Town #4: Oasis est. 1860

Our next town, Oasis, we found by accident. On our way back to Delta from Hinckley, we saw a sign pointing south to Oasis. Neither John nor I had ever heard of Oasis. (See I told you it would help to do a little preparation before these trips.) We did a quick turn, and after a few miles, we found ourselves in the very small town of Oasis or what was left of it. There was not much there. You can tell from the picture of the green sign that it doesn't look much like an oasis. We were glad that we could even find a town sign. We weren't sure that we would find that.

Then, on the north side of town, we found this great old wooden town sign with the zip code on it. Isn't that a handy thing. We knew that this was the sign that we had to get our picture taken by. It is a great picture of the sign, but not such a wonderful picture of us. The building behind us was the seed plant.

Here is what is left of downtown Oasis. I later found out that Oasis was in 1914 the biggest community in Western Millard County. At that time it had a bank, two hotels, two lumber yards, two confectioneries, three stores, a big railroad station and a seed plant. It was a big stop on the railroad between Salt lake and Milford. The Oasis State Bank served the whole area until the Depression when it went under like so many other banks. This store and the seed plant were pretty much the only businesses left in 1950. Now those are gone, too.

Here is one of the homes in Oasis. I took a picture of this because it still has an outhouse in the back. Do you suppose that they still use it? While drove thru town, a man came out of one the houses bare chested and sporting a long shaggy beard. I think I have now had my first bigfoot sighting.

By the way, I have been getting my information about these Millard towns from a book called Milestones of Millard which was put out by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers in 1951. It has been a very helpful book. I wish I had a book like this for each county in Utah.