Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Alphabet Soup
One of the more fascinating trips the wife and I have ever taken in the US was to follow the route of the Transcontental Railroad from Sacramento going east. It is a trip to almost nowhere that is amazingly rich in history. Now that we have reached the "r's" in Alphabet Soup I thought we'd look at such a place - Rawlins, Wyoming
Rawlins exists now almost solely as a railroad town. The route taken by the railroad and the Oregon trail before it across southern Wyoming is the only place you can get across the Rocky Mountains with but one up grade and one down grade - through the entire rest of the range there are back-to-back ranges, but here you climb to a very high plateau and drive across the desolation for most of the state. The area is extremely rich in natural gas and coal so the need of rail transport to get it in and out is huge. The town has always been a major port on the trail and before the railroad was a fort on the Oregon trail.
Rawlins really is a bit of the Old West - even today. Much that is fun, well, interesting, survives. The old jailhouse (pictured in the postcard above) is somewhat infamous. In the territorial, pre-law days it was home to a bit of a butcher who did some things to condemned prisoners best not discussed in public.Rawlins is also a hop, skip and jump from one of the most famous towns of the old west - the birthplace of the western novel - Medicine Bow, Wyoming.
Medicine Bow played host for a period of time to eastern writer Owen Wister who penned "The Virginian" in the log house you see here and the rest is, as they say, history. During the Victorian Age, Wister set the mold for the story and the character of the rough tumble, but with a heart-of-gold, cowboy that the world has learned to love over and over again.Wister's novel caught like wildfire and the people of Medicine Bow were not stupid. The railroad passed through there so they built The Virginian Hotel (pictured below) and started separating foolish easterners from their money at a rapid pace. The hotel was as lush as they come when it was built, but that is a while ago. People still live in Medicine Bow, but it is a near ghost these days.
Just about 15 miles out of twon are two other really interesting things -- one of the largest deposits of dinosaur bones in the world -- so many that one old coot used 'em to build his house back before people really had a handle on what they were -- the house still stands. Just a little past that is the spot where Butch and Sundance used a tad too much dynamite to open the railroad safe. There is a small museum with the wreckage of the safe there for your inspection.
For the middle of nowhere, this is a pretty fun place to visit.
