MEMOIRS PART 2 - WRATHALL AND MATTHEWS

In about 1920 Dad and Pratt Matthews formed a company named WRATHALL AND MATTHEWS and went into the construction business. They bought used equipment from various sources, dug trenches and installed tile to drain some of the lower areas in Granstville, including their own properties. They also got contracts fro some of the grade raising work for the new Lincoln Highway, which went through Granstville. They did this with horse-drawn equipment, mostly with a two-horse scraper called a "fresno".

One of the contracts they got was to raise the grade across the Bonneville Salt Flats. Anyone who is old enough to remember things as they were before Interstate 80 was built may recall that the highway was parallel to the railroad tracks, about 100 yards north, and ran in an almost straight line from the eastern edge of the Flats to Wendover on the western edge. The only place hwere the highway curved was about halfway across the salt flats, where the highway turned away from the railroad. After about a half mile it curved back toward the railroad until it was again 100 yards away and then curved to resume its western course toward Wendover.

Dad told me the reason for this. The surveyors had reached an agreement with the railroad regarding the railroad's right-of-way, put in the proper alignment stakes, and told Dad & Pratt to begin. They began the laborious work with their fresnos and when they were a little beyond the half-way point, a railroad inspector came by and said," Wait a minute - our right of way doubles every 20 miles for a length of a quarter mile in case we ever want to build a station."

After many arguments and recriminations, the highway people caved in and curved the road out as indicated above. This prevented it (according to Dad) from becoming the longest straight highway in the U.S. and maybe the world at that time. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the railroad never built a station there.