State Route 31 is a state highway

State highway

State highway, state road or state route can refer to one of three related concepts, two of them related to a state or provincial government in a country that is divided into states or provinces :#A...

 in Sanpete

Sanpete County, Utah

Sanpete County is a county located in the U.S. state of Utah. The population according to the 2010 U.S. Census was 27,822. It was possibly named for a Ute Indian chief named Sanpitch, which was corrupted to Sanpete. Its county seat is Manti and its largest city is Ephraim.-Geography:According to...

 and Emery

Emery County, Utah

Emery County is a county located in the U.S. state of Utah. As of 2000 the population was 10,860, and by 2009 had been estimated to decrease to 10,629. It was named for George W. Emery, governor of the Utah Territory in 1875...

 Counties in the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

. It runs for 47.746 miles (76.8 km) from US-89 at Fairview

Fairview, Utah

Fairview is a city in Sanpete County, Utah, United States. The population was 1,160 at the 2000 census.-History:Located at the confluence of the San Pitch River and Cottonwood Creek, Fairview is the largest town in the northeast end of the Sanpete Valley...

 to SR-10

Utah State Route 10

State Route 10 is a State Highway in the U.S. state of Utah. The highway follows a long valley in Eastern Utah between the Wasatch Plateau on the west and the San Rafael Swell on the east....

 in Huntington

Huntington, Utah

Huntington is a town in Emery County, Utah, United States. The population was 2,131 at the 2000 census. It is the largest town in Emery County.-History:...

. The highway has been designated as part of the The Energy Loop, a National Scenic Byway

National Scenic Byway

A National Scenic Byway is a road recognized by the United States Department of Transportation for its archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and/or scenic qualities. The program was established by Congress in 1991 to preserve and protect the nation's scenic but often...

.

Route description

SR-31 begins at an intersection with US-89 at Fairview and runs east northeast for approximately 10 miles (16.1 km), then turns southeast for the remainder of the route, terminating at an intersection with SR-10 at Huntington.

Just off State Route 31, about 15 miles (24 km) west north-west of Huntington, is Crandall Canyon, location of the Crandall Canyon coal mine

Crandall Canyon Mine

The Crandall Canyon Mine, formerly Genwal Mine, was an underground bituminous coal mine in northwestern Emery County, Utah.The mine made headline news when six miners were trapped by a collapse in August 2007. Ten days later, three rescue workers were killed by a subsequent collapse...

. On Monday, August 6, 2007, at 2:48 A.M., the mine collapsed, trapping and killing six workers inside. A second collapse on August 16, 2007, killed a Mine Safety and Health Administration

Mine Safety and Health Administration

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Labor which administers the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 to enforce compliance with mandatory safety and health standards as a means to eliminate fatal accidents, to reduce...

 investigator and two more miners, bringing the total to nine.

History

The road from SR-32 (by 1926 US-89) in Fairview east to the Sanpete-Emery County line, near the present north end of Electric Lake, was added to the state highway system in 1915. It was extended southeast to SR-10 in Huntington in 1918, and in 1927 the state legislature numbered the Fairview-Huntington highway as SR-31. A major realignment was made in 1976, when Electric Lake was created and a new route was built to the west. The old route in Sanpete County became a county road, and is now part of SR-264, but the majority of the road in Emery County was beneath the lake and thus abandoned.

Major intersections