WaltersRail

Glendo, Wyoming, sits on the edge of the valley of the North Platte River. You can't see the river anymore, because it was turned into a reservoir by the construction of a huge earthen dam about 4.5 miles southeast of town. From time to time, the Bureau of Reclamation drains the water to allow inspection and maintenance of the dam. Then the river valley is a mud flat.

Glendo was originally a stagecoach stop called Bellewood. The name Glendo comes from the Gaelic word for valley ("glean") and was given to the village by the Cheyenne and Northern Railroad. About 200 people live in Glendo, which contains a county school (K-12) and a church. Summers are short and warm; winters long and brutal. If you have never felt a January wind roar across Wyoming, then you have never really felt the wind, never really known the cold.

The Cheyenne and Northern, a continuation of the Colorado and Southern north of Denver, built through Wyoming to a connection with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy at Orin Junction. Both roads were under common ownership, and their linkage, plus a connection with the Northern Pacific near Billings, Montana, created a direct route from Puget Sound to the Gulf of Mexico, which line never saw much traffic because of the concurrent opening of the Panama Canal.

The tracks through Glendo were operated by the CB&Q for many years until the creation of the Burlington Northern in 1970, at that time America's largest railroad. BN and Santa Fe merged in 1995, creating what today is called BNSF, which now operates the line discussed in this article.

This map of Wyoming highlights the area disussed below.

Northbound coal empties beside the recently drained Glendo Reservoir.

Above the recently drained reservoir.

If you are driving north on I-25 from Cheyenne, you will cross country as isolated as almost anywhere in the continental United States. The first town you come to will be Chugwater, population less than 200, 45 miles north of Cheyenne in the canyon of Chugwater Creek.

William Henry Jackson, an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer, passed through on the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 which led to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park. He wrote in his journal:

A very conspicuous feature which we notice in descending the valley of the Chug is the high bluff of Lower Cretaceous sandstone, which stretches away toward the northeast like a huge wall. The jointage is so regular that it presents the appearance of massive mason-work gradually falling to decay. The sides of these sandstone walls are from 40 to 60 feet perpendicular, sometimes overhanging, large masses of which have broken off and fallen to the base. Their most striking feature, however is to weather into most picturesque castlllated forms. The valley of the Chug is 100 miles long, and is a favorite place to winter stock."

The Cheyenne and Northern Railway built north from Cheyenne shortly after the Hayden Expedition. It was absorbed by Union Pacific Railroad subsidiary Union Pacific, Denver and Gulf Railway and later became part of the Colorado and Southern Railway when the Union Pacific went into receivership.

The town of Chugwater was surveyed and laid out by engineers for the Swan Land and Cattle Co. in 1886. As late as the 1940s, Chugwater was a railroad stop where cattle were loaded for shipment east to Omaha.

Loaded coal on the High Plains of southeastern Wyoming.

If you keep driving north, the High Plains open like a book to reveal land on a scale unimaginable to anyone living east of the Mississippi River. The horizon surrounds you like the horizon on the ocean -- no trees, no bushes, no shrubs, nothing but endless grass. The railroad stays in the canyon of Chugwater Creek and is virtually inaccessible until you reach Wheatland, population about 3,500.

You may wonder why a town on the Wyoming High Plains, elevation about 4,800 feet, with an average annual rainfall of about nine inches, would call itself Wheatland, since wheat cannot grow in such a high desert climate. The town is located in a flat, with Chumwater Creek on the east, Sybille Creek on the west and the Laramie River on the north. In 1883, several speculators created the Wyoming Development Company to irrigate the flat by canals connected to the creeks and river, which themselves draw water from Laramie Peak. The speculators would make their money by selling irrigated lots to farmers.

The Cheyenne and Northern reached Wheatland in July 1887. Town lots were auctioned in 1894. By 1915, the population was about 5,000.

Today (September 2024), the population is about 3,500, and according to the Platte County web site, the Wheatland Irrigation District is the largest privately owned system in the country.

This aerial view shows the green irrigated flats of Wheatland surrounded by Wyoming's high desert.

Loaded coal headed south.

More coal north of Glendo.

Coal load headed south.

Dusk.

Wyoming sunset.

Another.

About 30 miles north of Wheatland lies Glendo. Sir Richard Burton, a 19th century British adventurer, commented on his overnight stay at the original stage coach station:

We were informed that "lady travelers" were admitted into the house, but the ruder sex must sleep where it could or not sleep at all if it preferred. We found a barn hardly fit for a decently brought up pig; which had no door and a damp floor. Into this disreputable hole we were all thrust for the night even the federal judge amongst us whose position procured him only a broken down pallet.

To reach Glendo, the Cheyenne and Northern first had to navigate through treacherous Wendover Canyon to the south. The tracks were extended as far north as Orin by 1900, but the railroad then sat quietly, waiting for the CB&Q to come east from Casper in 1914.

At Wendover Junction (the south end of the eponymously named canyon) a line branching to the southeast provided a link to farms and ranches in western Nebraska and ultimately to Omaha. At Hartville Junction, near the town of Guernsey, a spur track ran north to the Hartville and Sunrise Mines.

Aerial view of Wendover Canyon.

Wendover Canyon.

Northbound coal empties entering Wendover Canyon.

Deep in Wendover Canyon.

Loaded coal exiting Wendover Canyon.

Stacks and trailers in Wendover Canyon headed south to Denver. At the southern mouth of the canyon is the junction where loaded coal trains take the line to Guernsey and Nebraska.

Present day Guernsey is on the site of "Emigrant's Tub," a location on the Oregon Trail where travelers stopped to bath and wash clothes. One mile south of town are the Oregon Trail Ruts -- wagon tracks worn into hard rock. Three miles from town are Register Cliffs where emigrants carved their names into sandstone.

The town of Guernsey dates to 1902, when it was founded by the Lincoln Land Company, a subsidiary of the CB&Q and named after state representative Charles A. Guernsey. The village was originally a shipping point for iron ore from mines at Hartville and Sunrise. The railroad was also a through route between Northwest and Midwest. Later, in the 1970's with the opening of the Powder River Basin mines, coal traffic began roaring through town night and day.

Stewart Culin, American ethnographer and author, passed through the "new boom town" during its creation and wrote about it in "A Summer Trip Among the Western Indians":

Some dozens of unpainted frame houses on the open prairie, a railroad station, and a vast gang of laborers engaged in building a railroad embankment were all that was visible of the new metropolis, in which corner lots were being offered for sale at metropolitan prices.

. . .

The next morning we left our hospitable hosts and were driven back to Guernsey. The town, I should say city, seemed to have grown perceptibly since our arrival. I visited the newspaper office and purchased copies of the twenty-sixth number of The Guernsey Iron Gazette. This journal gives an interesting picture of life in the three months’ old boom town, a town which its promoter has christened the Birmingham of the West.

Leaving Guernsey, we returned to Hartville Junction where we took a train passing through the marvelous canyon of the North Platte [Wendover Canyon], and proceeded to Casper, where we were to take a stage for Lander, Fort Washakie and the Wind River reservation.

Hartville Junction was where the short branch line running north to the mines tied into the main line running southeast from Wendover Junction to Guernsey and Nebraska.

Hartville made the news when miner Ernesto Jacobetti was shot, according to the New York Tribune of December 27, 1907, "squarely between the eyes." The bullet went straight through his head. Still according to the newpaper, about one-half of his brains "oozed through the hole in his head, yet he recovered with no loss of mind or memory and within three weeks was back at work in the mines."

The reader is free to believe this story or not.

The last mine closed at Hartville in 1980, when the population was about 250. In the 2010 Census, the population was 62.

Coal train at Orin Junction, with Mount Laramie rising in the background.

Orin Junction. Before the opening of the Powder River Basin coal mines, all traffic at this point would have turned west and proceeded to Casper and then through the Wind River Canyon to the junction with the Northern Pacific. This train is turning east to the mines.

Both Hartville and Guernsey are located in the Hartville Uplift, a northeastward ridge about 45 miles long between Guernsey and Lusk, Wyoming. The uplift was caused by a fault on the eastern side as, millions of years ago, the High Plains cracked and then rose slowly over more millions of years. Today portions of the ridge extend 1,500 feet above the plains. The area is the dividing line between the High Plains and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and constituted the first major hurdle along both the Oregon Trail and the CB&Q line running from Nebraska to Wendover Junction.

That line crossed the North Platte just west of Guernsey, then navigated through three tunnels. Soil and rock were unstable, and eventually one tunnel was daylighted, though the giant cut to this day requires constant maintenance to keep the walls from collapsing.

Aerial view of Hartville Uplift.

Coal train on the bridge west of Guernsey across the North Platte. The Hartville Uplift rises in the background.

The daylighted cut on the line from Guernsey to Wendover Canyon. Notice how the walls have been overlain to prevent collapse.

Another coal train in Wendover Canyon, which was carved by the North Platte as the Hartville Uplight slowly rose around it.

Pronghorn in the shade in one of the tunnels constructed on the connection from Guernsey to Wendover..

Pushers entering same tunnel. The pronghorn knew the train was approaching and vacated in plenty of time.

Approaching Guernsey, with Guernsey Reservoir in background.

Loaded coal between Guernsey and Wendover.

The tracks northwest from Guernsey tie into the old Colorado and Southern at Wendover Junction shown here. The line to Cheyenne and Denver is visible at the bottom of the image. Wendover was once a small settlement, but in the 21st century, only one structure remains, the abandoned dwelling shown in this image.

Mining brought people into the Hartville Uplift. In the 1870s a mining camp was established in Eureka Canyon near a discovery of copper ore. Hartville was established in 1884, named after Colonel Virling Hart, the commander at Fort Laramie, who owned a claim and opened the first copper mine. About 5 million pounds of copper ore were extracted from several mines, the most important of which was Sunrise.

When the copper mines had played out, about 1889, iron ore production began from four mines: Central, Chicago, Good Fortune and Sunrise. The communities of Hartville, Sunrise, and Ironton near the mines housed the miners.

Guernsey was the railroad transport hub. The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, owned and controlled by George Jay Gould and J.D. Rockefeller, began leasing in the area in 1889, purchased the entire upper canyon in 1904 and oversaw all aspects of the mines and the miner’s lives. Sunrise was a non-union, dry, company town. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company owned and operated the train (Hartville Junction to Sunrise), rented the housing, sold the food, clothes and merchandise, and ran the schools for the miner’s children.

The following comes from the periodical Mines and Mining, September 13, 1907:

Sunrise is a company town in the fullest sense. Everthing, and may it be said everybody, is owned by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. No special brand is necessary, for the fact impresses itself indelibly on all who come here. Visitors are not especially welcomed, which a glance at the passenger accommodations on the train that meets the Colorado & Southern at Hartville Junction forces itself on all comers.

From Hartville Junction the spur to Sunrise via Guernsey, a distance of about fifteen miles, belongs and is operated by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It is a fine piece of railroad engineering with its high grades and frequent curves and one would not mind paying two prices for transportation, as he must, if only the accommodations were adequate, but, as has been said, the company seems not to care for that sort of traffic. Having constructed the line for its own convenience, no doubt it considers itself an accommodator of the public by attaching a caboose to its trains of ore cars, which caboose has poor seating capacity for about eight people, through several times that number travel over the route as a rule.

Loaded coal approaching Guernsey, near the location of abandoned Hartville Junction.

A frac sand train in the Hartville Uplift.

Near Guernsey and the Hartville Mine.

Northwest of Guernsey, Wendover Canyon slices through the Hartville Uplift with breathtaking abruptness, an enormous trench with walls several hundred feet above a placid river robbed of its power by the Glendo Dam upstream. As the land around it slowly rose, the river continued eroding, year upon year, eon upon eon. Today the canyon walls are vertical in many places, and one marvels that 19th century technology was able to construct a railroad through such narrow confines.

Southern end of canyon.

Coal empties.

The canyon runs basically north/south. At the northern end both river and railroad emerge out of the uplift into a broad bucolic valley easily reachable on county roads. The canyon itself is isolated. Photography requires a significant hike -- significant at least for the old man writing this.

An empty coal train emerges from the Hartville Uplift and Wendover Canyon, the northern mouth of which can be seen on the right hand side of the image.

Coal empty passing coal load the at the northern mouth of Wendover Canyon.

Northbound emerging from Wendover Canyon.

Southbound entering Wendover Canyon.

As the above indicates, both Guernsey and Glendo sit adjacent to reservoirs built on the North Platte River by the Bureau of Reclamation. Guernsey Reservoir resulted from the completion in 1927 of Guernsey Dam, a 135-foot-high embankment of clay, sand and gravel, quarried from the canyon mouth where the dam was constructed. On a spur track, CB&Q trains hauled the material to the dam site and dumped it from trestles. No relocation of the main line was required. The dam's primary purpose was to provide water and power (from a concurrently constructed hydro-electric plant).

Glendo Reservoir was a different story. Proposed for a site 25 miles upstream, Glendo was not intended for irrigation but rather to reduce silt in Guernsey. Planning began as early as 1944, but conflicts among Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska held up construction until December 1954. Nebraska feared that Glendo Reservoir would reduce flow into Lake McConaughy at Ogallala, while Colorado thought the additional storage at Glendo would require the use of more water in Colorado's North Park, headwaters of the North Platte. (The North Platte begins in the Colorado Rockies, flows north into Wyoming, then turns southeast and flows into Nebraska.)

The dispute ultimately found a home in Congress, which ruled that no money would be appropriated for Glendo until a definite plan for water use was agreed upon by the three states and the federal legislature. In 1954 the Bureau of Reclamation, like Solomon's splitting the baby, proposed that Glendo Reservoir would store 800,000 acre feet of water, with 100,000 acre feet for irrigation, 115,000 for sediment control, 275,000 for flood control and 310,000 for hydro-electric power.

Negotiations continued, with lawyers reaping a bonanza, until the states finally agreed that although 100,000 acre feet could be stored in Glendo Reservoir for irrigation, only 40,000 could be used in any one year--15,000 for Wyoming and 25,000 for Nebraska. Hydro-electric power would serve both states, plus Colorado. Construction required relocating about three miles of the railroad and U.S. 87 (now I-25) to the western edge of the reservoir. The original line followed the river closely and would be submerged about 200 feet.

North of Glendo where the reservoir, ends, both northbounds and southbounds climb a short grade on a sweeping curve before descending back into the river valley.

Southbound potash descending the big curve to Glendo.

Summit of the short grade north of town.

Coal loads climbing the grade north of town.

On the sweeping curve.

North of the small gradient and curve, the tracks run straight and flat through a wide valley. To the east rises a broad mesa, while Mount Laramie stands guard to the west. In the southern end of the valley, the line is single track, becoming double approaching Orin Junction, where double-track continues to the northeast toward the coal mines, while a single track turns west toward Casper and beyond to the Wind River Canyon. (For a complete discussion of BNSF's operations in the Powder River Basin, see https://www.waltersrail.com/2023/01/powder-river-basin-part-one-bnsf.html.) The valley is filled with trees along the river, cottonwoods and aspen, and the country seems almost verdant, though out of the valley high desert prevails. Wyoming Highway 319 runs beside the tracks, while I-25 climbs the hills to the west.

In the river valley north of Glendo.

Trains meet in river valley.

Northbound in the valley.

Northbound manifest.

More trains meeting in the valley north of Glendo.

Coal loads north of Glendo.

North of Glendo at First Dark.

Following are a few images of coal trains approaching or leaving Orin Junction.

Coal loads approaching Orin Junction.

Empties head to the mines.

Loaded coal at the junction.

Meeting at the junction. The train on the left has come through the Wind River Canyon.

More empties.

In any discussion of Wyoming, one should at least mention the weather. Winters are notorious, and summers, though short, can sometimes fry eggs on a sidewalk. But the real stars of Wyoming weather are thunderstorms, which can appear out of nowhere. One minute the sky can be clear and blue, the next dark purple heading to black. One of nature's most amazing spectacles is a growing thunderhead that starts as a small cloud, then explodes like the mushroom of an atomic blast, except mature thunderheads are shaped like anvils. If one is moving toward you, lighnting will appear in the purple clouds like flashing vericose veins and it will be time to run for shelter.

A storm is forming in the broad Wyoming sky.

A thunderhead is building to the right of the DPU.

Thunderheads exploding.

More.

Every now and then, if you're lucky, a rainbow will appear. If you're even luckier, a train will appear when the rainbow does. Your author has been railfanning over 50 years, and he can count on his fingers the times this has happened to him.

Coming off the big curve north of Glendo, a loaded coal train chases the thunderstorm south.

DPU's on same train.

Unfortunately, the photographer did not have on his camera a lens with a wide enough angle to capture the entire rainbow, which for about 30 seconds stretched from horizon to horizon. This image and the one above, taken together, give the complete picture.

Once the storm has passed, the late afternoon sun descends below a horizon now bereft of clouds. If you had not seen the storm pass, if you had not been in the middle of it, you would not have even known that it rained. The land lies silent, but the trains keep passing, keep their appointments with coal-fired electric plants mostly, but also grain export harbors and container facilities. Long into the night the trains continue, but unlike the railroad, you must sleep. And so you do sleep, and if you are fortunate, you dream of more trains, more locations to photograph, more ways to fill up what remains of your life.