he area’s first resident was a local prospector named Henry H. Hutchinson, who settled there in 1881. Other homesteaders arrived the next year and started digging an irrigation canal. Attracted by relatively abundant water and an extensive growth of cottonwood trees, they founded a settlement known as Lower Crossing. Lower Crossing was also home to some of the Chinese laborers imported to construct the narrow gauge railroad. As the town grew, adding a few stores and a blacksmith shop, it was renamed “Woodside” for the cottonwood groves. By 1900 the population stood at 114. Cattlemen used the town for mail and freight and sugar cane was raised to produce sorghum and molasses. By 1910 there were schools, saloons, a large hotel and the population had reached 328. The population dropped to 300 by 1920. In the late 1920 Woodside’s livestock shipping facilities and railroad station were taken away when the railroad consolidated its operations in Helper. This blow was followed by severe droughts in the 1930s, and by 1940 the population had dropped to 30.
In the 1940s Woodside became a minor tourist attraction. In the 1880s the railroad had dug a large water well here, which had later turned into a cold bubbling mud pot driven by naturally-occurring pressurized carbon dioxide gas. The hole was developed into a cold water geyser along with a filling station, store, and café.
In 1924, Utah Oil & Refining drilled the Woodside #1 well, located about three and a half miles southwest of the town. The well did not encounter oil, but rather, a large flow of helium-rich gas. President Calvin Coolidge set aside the “Woodside Dome Field” as “United States Helium Reserve #1”. Today, it remains an untapped helium resource.
In the 1960s, the Highway Beautification Act led to the removal of a number of billboards advertising the town’s geyser along U.S. Route 6, which had a major impact on tourist visits. The cafe and store burned down around 1970, and the geyser and filling station are the only remnants of Woodside. The geyser formerly spouted as high as 75 feet but is much lower now.