Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Dutch John, UT

Dutch John is a town in eastern Daggett County, Utah, about 4 miles northeast of the Flaming Gorge Dam on U.S. Route 191, with a population of 141 at the 2020 census.

The town was platted and built beginning in 1957 by the United States Bureau of Reclamation to house workers constructing the Flaming Gorge Dam.

After the dam's completion in 1964, Dutch John became home to a smaller number of dam maintenance and operations personnel, plus National Park Service and United States Forest Service employees.

During the peak years of dam construction, as many as 3,500 people lived in Dutch John.

The townsite and its buildings remained Bureau of Reclamation property until 1998, when the town was privatized and buildings were sold to individual landowners.

Residents voted overwhelmingly in November 2014 to incorporate, and incorporation became official in January 2016, so Dutch John was a census-designated place before 2016 and is a town today.

The town is named for John Honselena.

Dutch John is home to the Flaming Gorge Visitor Center, and a resort in town hosts the world's largest fishing fly, weighing over three tons and measuring more than 32 feet long.

In July 2002, the human-caused Mustang Ridge fire burned about 22,000 acres of pinyon and juniper forest near the town, damaging power transmission lines supported by wooden poles.

The town covers about 6.3 square miles, including about 0.4 square miles of water, at an elevation of 6,454 feet.