All Titles

Starting with the great migration along the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, central Wyoming has long been a transportation corridor of the western United States. Railroad tracks first worked their way into the region in 1886 with the arrival of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad, building westward from Douglas to Lander. In 1913, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, after successfully building through the Wind River Canyon, began construction south and east through Casper to connect with its existing line at Orin Junction. Connecting central Wyoming to the outside world brought goods and people and allowed for the development of the oil fields, agriculture, industry, and tourism.

On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act. This act created the Union Pacific Railroad and authorized government loans and land grants to aid in the construction of the nation's first transcontinental railroad, which would connect Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. As the Union Pacific raced west across prairies, mountains, and basins in 1867 and 1868, the Territory of Wyoming and many of its southern towns and cities were founded, including Laramie. In 1869, the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah, and the transcontinental railroad was complete. This is the story of the railroads of Laramie, a fabled place along the Union Pacific's Overland Route.

Forging America's Fuel Henry Cottle registered the first mining claim in what would become northern Hot Springs County in the late 1880s. Henry Monro and Frank Porter's Cedar Mountain "Cowboy Mine" followed in 1898. In 1906, Burlington Railroad built its southbound line from Billings, Montana to Frannie and Worland, Wyoming. The route was, in no small part, because of the quality and quantity of coal near Kirby. With a rail contract for a twenty-mile extension, Mormon pioneer Jesse W. Crosby, Jr. filed his mining claim in 1910. Naturally, more entrepreneurs followed, including Samuel Gebo. The coal camps of Gebo and Crosby were born, forming a significant coal district that nurtured a true melting pot of nationalities. Author Lea Cavalli Schoenewald recounts the area's heyday and the lives that powered its development.