It takes about three hours to reach Worland from Casper after a right turn at Shoshoni and a trip north on U.S. Highway 20 through the Wind River Canyon. It’s almost the same as taking a trip to Lander, only heading straight through Shoshoni on highway 26 / 789 through Riverton.
Before 1906, the trips took 30 hours if the conditions were adequate. The Chicago North Western Railroad cut that time to just 12 hours after the line was completed to Lander in October 1906.
Eight years later, the same was true for Worland as passenger trains rolled from Casper to Worland across the plains to Bonneville and then north along a narrow ledge along the western edge of the Wind River through the once impassable Wind River Canyon via the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
Before these steel-rail technologies transformed transportation in central Wyoming, it was the horse, freight wagon, and stagecoach that covered these vast, arid, windswept distances.
Driving on U.S. Highway 20/26 today closely mirrors the two former railroad rivals. The Chicago North Western is no more, and the Burlington Northern has taken over the former Chicago Burlington and Quincy. The lines were so close that at times passing trains could easily see each other.
As you drive west from Casper, a vestige of life before the rails arrived can still be seen just a few yards off the highway. A crumbling stone structure with a rounded Quonset hut to the west and what appears to be an aging twin-bay service station to the north rests quietly among the sagebrush and native grass about 20 miles west of Casper.
This relic was once the dream of Oakley Kenyon Garvey, and was known as the Stone Ranch.
There were many stone ranches in Wyoming, the most famous near Fort D.A. Russel, where the U.S. Cavalry and later units of the mechanized Wyoming National Guard trained on mock assaults and troop movements.
There were stone houses near Lusk, Pavillion, Lander, at Como Bluffs, and between Dubois and Lenore in the early 20th century. Some of these were cut stone, but most were built of volleyball-sized boulders, ancient river rock tied together with hand-mixed mortar. The one in Natrona County has a special history all its own.
This was a working cattle and sheep ranch, a place where, in times of heavier precipitation, as was the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, crops like potatoes, corn, and wheat could grow without irrigation. It was also a key stage station on the lines from Casper to Lander and over Birdseye Pass to the Big Horn Basin that rolled west before branching at Round Hill Station, a few miles southeast of Lost Cabin.
John “Jack” Clark was an enterprising rancher, raising cattle, sheep, and most notably, horses along Casper Creek below the red rock uplifts dotting the Natrona County countryside west of Casper.
Jack’s father, William Clark, had a stage and freight line in partnership with Charles H. King, delivering people and goods to the Lander Valley and the Big Horn Basin.
Clark had ranches located near water on the arid high plateau. When the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad arrived in Casper in 1888, they began looking west toward Lander and the growing trade at the Fort Washakie Agency on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Clark arrived in Casper soon after the railroad in 1889. He purchased the Elkhorn Livery, Feed and Sale Stable near the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad Depot from partners Adams and Williams. It made a connection with passengers arriving in Casper who had to change to overland horse-powered transport to reach their western destinations.
Clark first appeared on the Casper scene in a comical incident typical of the times, but rarely seen in popular media, either in print or on the screen.
Natrona Tribune August 26, 1891 –
Considerable excitement was raised Wednesday afternoon.
“Many of our citizens who were on the street were startled to hear blood-curdling yells from some person near the stock yards, about a mile east of town. Constable Patton and several citizens mounted horses while we tied to the hitching racks nearby, and sped like the wind in the direction from which the sound had come. While hanging to his hat and the reins of his fleeting horse, Constable Patton’s imagination ran high. He could see a man lying in a pool of blood by the roadside, and his murderer flying down the road beyond him. He imagined how in a short time he would overtake, arrest and bring him back to town. All this passed through his mind in less time than it takes to print it, and he soon came in sight of a peculiar object in the road.
Urging his faithful steed he was soon beside it. “Crazy Horse,” who is now working for Jack Clark, had a horse down and was yelling to Jack a mile away to come and pick the horse up. The officer and men returned to town much wiser than when they left, and Jack had been saved the job of going down and picking the horse up.”
Stage companies had a lucrative operation in place delivering passengers and freight to Lander and over Birds Eye Pass to the Big Horn Basin. Clark was well aware of this growing trade and earned a good income supplying high quality horses for the 30-hour run in both directions.
Natrona County Tribune – August 8, 1896
Woolville
“For some time, it has been rumored that the railroad people intended to remove the dipping pens from W. Clark to the second stage station west of there on Jack Clark’s land, but only recently has it developed that a town of considerable size is to be established there early next spring. The town’s name indicates the chief source of revenue to its occupants, the wool business.
The dipping pens are now being put in there, and before spring large shearing pens will also be erected at Woolville. A wool warehouse, blacksmith shop, general store, saloon and eating house are among the business houses to be erected in time for use next spring. This new town will prove a great convenience to the sheep men of the state. The drive from Casper to the mountains between dipping and shearing is about sixty miles long, and the feed in that vicinity is excellent.
It is stated that a steam shearing plant will be put in there by the Cooper people.
The railroad people, who control the townsite, will endeavor to have a post office established there in the near future.”
Woolville never arrived, but Woolton, later Wolton, did. Wolton became a substantial community, so substantial that baseball teams from Wolton in later years routinely rode the train to Riveron and Lander during the summer for home and away tilts on the diamond.
Some misguided narratives about the role of the Stone Ranch list it as a breakfast-and-dinner stop for stage passengers traveling west. It wasn’t. The stage left Casper at about 9 pm and passed through Stone Ranch three hours later. In heavy snow, they did occasionally take in breakfasts of fried rabbit or pronghorn, with fried potatoes, sourdough biscuits, and coffee, but under normal conditions, breakfast was around 2:30 a.m., a little further down the line at Clark’s Ranch.
Here is a glimpse of travel in central Wyoming before the arrival of cars, trucks or trains.
Natrona County Tribune – August 1, 1901
OVER THE STAGE LINE
“Few people have ever made a trip on stage from Casper to Thermopolis, a distance of 140 miles, in thirty hours. There are few experiences in this life which you would remember until your last day. Riding nights and a day seems hard, but we assure our readers that they would keep awake along the way and would have tremendous appetites for meals.
You leave Casper at nine o’clock with a four-horse team ahead of you and a good driver in charge. After traveling west for fourteen miles you come to the first station, where the four horses, which have been going on a continual trot all the way, are unhooked and four fresh horses take their place. In five minutes, you are again going west at a full trot.
At midnight you pass the Stone House, in which O. K. Garvey has been running for the past year. In another hour or two you come to the Casper Creek Road ranch, now under the management of Howard Steed. A small mail bag is dropped off at this place, but no one is disturbed from their slumbers.
You hit the road again and keep time with another series of ruts and jolts until you reach Clark’s ranch on South Casper Creek at 2:30 in the morning. You take breakfast here, and although it is earlier than most people are accustomed to eating breakfast, you will nevertheless enjoy the meal, for Mrs. Clark and her daughters are aware of how to set a nice breakfast. The cooking and the hospitality of the hostess are indeed a comfort to the tired mortal who has been along the roads all night long.
After finishing your breakfast and bidding Mrs. Clark good morning, you make your way for the stage to proceed on the journey. This is where you notice the first break of a new day in the east, and you feel more like lying down on the ground and sleeping than continuing the journey.
You proceed west on a chariot. Mr. Clark is behind you, and it has the appearance of one of those spots where, if sheep were located here, it was no other spot on earth with enough room for those who handle the livestock.
After leaving this place you meet the stage bringing passengers to Casper from Thermopolis. You take a squint at the passengers and wonder if they are tired and sleepy as you are, and from the way they look they are probably wondering the same thing about you.
The narratives continue as the stage moved west to Red Springs, then on to Lost Cabin.