Hell on Wheels

RAWLINS, WYOMING: The original inspiration for this trip came a few years ago when I read Empire Express, by David Haward Bain. That book is the best history of the transcontinental railroad available today, and it first made be consider going west along the path of that first rail line built by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. All of the towns I visited today were founded because of the Union Pacific's line across the Platte Valley and the mountains of Wyoming.

The first stop was Ogallala, Nebraska. The road west from Grand Island showed the slow change from the fertile lands to drier ones as I crossed the 100th meridian. The land gets browner and crops cease to flourish except where they are irrigated. The trees are fewer, and mostly Cottonwood. It is here that the coming of the rails has the greatest impact. People lived in Omaha and Sacramento before the rails, but the land in between was known as the Great American Desert; it had no towns, no roads, only wagon trails and Indian nomads. But the technology of the day demanded that where a railroad passed, there needed to be stops along the way to restock coal and water for the locomotive. Wherever a likely water source was found, a depot was established and a town grew up. Ogallala was such a town. Often the largest these towns ever were was when the railroad workers passed through with their camp-followers. Together, this traveling bunch of workers, peddlers, and shady characters was known as "Hell on Wheels". The people in Ogallala have preserved some of that old frontier heritage, keeping (or restoring, I'm not sure which) the main street of the town in old frontier style. It was too early for the saloon to be open, but I did stop by the petrified wood museum.

A quick ride on I-80 and I-76 brought me to the next stop, Julesburg, Colorado. This was actually the fourth Julesburg, the first having been burned by Indians, the second and third having been relocated to take up more advantageous positions with regard to rail traffic. The fourth incarnation of the town is home to a museum in the former Union Pacific rail depot. Exactly what it is a museum of, I am not sure. It holds a collection of nearly everything old or interesting from the town, including information on the Pony Express, the railroad, the early inhabitants, or whatever else there is room for. There was also a restaurant advertising "prairie oysters," but I declined in favor of an Arby's in Sidney, Nebraska.

After passing back into Nebraska and eating lunch (I highly recommend Arby's Chicken Bacon Swiss Combo), I set my sights on Wyoming. It started getting quite hot again in the plains, but the consensus on the blog being that air conditioner use is perfectly safe, I cranked the A/C and was spared the worst of the 95-degree day. I pulled into Cheyenne to check out what there was to see. If Indianapolis seemed like the perfect state capitol, Cheyenne is more like a county seat with a state house in it. That's not an insult; it's a very nice town (and is, in fact, the county seat) but it's not very large (55,000 people) so it lacks the built-up downtown I usually think of a city as having. That being said, it's a nice, clean town that I wouldn't mind living in. The state capital has a gold dome, as so many do, and it is set right in the middle of the town, unassumingly, as though it's no big deal, not trying to show off or anything. That seems like the spirit of Western democracy: just regular folks doing the people's work.

The next stop was a rest stop near Laramie. Normally I don't even write about the rest stops, but in Wyoming they seem to situate them near scenes of natural beauty or some other attraction. In this case, the attraction was a giant bust of Lincoln that overlooks the highway. I took a picture, considering it a preview to my eventual visit to Mount Rushmore. From there I took off for Rawlins. Rawlins is another of the towns the Union Pacific founded on its way west, and even now the railroad is, along with the oil refinery to the east, the major employer in the town. This is also the last town of any size for about a hundred miles, which explains why the first five hotels I stopped at were booked solid. It also explains why a town of 8,000 people has more than five hotels.

So, tomorrow, it's on to the Great Divide and the desert. Keep those comments coming!