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CORINNE, Box Elder County — The Winter Steam Festival at Golden Spike National Monument won’t happen this year, as a result of the partial government shut down. The event is a regular destination for many families, as well as photographers and train enthusiasts.
For 20-year volunteer Mike Tomany, it’s a big deal, too.
“It is the best hobby in the world,” Tomany said. “December the 29th is my birthday. And you tell me a better birthday present than to go out and fire a steam locomotive, and goof off with your friends all day long.”
Along with many other volunteers, he was disappointed to hear of the festival being canceled.
“I was upset. I could see that it was coming, and hoped that it wouldn’t come,” Tomany said. “People plan their vacations, their winter holiday vacations around that event. A lot of people will be very disappointed.”
Box Elder County commission chair Stan Summers said word came down of the cancellation on Dec. 21. He said county leaders started working immediately with the governor’s office to try and save the annual event.
“All day Sunday, basically, was emails and texts and phone calls back and forth to see if we couldn’t keep the steam festival open,” Summers explained. “The governor’s office was really ready to reach out and help us do what we needed to do to hopefully keep that open.”
While the county would likely have been able to fund the $21,000 needed to keep the event alive, Summers said coordinating volunteers and federal employees who were unable to communicate with them because of the furlough proved too difficult.
Box Elder County Director of Tourism Joan Hammer said there was a lot of hope for the event to help give an early look into the sesquicentennial celebration in May for the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad.
“Folks are really excited to celebrate, not just on May 10 of 2019, but all year long,” Hammer said. “There is a bit of a disappointment that we can’t kind of showcase, and get things off to a great start for the year.”
Tomany said there’s another concern: With the national monument shut down for the moment, workers and volunteers aren’t able to prepare the engines for the upcoming celebration.
“Perhaps the biggest problem to me is that we’re losing several weeks of maintenance time,” Tomany said. “In the winter, we paint everything, we polish all the brass, re-seat all the valves, adjust all the gauges so that they read properly.”
Summers said he’s disappointed that our nation’s leaders couldn’t come up with a solution and avoid a shutdown.
“It was a big disappointment that we had to cancel that because of the government shutdown,” Summers said. “I honestly think that sometimes the federal government doesn’t realize that it hurts the states, and the counties, and the cities and things when they do stuff like this.”
Tomany agrees.
“Unfortunately, there are political gains to be made on both sides of the fence,” he said. “And they’d rather fight than compromise, and it’s sad.”
