Wyoming Genealogy

There is some reason to believe that the Spaniards were the first white men to enter Wyoming. Traces of ditches and relics of early mining implements have been found on the Big Horn and Yellowstone Rivers and there is a tradition that they penetrated what is now the confines of Yellowstone Park, but definite proof is lacking.1 Coming nearer to recorded history are stories of French and Canadian trappers having visited the streams of southern Uinta County in the days of the early fur trade, and it is highly probable that this was the case. Nothing definite, however, is known […]

Soon after the completion of the railroad it was decided to make Evanston the end of the division, and work was begun on a substantial roundhouse and machine shops made of stone. Bishop Sharp of the Mormon Church had the contract and employed about one hundred fifty men in the construction. It was completed the Fourth of July, 1871, and engines and men moved in from Wasatch to the accompaniment of shrieking whistles and cheers from the assembled crowd. A town picnic was held across the river, in which all of the community joined. The speech of the day was

To the north of the railroad tracks lay “Chinatown,” a huddled group of shanties built on railroad land. All kinds of material were used in the construction and the houses resembled the work of half-grown boys more than that of men. When lumber gave out, packing boxes and building paper were substituted, and many of the roofs were made of tin oil cans flattened out. Here lived a few merchants, half a dozen laundry men, and vegetable peddlers who cultivated truck gardens near the river. They irrigated them by means of water wheels patterned after those of their native land.

During the years when Evanston was developing from a railroad grading camp into one of the permanent towns of the new Territory of Wyoming, there was springing up at her very gates a busy mining town the influence of which was destined to endure long after its decline. It was the coal camp called Almy. There are in the west few prettier sites than this once thriving camp on Bear River, and few that present such easy access to the hidden wealth. The engineer pierced the hillside with gently sloping tracks that led to veins averaging twenty feet in width.

The settlement of the Bridger Valley has gone steadily forward, and it is today one of the most important agricultural districts in the state. Soon after the military reservation of Fort Bridger was thrown open three men named King Durant, Joshua Stewart and S. R. Brough took up land about five miles west of Fort Bridger. In 1891 a canal was taken out of Black’s Fork under the direction of a Mormon bishop named Ferrin, and homesteads were located by F. L. Diffendaffer, William Snodgrass and Samuel Gross. Soon after there moved in a colony from Utah bringing cattle and