Representative homes & outbuildings Street labels & original blocks Cottonwood Creek & irrigation ditches Native and planted vegetation 1917 footprints as later clues

Evidence key

The labeled Seeley house was built in 1889 on the south half of Lot 2, Block 11. Its exact footprint is simplified.Other c. 1890 homes are plausible forms in approximate positions within original blocks.Creek and irrigation alignments are approximate, informed by the later topographic and survey maps.Dashed markers show selected buildings mapped in 1917; their presence in 1890 is unproven.

Inspector

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Sources & decisions

Castle Dale plat, surveyed 1880: block grid, lots, public reservations; it does not plot houses. The scan says it was filed in 1889 and approved in 1891.

Sanborn fire insurance map, 1917: later building footprints, detached structures, church and school. Its shapes inform period visual texture, not verified 1890 addresses.

Castle Dale topographic map, later survey and 1986–87 architectural reconnaissance: slope, creek corridor, and subsequent street development.

National Register nomination for the Justis Wellington Seeley II house: 1889 red brick and adobe T-plan home on the south half of Lot 2, Block 11.

Utah History Encyclopedia: original sloping shelf, creek settlement, 1889 academy, 1892 courthouse, and later expansion.

Emery County water history: Mammoth Canal began around 1884 and served town and north bench; early ditches and cultivated land.

Utah State Historic Preservation Office and USU Range Plants: architectural forms and native vegetation.

Orientation is north up at zero turn. Heights, water traces, house count, and exact footprints are illustrative, not survey or excavation measurements. Street names use present directional conventions to make the historic grid legible; Main, Center, and 100 South also appear in the supplied survey or Seeley nomination.

Castle Dalec. 1890

Castle Dale
c. 1890