View Full List of National Register: Wyoming Listings

Point of Rocks Stage Station

 
 

Read All About It:

The Point of Rocks Stage Station is located in a valley of Bitter Creek in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. It was built of native sandstone taken from the surrounding hills. Mud mortar chinked the walls. The station has at various times served as a stage stop, a freight station, a store, a school, a ranch headquarters and a home. In some references the Station is also known as ''Rock Point'' or ''Almond'' station. Point of Rocks principal significance is as a stop on the Overland Stage Line during the 1860s and as the junction of the Overland Trail and the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868. For a number of years the Station was the starting terminal for the stage and freight operations running north to South Pass City and the Sweetwater mines.

From 1862 to 1868 Point of Rocks station served the Overland Stage and the Wells, Fargo and Company operation when the latter purchased the business from Ben Holladay. Specific references to events that occurred around Point of Rocks are scarce but the entire vicinity was the scene of considerable Indian hostilities during the Civil War years. The station was burned out at least once. According to one account the station was also the scene of a robbery staged by a ''Jim Slade, ex-stage line superintendent, turned bandit.'' Seven passengers on the coach were reportedly killed in the holdup. The westward construction of the transcontinental railroad reached Point of Rocks in the summer of 1868. The two routes met at this point for the first time and the Overland Stage was, for all practical purposes, then out of business.

In 1877 Lawrence Taggert, a Union Pacific section foreman, moved his family into the building. His wife turned one room of the station into a schoolroom and served as teacher. A daughter of the Taggerts, Mrs. Charles Rador, lived in the station as a child and in 1897 moved with her husband into the building. Mr. Rador operated his sheep-ranching outfit from the station and the Radors resided there until 1910. The last person to reside at the stage station was Jim McKee, supposedly at one time a member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. McKee is said to have spent much of his time looking for a cache of unrecovered loot from one of Butch Cassidy's robberies. The Point of Rocks Stage Station became the property of the State of Wyoming in 1947.

 
Point-of-Rocks

 

Date Added to Register:
Friday, April 03, 1970
 
Location:
Sweetwater County
 
County:
Sweetwater County
 
Smithsonian Number: 
48SW802