In the 1860s, Ike and Dow Barton, two escaped black slaves from Alabama, were the first recorded settlers in the region of present day Caliente. Then known as Dutch Flat, the area supported ranchers who provided meat and hay to the miners working in Pinoche and Delmar. In the latter part of the nineteenth century several rival railroad lines squabbled over right of way through the narrow canyon, but in 1901 the Union Pacific managed to bring its track in from Milford, Utah. A local hot spring gave the town its name - Caliente. The town's mission style train depot was built in 1923 and the town prospered until the 1940s when steam was replaced with diesel as the driving power for the locomotives. Zane Grey visited often.
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