Town note
The town was founded in the late 1800s, about ten miles north of its present site, purely as a water stop where railroads could replenish their steam locomotives.
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FILE 574 / 22 February 2025 / 74 MIN / express
This is Lucin, Utah, LUCIN ... it's a ghost town ... in northwest Utah ... this is in Box Elder County. about 0:03:30
The town was founded in the late 1800s, about ten miles north of its present site, purely as a water stop where railroads could replenish their steam locomotives.
about 0:04:16In 1903 the town was moved to its current site to serve as a stop for the Lucin Cutoff.
about 0:04:32The population consisted mainly of employees of the Central and Southern Pacific railroads.
about 0:04:43In 1936 the town was completely abandoned, then resettled by four retired railroad workers and their children, who came back about 1937.
about 0:04:50The town was founded in the late 1800s, about ten miles north of its present site, purely as a water stop where railroads could replenish their steam locomotives.
about 0:04:16In 1903 the town was moved to its current site to serve as a stop for the Lucin Cutoff.
about 0:04:32The population consisted mainly of employees of the Central and Southern Pacific railroads.
about 0:04:43In 1936 the town was completely abandoned, then resettled by four retired railroad workers and their children, who came back about 1937.
about 0:04:50People lived there until 1972, after which no one lived there anymore.
about 0:05:06In 1997 Ivo Zadarski, an aviation engineer and entrepreneur who invented the Ivo propeller, bought the airport and a large amount of land and moved there.
about 0:05:18Zadarski bought 400 acres for $99,000, including the Lucin Airport.
about 0:06:22He built a 50-foot steel hangar with no windows and lived in it alone.
about 0:06:46The post office would not deliver there, but UPS and FedEx would, and he used to get deliveries from the Schwan's food truck until he cancelled it because he was gaining weight.
about 0:07:38A four-inch pipe running from the Pilot Mountain range to the south-west supplies water to a clump of green trees, ponds and the Lucin Pond.
about 0:08:17The Sun Tunnels, concrete tubes in the desert created by the artist Nancy Holt, were made in 1976.
about 0:10:03"$99,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2025 about 0:06:22
"$46,000"
Comparison: "about 500 dollars an acre". No direction stated.
As told in 2025 about 0:08:48
"$10,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2025 about 0:09:13
"$320,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2025 about 0:09:14
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Dylan Rounds was nineteen and from Rigby, Idaho. In 2022 he was living alone in a camp trailer outside Lucin, Utah, a railroad ghost town in Box Elder County, on land he had bought with his father and grandfather. He had spent two summers clearing the ground and securing his water rights, and that year his grain was finally coming up.
On the morning of 28 May 2022 Dylan telephoned his grandmother to say he was going to park his seed truck because it had started to rain. He said he would call her back. He never did, and nobody could reach him again. He had last been seen on 26 May, eating at a cafe in Montello, Nevada, just over the border. On 30 May his mother Candice and his stepfather drove out from Ohio and Idaho, stopped in Park Valley where there was cell service and reported him missing to the Box Elder County Sheriff's Office. He also said he had moved the grain truck because Dylan had backed it in too far, and that small tyre tracks led out of the front gate. A detective was called out at 8.30 the next morning.
That first day searchers found a pair of Dylan's Georgia work boots behind the grain shed, thrown into the brush rather than set down side by side. One boot had a dark stain consistent with blood. Dylan's mother said they were his only pair and that from the moment she saw them she knew he was dead. Volunteers logged more than 300 hours and covered over 3,000 miles in the first days, with canines, drones, horses and aircraft, and the parents offered a $20,000 reward.
Police looked hard at Chase Venstra, a local drifter with a long criminal record. A bar owner's daughter said Dylan had confronted him, and that Chase had been out in the desert in a ghillie suit with a rifle, threatening suicide by police. The family put up a $5,000 reward for information on him. He posted on Facebook that he had nothing to do with it and had been cleared by Dylan's mother and the investigator. He had a $75,000 warrant out of Montana for a domestic incident. Interviewed at last, he said his last contact with Dylan was driving him to the Tacoma crossroads, and that on 28 May at six o'clock he was at Little Caesar's Pizza and then bought beer and went home. He also claimed Dylan and Kurt Wadsworth might be in a relationship; nobody else supported it.
In June 2020 he and Dylan's father Justin squared off, both armed, on a lane in Idaho over a pig venture, and were only talked down by their partner Larry.
The case broke on the phones. Dylan's phone went stationary on the property at 11.01 for three hours and thirty-six minutes, then moved from the barn to Lucin Pond at 14.37, arriving at 14.52, with a final timestamp of 14.53.55. His touch DNA was on the boots.
The family set up a nonprofit, Dylan's legacy, to help families searching for missing loved ones.
May 2022 / his farm property, Lucin, Utah
As told in the episode, on 22 February 2025.
Accused
Public places are marked on the map.
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