History of Castle Dale, Utah

The 1880 census found 237 people residing on homesteads strung along more than six miles of Cottonwood Creek. In that year two townsites were surveyed, one known as Upper Castle Dale and the other as Lower Castle Dale. In 1882 Upper Castle Dale took the name Orangeville in honor of Orange Seely, even though he resided in the lower town. The two communities, only three miles apart, have had closely related histories, but Castle Dale has been home to the main public institutions. The period from 1890 to 1910 brought a doubling of Castle Dale's population, from 409 to 848. The town expanded from the original plat on a sloping shelf beside the creek onto the adjacent benchlands. A two-story brick courthouse was erected in 1892. The Emery Stake Academy, founded in 1889 as the first high-school level educational institution in southeastern Utah, occupied a new two-story brick building in 1899, then moved in 1910 to a larger three-story building on the bench. This period also saw the town's incorporation (1900), the building of several commercial structures, the establishment (in 1900) of a weekly newspaper, the Emery County Progress, the first electric service (1906), and the Emery County Bank (1906).