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UINTAH, Weber County — For as long as anybody can remember, railroad tracks have always passed right through the middle of Uintah. It's a peacful town today, but it wasn't always that way.
The small town has a colorful history of bars and brothels, but it was back in 1908 when it had one of its worst moments.
It happened at the railroad tracks.
"I just always knew the story of how he got killed down by the railroad tracks. They always told me. It’s part of our family history," said Robert Smith.
Smith drove to Ogden from Rexburg, Idaho, to be a part of a ceremony at the Ogden City Cemetery Saturday morning to honor two Weber County sheriff’s deputies.
One of of the deputies, Seymore Clark, is Smith’s great-uncle.
“I think it’s awfully important to remember that far back," Smith said. "Usually, you think that kind of history is gone."
A medallion signifying Clark was a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty was placed on Clark’s headstone.
In November of 1908, Clark and deputy John Murphy were bringing a man through Uintah on a horse and buggy when they came across another man suspiciously hiding behind some stacked shoe boxes at the railroad tracks.
“Deputy Murphy responded, ‘Don’t get excited, we’re officers of the law’,” said Lt. Lane Findlay recalled during Saturday's ceremony. “Once that phrase was uttered, the man opened fire on the two deputies.”
Clark was shot twice in his arm and twice in his abdomen. Murphy was also shot in his hand, but was saved because of a ring he was wearing.
His granddaughter Melissa Castleton still has that ring.
“It has a little crack in it, and I had always been told it saved his hand from a bullet,” Castleton, who traveled to Ogden from California to be at her grandfather’s ceremony, said.
“For me, this has been very personal," she said. "I never knew my grandfather. He died when my father was only 15 years of age. But I’ve really grown close to him in these last few weeks."
Both men were awarded the Weber County Sheriff’s Office Purple Heart.
“It means an awful lot. It means a remembrance of our family in Ogden, Utah,” Smith said.
As for the man who shot the deputies, he has never been found, "leaving it, of course, as the only unsolved murder of a Utah law enforcement officer in history,” said Weber County Sheriff Terry Thompson.
It's also "the only fatality the Weber County Sheriff’s Office has ever experienced," Thompson said.
Even though it has been more than 100 years, current Weber County deputies say it’s a reminder the sacrifices of others in law enforcement are never forgotten.
“The brotherhood that is felt in something like this, imagine if the whole world reacted to each other that way? We’d live in a whole different world,” Castleton said.
