Riverton Chamber After Hours event Thursday celebrates new history tour along Heritage Trail, RiverWalk

(Riverton, WY) – The Riverton Chamber of Commerce is hosting an After Hours event this week celebrating the opening of the new Wind River Country History – Riverton Tour along the Wyoming Heritage Trail (Rails-to-Trails) and RiverWalk in town.

The 14-exhibit tour is intended to help visitors and local citizens connect more easily to local history, according to a press release from the Chamber – but it is also expected to have a positive impact on economic development in Riverton.

“The whole reason for all of this (is) economic development – to give tourists something to do,” Project Coordinator Cathy Cline told the Riverton City Council during a recent meeting. “Whether they’ve come for a sports tournament and need to kill some time between games, or they’re sitting in a hotel room because they came here for work, or they’re on their way up to the park and they heard there was a really cool things to do here – we want to be able to entertain them.”

There’s also a “safety and security” benefit to the project, Cline added, explaining that “the more people we put on these trails, the safer these trails will be.”

“That is a big goal,” Cline said. “(As well as) the community pride that’s involved. We’re hoping that everybody that comes will hear a little bit about their own story, see a little bit of themselves in these exhibits, and feel really good that this is the place they live.”

History tour

The history tour consists of 14 graphic exhibits that tell some of the local area’s “most important stories,” the Chamber said, featuring information about dinosaurs, geology, the Wind River Reservation, fur trappers, homesteaders, immigrant workers, transportation, and energy booms and busts.

“A number of notable citizens are profiled, including Chiefs Washakie and Black Coal, as well (as) Riverton’s founders, early settlers, and the community builders and philanthropists of the last century,” the press release states. “As the tour moves to the RiverWalk, where visitors can enjoy the river and its wildlife, the tour tells of the tie hacks and tie drives that brought millions of railroad ties into Riverton for processing. Here, visitors will also find the story of how Riverton was born.”

People can experience an audible version of the tour using the Wyoming-based tour app TravelStorys, which uses GPS to activate audio on individual cell phones as users approach each exhibit, the Chamber said.

“(So) not only will you see the exhibits, but you will also, on your cell phone, be able to hear the tour itself vocalized to you,” Cline said. 

The audio features familiar local voices including Ernie Over, Jack Schmidt, Ivan Posey and Cy Lee, according to the press release.

“The soundtrack, along with graphic displays, will likely be used most often by individual visitors, but a group, such as a classroom, can connect to a Bluetooth speaker so that many students can experience the stories at the same time,” the press release states. “Teachers will also find the storyteller’s circle on the RiverWalk as a good place for classroom discussions and review.”

Wyoming PBS helped produce the audio, the Chamber said, expressing thanks to that organization and other project contributors, including the Wyoming Parks’ Monuments and Markers department, the Wyoming Historical Museum, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Historic Preservation offices, Fremont County Museums, the Riverton Depot Foundation, the Wind River Visitor Council, the City of Riverton, the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, and the Riverton Rotary.

“There are a hundred different reasons from each of the involved parties for doing this project – to promote community pride, to teach history, to preserve and remember our past, to hear our own voices and see our own stories, to help young people understand the world by understanding their own community, to promote mutual appreciation, to provide seniors an interesting outdoor experience, to make the walk/run trail more interesting and thus promote those healthy benefits, and so many more,” the Chamber said. “But for the originators of the project, it’s been about economic and tourism development. … The more time visitors spend in our community, the more we all benefit.”

After Hours

This week’s After Hours event will take place 5-7 p.m. Thursday, beginning at the history-telling display near The Depot restaurant (Main and South First) and running to the exhibit at Rotary Centennial Park (Adams and South Second West).

Cline said one of the exhibits that will be featured Thursday explores “transportation, rail, and air as it affects economic development,” while the other “speaks to Germans from Russia who (were) sugar beet families.”

The Depot will offer food during the event, Cline said, noting that parking is available at both ends of the trail.

Attendees are asked to keep The Depot’s parking lot available for dinner patron parking.

For more information, call the Chamber of Commerce at (307) 856-4801.