A Tour of Goshen County
Source: "Wyoming: A Guide to Its History, Highways and People: A Guide to Its History, Highways and People"
By Federal Writers' Project
Published by US History Publishers
1941
Submitted by K. Torp
LINGLE, 164.8 m. (4,165 alt., 415 pop.) is at the junction with US 26, which unites eastward with US 85 to Torrington, following the Laramie River. Pioneer trails ran along both banks of the Laramie, the Mormon on the north, and the Oregon on the south.
TORRINGTON, 174.0 m. (4,104 alt., 1,811 pop.), seat of Goshen County, has a busy business center, trim houses, and gardens. Torrington proper is on the north side of the North Platte River, in the midst of sugar-beet, potato, and alfalfa fields. Certified seed crops are grown here, under contract to various commercial firms. The county has no bonded indebtedness; royalties from oil, coal, and other mineral products provide much of its revenue. In Torrington is a large cold-storage plant, with individual locker boxes for rent by the month. Customers bring in their cattle or hogs to be butchered. The meat is pre-cooled, carved into steaks, roasts, and other cuts, and stored in the lockers.
St. Joseph's Orphanage (L), 175 m., under Catholic supervision, has accommodations for 50 children and maintains its own farm.
The Holly Sugar Company's Factory (R), 175.4 m., is on a branch of the Union Pacific, in South Torrington. The large, many-windowed, concrete structure, with great flues and landscaped yard, is a center of activity from September to late November, while trucks and wagons loaded with beets come in to be weighed and unloaded. The great steel arms of the piler move the beets into mountainous heaps, alongside the piles of limerock and coke used in the refining. All factory machinery is driven by electricity generated by steam turbines. The daily slicing capacity of the factory is 2,000 tons.
US 20 crosses the OREGON TRAIL (see Tour 4), 176 m., and proceeds through a region of irrigated farms, where, in autumn, yellow and silvery strawstacks dot the fields. A tall water tower and a smoke-stack rise above the trees of Torrington to the north. At 178.1 m. is the junction with a dirt road.
Right on this road, 10 m., to a desolate 'dust bowl' region of more than 109,000 acres, most of it in Goshen County. Formerly 149 families lived in this area, a prolific wheat-growing section, before its soil was worn away by erosion; of these only 64 families remain. Since 1936, the Goshen Hole Project of the United States Soil Conservation Service, with headquarters in Torrington, has made notable progress toward checking further erosion, by means of contour cultivation, restoration of grass, and other conservation techniques. Dams and innumerable shallow contour furrows divert the runoff after rains from the arroyos to the bordering land, where It is absorbed. The region may never be brought back as 'farming country,' but the work of the service has progressed sufficiently to indicate that it can be restored to the status of good grazing lands. The project is a co-operative one, operating under five-year contracts, between the landowners and the Government, on a 50-50 basis.
At 179.3 m. is the junction with a dirt road.
Right on this road to the Harvard Fossil Beds, 1.1 m., believed lo contain thousands of fossils, including many of the three-toed horse. Since the beds were purchased by Harvard University in 1930, extensive exploratory work has been done here under the direction of Dr. Erich Schlaikjer. Except when expeditions are encamped in the summer season, there is little for the visitor to see, as the excavations are carefully covered when not being worked.
For a stretch of more than 60 miles, HAWK SPRINGS, 196.4 m. (4,394 alt., 135 pop.), is the only wayside settlement offering accommodations.
At 198.2 m is the junction with a dirt road.
Right on this road (steep; sharp turns) to LONETREE CANYON, 11 m., scooped out from the flat prairie. The CHUGWATER FLATS, 13 m., were settled in 1910 by many Iowa farmers, who built substantial homes and cultivated dry farms. For several years there was sufficient rainfall for good crops; then came years of drought and hail. Now dozens of farms are deserted; windows are boarded up, and machinery stands rusting in the barnyards.
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Welcome Goshen County Wyoming Genealogy Trails History Group.
Hosted by Jo Ann Boyd Scott and as your host I try to post as much data online online as possible in order to make it freely available to all.
We gratefully accept contributions of raw data such as census information, marriage,/birth/death records, obituaries, county histories, biographies, old newspaper items, maps, anything that would help someone build their family tree!!
If you are interested in hosting other counties in Montana view Volunteer Information page, contact Kim. (a desire to transcribe data are required). I will help you with the web page designing. E-MAIL JoAnn . Send me text or picture data, information on any county and I will post it. I will immediately return your e-mail with a date I can get back to you with information.Your data is owned by you not the web site. SEND DATA to this e-mail.All data on this website is © Copyright 2007-2009 by Genealogy Trails with full rights reserved for original submitters.