The Boston-Wyoming Smelter site is a specific point of interest relative to the Grand Encampment Mining District. The smelter property is only the site of the former smelter, since all of the buildings which were once on the site have been destroyed or removed, leaving only the foundations and traces of walls as evidence of the smelter's former expansiveness.

The era of the Grand Encampment district began in 1897. In that year Ed Haggarty, a prospector from Whitehaven, England, discovered a rich copper prospect which he named the Rudefeha. Much of the more than two million dollars of copper from this area of Wyoming came from this one great prospect and mine. Seeking capital and the development of the region was the foremost advocate or promoter of the Grand Encampment Mining Region, Willis George Emerson. By 1902 the construction of a smelter at Encampment had been accomplished, largely through the efforts of promoter Emerson, and was listed under the name of the Boston and Wyoming Smelter. It was built adjacent to the town on the west bank of the Encampment River to serve mainly the Ferris-Haggarty mine. It contained, with later additions, the equipment necessary to transform copper ore to consumable metal.

By 1904 the mining operations were at their apex, employing 200 men and producing over $1,400,000 worth of copper. Although the price of copper increased to its highest ever at 26 cents a pound in 1907, the Grand Encampment area would not become a part of that copper prosperity. The Grand Encampment copper region epitomizes the ''boom and bust'' syndrome of many Western mining areas. The reasons for the collapse of the boom in the region are many. Foreclosure proceedings began in 1913 and salvage operations followed shortly.

Bridger's Pass is a geographic landmark located on the Continental Divide in southern Wyoming between the North Platte River drainage and the Snake River drainage. The headwaters at the Pass are Muddy Creek which flows west towards the Pacific slope and Sage Creek which flows east into the Atlantic's watershed. Bridger's Pass was second in importance only to South Pass as a major central passageway over the continental divide during the period of westward development and migration that occurred in the United States around mid-nineteenth century.

The Pass was long considered a likely possibility for the routing of a transcontinental railroad system. For over six years the Overland Stage line traversed Bridger's Pass while providing United States mail delivery and transcontinental transportation between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast.

The Brush Creek Work Center is located in the Brush Creek drainage on the western slopes of the Medicine Bow Mountain Range in southern Wyoming. The work center was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1937-1940 as an administrative facility for the Brush Creek Ranger District and replaced the original facility that was located about one mile to the northwest.

The first Ranger Station was originally called the Drinkhard Ranger Station and was constructed in 1905. The name was not thought to be appropriate and was changed to Brush Creek in 1914. The Brush Creek Work Center is significant for its association with expansion of Forest Service administration from custodial superintendence to active resource management during the 1930s. It is also significant because it embodies a distinctive style of architecture developed by the Forest Service during the Depression era. The use of standard plans was typical of remote Forest Service installations and the log building style conformed well with the forested surroundings.

The forty bridges in this thematic study are the best of their types which were still in use on the state and county road systems in Wyoming when the study was completed in 1982. Selected from a statewide survey of all functional vehicular trusses and arches using a specific evaluation criteria and methodology, most represent superlatives of their generic engineering types (i.e. truss configuration and connection types) while typifying bridgebuilding and transportation trends in the state. All were built in the first three decades of the twentieth century (1905-1935).

Although bridges were put up during the earlier periods of overland wagon emigration, they had not begun to proliferate in the state of Wyoming until the early twentieth century with the emergence of the automobile as a principal form of transportation. All the listed bridges display a remarkable homogeneity of construction and operational histories. Generally, county-built trusses were contracted through competitive bidding among several Midwestern bridge erectors and built from standardized designs using prefabricated components. After creation of the Wyoming Highway Department in 1917, the role of the counties in truss bridge construction diminished. The later highway department bridges were typically designed from standard plans maintained by the department and built by local contractors from components fabricated in the same Midwestern foundries.

One feature that all steel truss bridges shared was their versatility. Quickly erected, they could also be dismantled and moved if necessary. Many county road bridges in Wyoming had begun service as railroad bridges, sold or given to the counties as obsolete structures. Similarly, early highway bridges which had become unsuitable to handle increasing volumes of traffic were sometimes replaced with new trusses, with the older bridges demoted to places along less traveled roads. After World War II, new trussbuilding was rare in Wyoming. Today trusses have been largely superseded by more sophisticated engineering designs and are seldom erected. The remaining highway and roadway truss bridges are remnants of past technologies, whose numbers are continually dwindling through attrition.

Carbon was the first coal camp to be established in Wyoming, and the cemetery is among the first formal burial grounds established in the state. The town of Carbon grew along with the mines, and reached its peak population around 1890. Over the following decade, the mines began to be depleted and the railroad diverted its main line a distance to the north as the Hanna coalfield to the northwest came under production. In 1902, the last of the mines was closed and Carbon was soon reduced to a depopulated ghost town. Many of the town’s buildings were moved over the following decades, both to Hanna and area ranches, leaving behind numerous stone foundations and the cemetery. The cemetery is the most intact surviving feature of the formerly bustling community and remained in use throughout the early decades of the 20th century by persons associated with the former mining town.

The Carbon Cemetery is significant at the local level under Criterion A in the area of Exploration/Settlement, specifically the period of settlement and town building that followed the 1868 arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad. It has remained in use from 1868 through the present time, primarily as a final resting place for residents, former residents, and descendents of the pioneers who first populated the historic coal-mining town of Carbon and the surrounding ranchlands.

Carbon Cemetery is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria Consideration D for its history as a burial ground that derives primary significance from its age, distinctive design features, and direct association with the historic mining town of Carbon. Historical geographer Richard Francaviglia wrote in his groundbreaking 1991 book Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts, that among the many important physical remnants of each mining town, the cemetery is a microcosm of that urban environment and its economic underpinnings. These sites reflect and tell us a great deal about the ethnic variety, cultural values, social and economic stratification, and burial traditions of the community. They are, in effect, an important part of each mining community’s social landscape. Historic cemeteries also provide evidence of early landscape design and examples of funerary art as these features evolved over time. As Francaviglia states, “The cemetery remains one of the most intriguing aspects of the mining landscape, for from its serene vantage point we may look back and see the rest of the mining district as an island of buildings, structures, and forms that permitted its occupants to extract wealth quickly from the earth, and each other, and then move on.” This, exactly, is the broad scope of the story told by Carbon Cemetery and its association with the adjacent town and mines of Carbon.

Carbon Cemetery appears to have experienced few alterations since its period of significance ended around 1940, and today exhibits a high level of integrity. Although the site was most active from 1868 to 1902 during Carbon’s heyday as an active coal-mining town, it continued to evolve over the following decades as the cemetery remained in use and was maintained by family and friends. Changes to the perimeter fence that involved shoring up the original wood posts with twinned metal ones took place sometime around 1910 and are historically significant. The south gate may also have been removed at that time. Non-historic changes to the site appear limited to periodic burials and replacement of the original main entry gate at the east entrance in recent years (although with a historically sensitive replacement), along with the installation of a flagpole and platform nearby. None of these non-historic changes have diminished the site’s overall integrity.

Today the cemetery holds numerous graves that date from the period prior to 1902, along with a smaller number of burials dating from the several decades following Carbon’s demise. By far, most of the graves are more than fifty years old, and are considered historically significant. From 1902 through around 1940, Carbon Cemetery continued to receive burials of former Carbon residents and their descendents, some of whom had resettled in the nearby coal-mining community of Hanna. Family and friends continued to visit the remote site during these years, ensuring that it was maintained as an active cemetery. However, the World War II era was a watershed in terms of rural population out-migration, and a corresponding shift to a national mindset that favored forward-looking thinking and action. Many historic rural cemeteries throughout the West went into decline and, in some cases, were abandoned. While additional burials took place in Carbon Cemetery after 1940, these occurred less frequently than before.

Como Bluff is a long ridge extending on an east-west axis approximately six miles between the small towns of Rock River and Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The ridge is an anticline, the result of folding geologic pressures. Two geological formations, the Sundance and the Morrison, relating to the Mesozoic Era are exposed. Here paleontologists of the nineteenth century discovered and unearthed, from Morrison formation strata, many perfect fossil specimens of large land dwelling creatures. It is thought that Como Bluff was the site of the first major discovery of dinosaur remains in the world. Significant discoveries were made in fourteen different quarries scattered along the entire length of the ridge.

The significance of the Divide Sheep Camp site is its role as a summer headquarters for a local sheep operation. The site was first utilized by the Niland-Tierney Company and later the Divide Sheep Company. Both were substantial operations on the upper middle size range of ranching during the early 1900s, and had important ties to other aspects of the Carbon County economy. The Divide Sheep Camp was first authorized by a U.S. Forest Service Special Use Permit in 1909 for a pasture to hold saddle horses, a small cabin and barn to be used as a sheep headquarters, a sheep corral used in separating, counting, and branding sheep and a dipping vat.

The site was a base summer camp which provided supplies to company employees herding sheep on public domain range and later on the reserved National Forest System land. Herders used sheep wagons in the lower desert country during the winter months. In the spring, they drove their charges upon higher elevation public range and stored their wagons at the camp. As many as 32 wagons were stored there.

The Divide Sheep Company ran approximately 3,400 sheep, but numerous other outfits were allowed use of the facilities. The site possesses a local significance to the early grazing history of the Medicine Bow National Forest and Carbon County.

The Downtown Rawlins Historic District comprises the central business district of Rawlins, Wyoming and dates from the 1880s. It is located within the traditional commercial area of Rawlins that extends from the Union Pacific Railroad on the south to West Spruce Street on the north and from Third Street on the east to Sixth Street on the west. The buildings within the district are generally one or two-story brick commercial buildings interspersed with several important social and government buildings.

The original Downtown Rawlins Historic District nomination was prepared in 1984 and was based on an intensive survey at that time. In 1998 the area was resurveyed to determine the feasibility of expanding the district boundaries. The expanded district contains fourty-four buildings, thirty-two of which are considered to be contributing elements to the district. The Historic District is significant as the original commercial heart of a major Wyoming city that became the county seat of Carbon County. From its humble origins as one of hundreds of railroad towns along the Union Pacific mainline, it grew into a modern city with a diversified economy that today serves a regional ranching, oil and gas, and industrial community. Because of its location on the first transcontinental railroad with a permanent water source in an otherwise semi-arid region, it became a major division point for the Union Pacific Railroad.

In the twentieth century, it was located on the first transcontinental auto highway (the Lincoln Highway). Therefore, it has also played a key role in state, regional, and national transportation. The District is also significant because it represents several different architectural styles and influences ranging from simple commercial storefronts to high style, architect-designed buildings. The buildings of the District reflect several identifiable building periods in the town's history and also represent the use of several different building materials, including wood, locally quarried stone, brick, stucco, terra cotta, and concrete.

Duck Lake Station was in the 1860s one of thirty-one stopping points or waystations in Wyoming along the Overland Trail, a central route through Western America. Stage stations along the Overland Trail were usually spaced from ten to fifteen miles apart. Duck Lake Station is thirteen miles east of Dug Springs Station and thirteen miles west of Washakie Station. In a given area stations were similar in appearance. For example, those east of the Continental Divide were of pine logs while those west of the Divide were of native stone.

Not all of the stage stops were alike in number of structures, nor was there uniformity of services offered the traveler. Some of them were ''home'' stations that provided the amenities of civilization to travelers and were located at intervals of perhaps 50 miles. In addition to offering larger, more commodious quarters, the menu was better than that found at ''swing'' stations such as the one at Duck Lake.

Swing stations were merely one-room structures offering accommodations that were basic and a bill of fare that was usually poor. Despite scanty physical remains, Duck Lake Station is important as one link in a pioneer chain of transportation and communication in the American Far West.

The forty bridges in this thematic study are the best of their types which were still in use on the state and county road systems in Wyoming when the study was completed in 1982. Selected from a statewide survey of all functional vehicular trusses and arches using a specific evaluation criteria and methodology, most represent superlatives of their generic engineering types (i.e. truss configuration and connection types) while typifying bridgebuilding and transportation trends in the state. All were built in the first three decades of the twentieth century (1905-1935).

Although bridges were put up during the earlier periods of overland wagon emigration, they had not begun to proliferate in the state of Wyoming until the early twentieth century with the emergence of the automobile as a principal form of transportation. All the listed bridges display a remarkable homogeneity of construction and operational histories. Generally, county-built trusses were contracted through competitive bidding among several Midwestern bridge erectors and built from standardized designs using prefabricated components. After creation of the Wyoming Highway Department in 1917, the role of the counties in truss bridge construction diminished. The later highway department bridges were typically designed from standard plans maintained by the department and built by local contractors from components fabricated in the same Midwestern foundries.

One feature that all steel truss bridges shared was their versatility. Quickly erected, they could also be dismantled and moved if necessary. Many county road bridges in Wyoming had begun service as railroad bridges, sold or given to the counties as obsolete structures. Similarly, early highway bridges which had become unsuitable to handle increasing volumes of traffic were sometimes replaced with new trusses, with the older bridges demoted to places along less traveled roads. After World War II, new trussbuilding was rare in Wyoming. Today trusses have been largely superseded by more sophisticated engineering designs and are seldom erected. The remaining highway and roadway truss bridges are remnants of past technologies, whose numbers are continually dwindling through attrition.

The Elk Mountain Hotel was constructed in 1905 on property previously used for an Overland Stage Station, local saloon and community post office. The building incorporates many features of the Folk Victorian style of architecture found on the western frontier. It is a two story, front-gabled roof, wood frame building with a stone foundation. Since it was the only hotel with accommodations in a fifty mile radius, the hotel was an important waystation for the entrepreneurs and laborers who integrated this region into the mainstream of Wyoming's economic development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The buildings also derive significance through their association with the local community by serving as a dance hall, meeting place and club house for various local societies in the same time period. The Garden Spot Pavilion is a dance hall located near the hotel. It was constructed in two phases with the first part completed in 1880. The name plate on the false front facade identifies the building as the ''Famous Garden Spot Pavilion''. It is the oldest surviving building in Elk Mountain.

The Ferris-Haggarty Mine site is a specific point of interest relative to the Grand Encampment Mining District. The era of the Grand Encampment district began in 1897. In that year Ed Haggarty, a prospector from Whitehaven, England, discovered a rich copper prospect which he named the Rudefeha, or the Ferris-Haggarty property, as it soon came to be named. Much of the more than two million dollars of copper from this area of Wyoming came from this one great prospect and mine.

Seeking capital and the development of the region was the foremost advocate or promoter of the Grand Encampment Mining Region, Willis George Emerson. Upon obtaining an interest in the Ferris-Haggarty property, and establishing a plethora of companies, promoter Emerson attracted dollars toward the construction of such things as a four-mile, wood and iron pipeline designed to supply power to the smelter, and an aerial tramway. When completed, the tramway extended for sixteen miles from the Ferris-Haggarty Mine, over the Continental Divide at an elevation of 10,700 feet above sea level, and down through the mountains and across the valley floor to the smelter at Encampment.

By 1904 the mining operations were at their apex, employing 200 men and producing over $1,400,000 worth of copper. Although the price of copper increased to its highest ever at 26 cents a pound in 1907, the Grand Encampment area would not become a part of that copper prosperity. The Grand Encampment copper region epitomizes the ''boom and bust'' syndrome of many Western mining areas. The reasons for the collapse of the boom in the region are many. Foreclosure proceedings began in 1913 and salvage operations followed shortly.

Constructed in 1907-1908 to house the First State Bank of Baggs, the Bank Club Bar is one of a few of the original buildings still standing in the community. Though not a false front, the bank is an excellent example of western 'boom town' attempts to provide urban scale and create a sense of stability in isolated small towns.

The structure embodies distinctive characteristics of Greek Revival and classical trends popular near the turn of the twentieth century. It represents the ingenuity of westerners, limited by financial resources and access to authentic materials, in creatively copying the popular urban 'look' of the day.

Fort Fred Steele contributed to national history in the areas of United States Military and Indian affairs, transcontinental transportation and communication, and its history also relates to the cattlemen's frontier and settlement. Original military structures at Fort Steele include a commanding officer's quarters, two large warehouses, a powder magazine and a number of smaller structures. Foundations exist in many places where buildings once stood.

Fort Fred Steele, established on June 30, 1868, was one of three military forts built along the Union Pacific Railroad to provide protection for the line, its builders, and the communities that later developed along its course. To a lesser degree, the fort provided protection to ''trail'' travelers in the area and partially filled a void north of the Platte River created by the abandonment of the Powder River forts in 1868. During the last ''Indian Wars'' on the Northern Plains, Fort Steele was utilized as a support and supply base for troops in the field. Throughout its existence, the fort exerted a stabilizing influence in the surrounding vicinity and served as an important rail point for shipping and receiving.

Fort Steele continued to grow into an impressive permanent post through the 1870s, and was an economic asset to the area. Peace and progress continued around Fort Steele during the early 1880s. Considered no longer necessary to military objectives, the post was abandoned August 7, 1886. After abandonment by the military, the fort developed into a community along the route of transcontinental travel.

1868 Oil Painting by Aldrich, Wyoming State Archives

Fort Halleck represents the single and strategic military establishment located along the transcontinental thoroughfare historically known as the Overland Trail. The building of the Fort was prompted by the hostile Indian warfare existing on the Plains during the early 1860s and its primary purpose was to aid in keeping the line of transportation open between the East and the West. Fort Halleck was established at the base of Elk Mountain on the northern extremity of the Medicine Bow range.

The Fort went into operation on July 20, 1862. Soldiers of Company A of the 11th Ohio Cavalry constructed the post and named it in honor of Major General Henry W. Halleck of Civil War fame. Contemporary observers described Fort Halleck as consisting of a collection of log structures, huts and dugouts flanking a small parade ground. Native materials from the nearby mountains were used in the post's construction and some of the structures were made by placing logs upright in the ground close together and then adding a sod roof. The majority, however, were the conventional low profile log cabin style. There is no evidence that the Fort ever had a stockade surrounding it.

The year of 1865 marked the high point of Indian disturbances along the Overland Trail. With the end of the Civil War and the increased migration to the Montana gold fields the scene shifted to the Bozeman Trail. The establishment of three new protective forts along this route diverted the hostile Indians attention northward. Fort Halleck was officially abandoned by the military on July 4, 1866. Captain Henry R. Mizner, Commanding Officer, dismantled the Fort and removed the usable materials and supplies to Fort Buford (later Sanders), a newly located post on the Laramie Plains established in anticipation of the forthcoming construction of a transcontinental railroad. The four year period in which Fort Halleck was in existence represented a critical time in American history. Although short-lived, the Fort filled a vital need in serving the interests of the United States government when maintaining contact with the Western states became an important consideration in the nation's survival.

The Fossil Cabin is an exceptional example of a roadside attraction associated with transcontinental travel along the old Lincoln Highway and U. S. Route 30; approximately five miles east of the nearest town, Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The cabin, constructed in 1932, was meant to lure travelers off the busy highway to buy gas at the nearby pumps. The one-story, rectangular-shaped building measures twenty-eight feet, four inches by eighteen feet, four inches and faces southwest. The walls are constructed primarily of dinosaur bones mined from nearby Como Bluff, one of the richest dinosaur fossil beds in the world. The dinosaur bones are laid in random courses with wide mortar joints. A University of Wyoming dinosaur specialist concluded that the bones were from a variety of species but that bone collection did not include a complete specimen. The building purportedly weighs 102,166 pounds and used a total of 5,796 dinosaur bones in its construction. The exterior walls do contain a very small amount of rock.

The bones to construct the cabin were gathered over a period of seventeen years from nearby Como Bluff. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, Como Bluff is part of the Morrison Formation, which is hundreds of feet deep and contains millions of years of deposition. The Morrison Formation occurs in twelve states and the first major vertebrate paleontological sites were discovered within the formation in 1877 in Wyoming and Colorado. Important fossil discoveries in the Morrison Formation led to the study of vertebrate paleontology worldwide by the end of the nineteenth century.

Two employees of the Union Pacific Railroad are credited with the first significant discovery of dinosaur remains at the bluff in 1877. As news of the find spread, prominent scientists and their crews traveled to the bluff where they unearthed a number of whole dinosaurs that were sent to such museums as the Peabody in Boston and the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh. Fierce rivalries, known as “the bone wars,” developed among various scientists working at the bluff as each attempted to become the first to discover a large or new specimen that could be sold for high dollar or displayed at the colleges with which they were affiliated.

Thomas Boylan, builder of the Fossil Cabin, was born in California in 1863 and came to Wyoming in 1892. He worked for various sheep and cattle companies near Lander, Medicine Bow and Rock River. Boylan filed on a homestead in 1908 located near Como Bluff. He collected dinosaur bones over a period of years with the intention of erecting dinosaur sculptures near the gas pumps located in front of his house along the Lincoln Highway. Boylan instead built the Fossil Cabin with 5,796 fossilized dinosaur bones and a small amount of rock.

The Fossil Cabin is a relic of a bygone era of motorized travel when petting zoos and buildings made of dinosaur bones could entice a driver to stop and gas up. It is a unique building, perhaps the only structure in the entire country made of dinosaur bones. Within the past several years, a man from North Carolina offered to buy the building with the purpose of moving it to that state to be used as a tourist attraction. The idea that the Fossil Cabin could be moved to North Carolina, so out of context, is amusing but also indicative of just how underappreciated it is on its home turf. It would be unfortunate if Wyoming loses its most significant piece of roadside architecture, one so evocative of an earlier time and directly related to the first transcontinental highway.

The France Memorial United Presbyterian Church in Rawlins is historically significant as it is the structure housing one of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in Wyoming, first organized in 1869. The church building, completed in 1882, is one of the oldest remaining structures in Rawlins and serves as a landmark in the city. The building has functioned as a social, cultural and religious center of the town and has contributed significantly to the broad patterns of the area's history.

As one of the oldest ecclesiastical structures in Rawlins, France Memorial is the only church in the city constructed of stone. Built only a few years after the Union Pacific completed tracks through the state, France Memorial is an early example of the Gothic Revival style in Wyoming. The use of Gothic Revival features in a church constructed in an isolated Wyoming town demonstrated an awareness and interest in architectural and philosophical trends of the day.

The Garrett Allen Site is an extensive prehistoric campsite of the Late Middle Prehistoric period (1500 B.C. - A.D. 500) and Late Prehistoric period (A.D. 500-1700). It is deeply stratified, with a number of levels displaying a continuous deposition of artifacts. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, archaeologists working under Dr. George Frison conducted excavations. Bones of bison and numerous game animals, butchering tools, milling stones, projectile points and flakes were recovered indicating the site was an extensive butchering location.

The George Ferris Mansion and carriage house are excellent examples of the popular Victorian architectural style known as Queen Anne. The design of the building came from a well known architectural firm, Barber and Klutz, located in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Ferris House is a locally prominent landmark which derives its significance from two principal areas: commerce and architecture.

The historical significance of the building lies with its association with George Ferris, one of Wyoming's more prominent businessmen. He gained statewide political prominence as a member of the House in the 1873 and 1875 Territorial Legislative Assemblies and as a delegate to the Wyoming Constitutional Convention from Carbon County. By the time ground was broken in 1899 for his house overlooking Rawlins, Ferris had acquired sole ownership of the Ferris-Haggarty mine in the Grand Encampment copper mining district and was at the zenith of his financial success.

Designed by an architect nationally known for opulent houses, this small mansion was intended to represent the family's ascension into the ranks of the state's wealthy elite. Ferris, however, was killed near his mine the following year, and it was left up to his widow Julia to complete the building three years later. Architecturally, the house is an excellent example of Queen Anne residential design. Completed in 1903, nearly two decades after its architectural peers in Cheyenne and Laramie, the Ferris House is perhaps the last of the great Victorian mansions built in Wyoming.

Constructed in 1895, the Hanna Community Hall has served the town of Hanna for over a century. Originally named Linden Hall, the building served as a saloon during the town's early turbulent years as an energy boom town and then as a pool hall during prohibition and is the only structure remaining from this period.

In the 1920s after the community had established some permanence, this building became the social and cultural center for the tiny community by providing a necessary social and recreational outlet for citizens isolated by environment and circumstance. The hall was used for everything from city government meetings, church services, athletic events and classes to dances and parties and is associated with locally significant individuals such as John Linden and municipal officials.