Anyone approaching the edge of Beaver Rim, whether traveling north to Riverton, or south to Sweetwater Station, knows the challenges of the steepest incline on U.S. Highway 287. With a 9 percent grade, it is one of the steepest sections of highway in the entire lower 48 states of the United States of America. Imagine it in sub-zero winter, behind a team of four horses trying to pull up the grade or control the team on the downward ride.
The town of Hailey was built a few miles southwest of the present summit of Beaver Rim, on Beaver Creek.
At one time, thanks to the ingenuity and creativity of one man, Eli Signor, it vied for recognition in Fremont County with Shoshoni, Lander, and Riverton.
This is the story of a town that almost made it, that had the right promoter, with the right ideas, but simply the wrong geographic location.
Hailey first appeared in newspapers and regional maps in the 1880s, when the Rawlins to Ft. Brown stage and freight route opened.
Hailey was the next stop after the road crossed the Sweetwater River at Myersville, and the last stop with regular, stream-fed water until it reached what would later become Hudson on the Popo Agie.
Located on Beaver Creek it was the place of dreamers, adventurers, outlaws, and legends. The vistas were spectacular with clear views of the Wind River Range 50 miles distant to the west, and the Owl Creek Mountains the same to the north. The soon-to-be fertile Wind River Valley lay in between.
Getting mail to Lander, and the Wind River Indian Reservation at Ft. Brown (Washakie) was the goal, and the challenges of “Crawling the Rim” made a station at Hailey a necessity on the route.
In the 1880s the called Beaver Rim, “Beaver Hill” and the steep route from the valley of the Wind River to the plateau above required skilled teamsters, stout horses, and mules. It was the most physically challenging, and dangerous portion of the stage and freight route from the railhead at Rawlins to distant Fort. Brown.
Unlike the Hollywood version of stagecoaches, which resemble city taxis in their portrayal of passengers riding the stage, the people brave enough to ride this route had to get out and walk both up and down the road at Beaver Rim.
Wagons wheels rolled up the trail, but before making the descent, drivers chained the rear wheels, locking them in place as brakes. The ascent was a challenge, but the descent could be deadly to both man and beast.
Carbon County Journal – July 17, 1888 -“The Lander Mountaineer reports: ‘Beaver Hill on the Rawlins-Fort Washakie stage road is so steep that horses going down the steep declivity unless they are attached to wagons, fall over on their necks. Thursday, as Major Baldwin’s outfit was going down the steepest part of the hill, an animal following behind fell and broke its neck. It was one of the Major’s mules and a good one. The roads need attention from the county all the way from Beaver Hill to Lander.”
In a 1925, “Old Timers” celebration at City Park in Lander, a woman’s quartet sang a series of “How Do You Do” songs to the honored pioneers at the event. Here is their song to Eli Signor, the man who almost made Hailey a Wyoming landmark.
How do you do? Eli Signor?
How do you do?
You must let the broncs alone.
Or they’ll surely break your bones.
Then you’ll have another home.
In his youth, Eli Signor broke horses, built corrals, and challenged the elements. He and his somewhat larcenous brother John established the stage stop at Rongis (Signor spelled backward) first, but John left the area quickly after taking a few too many neighbor’s cattle and disappeared to the north.
Hailey was founded by Ora Hailey, one of the major players in the Wyoming stock industry. Hailey ran cattle between Laramie and Rawlins in the 1880s, and expanded north into Johnson County, after the turn of the century.
The post office and stage station that bore his name were an investment. Hailey never had a hand in the daily operations of the station, aside from supplying horses and mules paid for by the stage and freight operating companies.
Hailey was one of Wyoming’s three electors in the 1904 election of Theodore Roosevelt. As a member of the Electoral Congress, he was a friend of Governor Bryant Brooks who would have a major role in Fremont County history as a proponent of Asmus Boysen’s dam at the mouth of the Wind River Canyon and in the reclamation project that brought irrigation water to Crowheart, Pavillion and Midvale.
He walked the line between cattleman and sheepman, and despite his statewide prestige, raising sheep still made him a target of vigilante cattlemen.
The Cheyenne Dailey Leader reported on January 24, 1908, that a camp owned by Hailey and his son was raided, the sheepherder ran off and the wagons and camp burned by unknown assailants. They left the sheep alone though.
Eli Signor Arrives in Hailey –
The changing location of the post office and station at Rongis, with the bad reputation it had earned, was too much for Eli Signor. He was a prominent, well-respected citizen, and when the Casper stage line moved their station two miles from Rongis to avoid the drunks hanging out at the Rongis bar, he and his wife moved a few miles west to the top of the rim and purchased Hailey.
He made a name for himself as a farmer, rancher, store owner and his wife served as postmaster until 1924. The couple was involved in agricultural pursuits that bordered on the extreme for the area but worked well back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Eli was active in Fremont County and statewide politics and kept up with the news through many newspapers that arrived at his post office. The question of what to do with state buildings in Cheyenne was a popular topic across the state in 1903 and 1904. Eli had a great sense of humor and displayed it in this article reprinted from the Thermopolis Record.
Sage Chicken Factory – Lander Clipper November 4, 1904 – “While in Lander last week the writer had the pleasure of meeting Eli A. Signor of Hailey, and of discovering that we both formerly roamed the same ranges in the Sacramento valley, Of course the capital removal question came up for discussion. In reply to an inquiry as to what use the capital building could be put to in case of Cheyenne losing out, Mr. Signor advanced the idea that it might be turned to good account as a sage chicken hatchery. Now that seems to be about the best solution we have heard of a problem that has been keeping the Cheyenne papers awake nights. We would suggest that the next legislature pass a bill providing that when the building is vacated for state government purposes it be used for the purpose mentioned by Mr. Signor.”
Signor was well ahead of his time when it came to agriculture. While other area landowners raised sheep or cattle, Eli dabbled in many different areas of crop production.
The couple arrived at Hailey in 1888. After building a home, barns, and corrals for livestock, Eli began planting trees. Located directly on the freight route from the Union Pacific at Rawlins had its benefits. He was able to order seeds, and seedlings and have them directly shipped to Hailey.
No crop was out of bounds for Eli Signor, in 1907 he harvested sugar beets and took them by wagon to Hudson for shipping. The cost of transporting a heavy crop like beets had Signor thinking much bigger.
Rawlins Republican -May 29, 1907 – “Eli Signor is experimenting with sugar beets this year. He hopes to have a sugar beet factory established, at Hailey before Lander gets one and if boosting counts for anything, he ought to get it.”
An October 13, 1911, edition of the Wind River Mountaineer published a reprint of a story from the Rawlins Journal –
Some Wyoming Apples
“Eli Signor, who lives at Hailey, Wyoming, between Rawlins and Lander, this week sent Postmaster P. L. Smith four of the largest and best looking apples we have ever seen. They were raised on his ranch at Hailey. Two of them are of the Alexander variety, the largest measuring 13 ½ inches in circumference and the other 13 inches.
The others are Greenings and are very little smaller than the Alexanders. Mr. Signor is well known in Rawlins, having lived at Rongis for many years when the Lander stage went from this city.
When he began ranching at Hailey he determined that it was possible to raise fine fruit in this state and said he now has a large orchard filled with apple, plum, pear, and other fruit trees, and is making a big success. It will only be a few years until progressive farmers like Mr. Signor prove to the world that Wyoming is a farming paradise.”
Orchards seem a far-fetched idea for the arid high desert of Beaver Rim, but the abundant water found in Beaver Creek, and careful use of the landscape to plant trees in draws protected from the prevailing northwest winds allowed Signor to grow fruit better suited to much warmer climates. Just 50 miles to the west, at the bottom of Red Canyon on South Pass hundreds of acres of apple trees grew successfully for many years, leading many to call Lander the “Apple City.”
At the 1904 St. Louis World’s, Wyoming Governor Fenimore Chatterton said of Lander’s apple orchards, “It has recently been demonstrated that the Garden of Eden was not in Palestine but is still situated on the Shoshone Indian reservation in Wyoming and that the variety of apple with which Mother Eve was tempted is still grown on a ranch just outside the reserve.”
Once again using his connections on the freight line, and with freighters looking for work after the Chicago Northwestern Railroad arrived in Lander in November of 1906, Signor was able to buy oats to fatten lambs and steers for market in a feedlot he established at Hailey.
In February 1917 he had several wagonloads of oats hauled from the old stage stop at Dallas to his ranch.
Signor had powerful connections in state government in distant Cheyenne. Former Wyoming Governor Bryant B. Brooks always had an interest in Fremont County long before the railroad reached Lander, the reservation was sold for homesteading and Riverton was established.
Wyoming State Journal February 2, 1917 – “Ex-Governor B. B. Brooks has taken an option in the amount of $1000 on the Signor coal mine, sixteen miles from Riverton. The option runs till March 1st. The high quality and abundance of coal in this property is well known, and Its development will mean much to Riverton. The Big Muddy Coal company with which Mr. Brooks Is identified, has machinery and equipment at the Big Muddy mine valued at over $100,000. This mine has played out, it is stated that in all probability should the Signor mine deal go through, this equipment will be moved here. The opening of the Signor mine by these people will mean its operation on a large scale and undoubtedly result in the building of a railroad from Riverton.”
The Big Muddy Mine was in southern Illinois, and closed in 1925, an indicator that it was already largely mined out by 1917. The equipment was never transported to Hailey, and the governor’s $1000 down payment, about $25,000 today, went into Signor’s pocket.
It was Eli Signor’s last big land deal. In his later years, he spent a lot of time in his garden, and in continuing to develop his apple orchard.
The records from the 1920 Wyoming State Fair indicate he was good at both.
He took the blue ribbon with a sheaf of Sudan grass, and additional ribbons for Duchess, Wolf River, Alexander, and Snow apples. He even won two dollars with his Blue Victor potatoes.
Previously at the state fair in Douglas, he won the top prize for the largest potatoes in 1908.
Signor was a man of many interests and equally many talents.
Through the years, he continued to operate the store, and his wife the post office and experimented, farmed, and ranched.
The Signor family was from northern Italy near the Swiss border and Beaver Creek began to draw Swiss immigrants.
In 1909, Hans and Lena Bringolf immigrated from Switzerland and took a homestead on Beaver Creek, just a few miles from Hailer.
After World War I, another Swiss immigrant, Eugene Gasser took one of the last homesteads on Beaver Creek, living in a sheep wagon for two years and hoping to raise horses. Gasser had been the Swiss Army equestrian jumping champion in 1916.
He wrote a letter back home to his brother in Switzerland that refers to Hans Bringolf and the challenges of living near Hailey early in the 20th century.
April 1923, postmark Hailey, Wyoming – “For a couple of days, I have been in the forest to make posts for my own home place. From here to Hans, it is a whole journey. Therefore, I am living in a gypsy wagon, for three or four weeks, not in a tent as I had written to mother. Unfortunately, I came into a blizzard yesterday, in a way you can see it only over here. Today the weather hasn’t changed. To get out of the wagon I have to dig first a tunnel through the snow, but frankly said, I have nothing to seek outdoors, and luckily I have enough wood and food for about 30 days. The wagon is good and has a very good stove. In spite of the storm, I like to live here. Yes, the gypsy life is nicer than you think! For eight days I have not seen any human being, and I think it will be some 14 days until I will see the next. Sorry here I have no ink, that’s the reason I am writing with a pencil. From here to the next farm, it’s a distance like between Hallau and Schaffhausen (about 10 miles) Maybe there is a sheep camp with some thousand sheep in the near area. Then too, I learn cooking, step by step. Yesterday, I had the misfortune with it. I wanted to cook beans, and since I like the beans so much I thought for myself, “Now, for this time I want plenty of them. For half measure, I filled the pan with bean kernel, but this pan was too small, and in a couple of hours I had two big pans full of bean soup. I knew that the beans expand, but I didn’t know they would expand like a just married wife.”
Eugene’s wife Clara Voch arrived at Hailey and the couple were married in Lander. They soon left the area for Black Mountain and eventually Riverton.
Eli stayed at Hailey, raising hogs successfully in 1927, but his days on the range were numbered.
The post office closed in 1924, and he spent his final years in Lander.
There are a few buildings on private property that remain of Hailey a century ago, but the dreams of orchards, sugar beets, and a growing town are buried under the windblown sand of Beaver Rim.