The #1 Castle Gate mine opened in about 1886. It opened after the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad ran their tracks over the mountain from Springville. It is a mine producing high quality coal.

The first houses for their employees were old boxcars provided by the railroad. In time homes and buildings were built as more people came. By 1914 it was incorporated as a town. It was a Company Town. Utah Fuel/D&RG owned the ground and all the houses and buildings. The store was also called the Wasatch Store. Here too, you had to buy from it or lose your job.

Castle Gate was very much a part of our early family history. The first born of both of Erick's families were born here in Castle Gate. Dora Dean lived in Castle Gate about four years where her son Keith was born, March 14, 1953, and her daughter Barbara started school in 1954. Dora tells me that Louise and Dan lived in Castle Gate but was not sure of the dates.

In 1895-1896, age 17, Erick Erickson arrived in Castle Gate where he went to work on the section. This job lasted a short time, then takeing a job as a night watchman. A few months later going to work on a crusher. At some point prior to April 21, 1897 Erick must have started droping cars in the railroad yard. This was the date that Butch Cassidy robbed the Castle Gate payroll and Erick's life history records that Erick witnessed the whole thing while dropping cars in the yard.

While Erick was working in Castle Gate he meet Mathalda Sophia Christensen and on November 8, 1900 they were married. Mathalda was the daughter of Christian N. Christensen and Maria Larsen, who came to Utah with their respective parents in 1868. Both the Christensen and Larsen families were established at Pleasant Grove, Utah where in September 1872 Christian and Maria were married. They began their lives togeather in Ephraim, Utah. After Christian returned from a LDS mission to Denmark and in 1883 they moved to Huntington, Utah afterward they settled at Cleveland, Utah. While there he entered upon a contract that brought him to Castle Gate. He was a brick mason by trade and he took the contract to build the coke ovens during the early period of the development of Castle Gate. Later he erected most of the brick buildings of the town. Mathalda's brother Niels C. Christensen in 1898 went to work as an electrician for the Utah Coal Company in Castle Gate, after which he was promoted to master mechanic. One record refers to Niels's position with the Utah Coal Company as "one of large responsibility". Niels served as a member of the board of the Welfare Association of Castle Gate and was keenly interested in all that has to do with the progress and improvement of his adopted city. At Manti, Utah on the 2nd of March 1898 Niels Christensen was married to Erick's sister Helga Erickson.

It wasn't untill the spring of 1920 that Erick returned to Castle Gate and went to work dropping cars in the yard. By this time he had lost Mathalda, his fourth child Marie and his second wife Mary Mindwell Gardner. On November 26, 1919 Erick married Kate Elezabeth Gardner and it was here in Castle Gate that their first child was born. Albert Levon was born September 20, 1920. The family lived in two tents for the first three weeks of LeVon's life. In 1921 the family left Castle Gate and moved to the farm near Cleveland, Utah.