Department of Transportation. Division of Right of Way Railroad maps, 1900-1960.

This series contains engineering drawings of railroads in Utah. The drawings were part of the permanent files of the Utah State Highway Department, then the Utah Department of Transportation.

Beginning in the mid-1920s, and over the succeeding years as the state highway department would do improvements (grading, paving, expanding, etc.) of state roads that paralleled railroads, they would request, and receive, a copy of the applicable railroad survey maps as a basis for their own surveying efforts. There are 700 drawings, most of them rolled, from all areas of the state where roads parallel railroads.

A large portion of the drawings are copies of the ICC valuation drawings that the railroads created in the 1920s as part of the federally-mandated effort to place a value on America's railroads, by documenting all railroad infrastructure and equipment. It was such a massive effort for the railroads, and the companies continued to use the original linens as the basis for their own drawing changes well into the 1970s. An advantage of making changes to the original linens was that changes were only made to small and specific areas on each drawing, meaning that adjacent areas remained unchanged. In many cases, as trackage was abandoned, the fact was simply noted, with budgetary authority or work order number, and the tracks remained on the drawing. Thus, the drawings continued to serve as historical documentation for the railroads themselves.