Our first stop was at Granite, Wyoming: DOME ON THE RANGE ~ The old capitol dome cupola, came from the state capital in Cheyenne, that was built in 1917, was replaced and ended up here; in the middle of nowhere.
Our next stop was BUFORD, WYOMING, Boasting on the town limits sign its population of 1, Buford is a single house, gas station, and post office. It’s also the highest spot for a town along the entire span of I-80. Jason Hirsch runs the place, but the town is owned by a rich guy in Vietnam.
BUT WE CAN SAY ~ WE’VE BEEN THERE!!!
OUR THIRD STOP WAS THE AMES PYRAMID!!!
Oliver Ames was the president of the Union Pacific Railroad. His brother Oakes was a Massachusetts congressman and the Railroad’s point man in Washington. The two made millions selling shovels to gold-seekers in California, then used the profits to take control of the Railroad, then wildly inflated its construction costs to bilk taxpayers out of an estimated $50 million. Oakes secured Washington’s cooperation by bribing his fellow congressmen. The fraud was uncovered in 1872. The two brothers both died a few years later.
The pyramid was the Union Pacific’s way to polish the tarnished reputations of its exofficials. Built in the early 1880s — after the scandal had subsided — it stood near a remote railroad town where passengers were encouraged to get off (and look at the pyramid) while the engines were changed. The Railroad hired big-deal architect Henry Hobson Richardson to design it, and a sign at its base proclaims it to be, “perhaps the finest memorial in America.” Sculptor August St. Gaudens chiseled large portraits of Oliver and Oakes that were set into the pyramid near its apex (St. Gaudens was selected to design the Lincoln Penny, but he died before he got started. Oliver faces west toward California, Oakes faces east toward his pals in DC.
The pyramid is 60 feet square and 60 feet tall, a pink granite tile with an angle-bend halfway up the side. Richardson got the necessary rocks by hacking off pieces of a nearby outcropping. No one knows how much the thing weighs. There might have been plans to dig up the brothers and entomb them here (the pyramid reportedly contains a narrow corridor, with niches in the inner core) but that did not happen; the Ames remain buried back East. It cost $65,000 to build — $1.4 million in today’s dollars — and it was so famous in its time that ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes came out to attend its dedication ceremony.
Posthumous immortality, however, eluded the Ames Brothers. The Union Pacific went bankrupt in the 1890s, and its tracks were moved south to a less expensive route. The pyramid no longer had a captive audience — or any audience. The Lincoln Highway was later built along the old rail bed, but it was rerouted in 1920, leaving the pyramid abandoned for good.
OUR FORTH STOP & TURN AROUND POINT WAS SUMMIT REST AREA & VISITOR CENTER AT EXIT 323.
No one heading west on I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming, can possibly miss this colossal, craggy Abraham Lincoln head towering over traffic at exit 323.
Lincoln’s head was built by Wyoming’s Parks Commission to honor Lincoln’s 150th birthday. It was sculpted by Robert Russin, a University of Wyoming art professor and a Lincoln fan (When he died in 2007, his ashes were interred in the hollow monument). But why is Lincoln in Wyoming? It’s because the head originally stood alongside the highest point of the old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, at Sherman Summit, 8,878 feet above sea level. When I-80 was completed in 1969, the head was moved here — losing a couple of hundred feet (and its key rationale for existing, really) but gaining a vast new audience.
The bronze head weighs over two tons and is 13.5 feet tall. It’s perched atop a 30-foot granite pedestal, ensuring that it can be seen from quite a distance, and looking uncomfortably similar to box-bound Captain Pike from Star Trek (the original series). The head is intentionally oversized on tiny shoulders, like a cartoon caricature, and seems to be sagging from its own weight. It disappeared for a couple of weeks in late 2015, but only to receive a thorough cleaning and sealing, Big Abe was back on his perch by New Year’s Day 2016.
For coast-to-coast travelers, the Lincoln head is an easy stop; and the adjacent Summit Rest Area and Visitor Center provides a comfortable vantage for contemplating our 16th President. Ever vigilant, he stares toward the rebellious South.
OUR FIFTH & FINAL STOP WAS AT THE HISTORICAL MARKER ABOUT THE
“TREE IN THE ROCK!!
There aren’t a lot of trees in southeastern Wyoming, and there were probably even less when the Union Pacific laid its tracks there in 1867. So when the railroad men saw a plucky little Limber Pine that seemed to be growing out of a granite boulder, they actually jogged the railroad sideways to preserve it. They called it “Tree in the Rock” and the name stuck.
The railroad was eventually moved south, and the old road bed past Tree in the Rock was used as a wagon trail, then as the Lincoln Highway, and now as Interstate 80. The freeway splits around the tree, which has its own little parking area in the median and a spiky fence to protect it. Limber Pines can live as long as 2000 years.
WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED OUR JOURNEY? MORE TO COME, SO UNTIL THEN!!
LoVe Us!!!
Love these pictures looks like a really impressive place!
That is cool!