USDA Forest Service

About forestry service, 80862, Wild Horse, CO, US, Utah

Vernal, the county seat and largest city in Uintah County, is in northeastern Utah, approximately 175 miles (280 km) east of Salt Lake City and 20 miles (32 km) west of the Colorado border. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 10,079. The population has since grown to 10,432 as of the 2022 population estimate. Vernal is home to the Vernal Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and one of the nine statewide regional campuses of Utah State University. The city serves as a gateway to the nearby Dinosaur National Monument, Flaming Gorge, and the Uinta Mountain Range. == History == Vernal, unlike most Utah towns, was not settled by Mormons moving west, or across the state. Brigham Young sent a scouting party to the area Uintah Basin in 1861 and received word back that the area was good for nothing but nomad purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and "to hold the world together." That same year, President Abraham Lincoln set the area aside as the Uintah Indian Reservation, with Captain Pardon Dodds appointed as Indian agent. Dodds later built the first cabin erected by a white man in the Uintah Basin around 1868. Settlers began to filter in after that and built cabins in various spots on or near Ashley Creek. In 1879, many came close to perishing during the infamous "Hard Winter" of that same year.