- If you've lived in Wyoming for a while, you've probably seen the Brown Road sign directing you to the Ames Monument south of Interstate 80 in Albany County many times.

But if you've never undertaken the additional five-minute drive off the interstate to see the mighty pyramid of the plains, this could be the year to do it.

Commissioned 150 years ago and completed in 1882.

It's one of the most striking parts of this or any other landscape.

The Ames Monument, testament to the achievement of the Transcontinental Railroad and two brothers who helped build it.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

When the subject is pyramids, Wyoming probably doesn't cross one's mind immediately.

But there is a pyramid here, the Ames Monument, on a flat prairie atop the Laramie Range.

It was built in 1882 by the Union Pacific Railroad to honor the memory of two men, brothers, who were vital to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad across the western half of America in the 19th century.

Two historians and history buffs, the Ames brothers remain a largely dubious pair for their role in the notorious once upon a time credit mobilier financial fraud that forever colored the legacy of the otherwise extraordinary achievement that was the railroad itself.

The Ames Monument, still taller than virtually every other building in Wyoming, stands as an oddly magnificent tribute to two men who may or may not have deserved it, but whose accomplishment undeniably does.

The state official in charge of the monument is Christina Bird.

You were with us a little more than a year ago at the historic governor's mansion and took us on a tour through there.

We're in quite a different setting here, still part of your purview in your position, which is what?

One more time.

- So I'm the district manager for the Southeast District of Wyoming State Parks and historic sites.

And - Rattle off the list of properties that you are ostensibly in charge of, so to speak, including this one.

- Sure.

So I'll start in Albany County with the Wyoming Territorial Prison.

Right.

Ames Monument, National Historic Landmark, Historic Governor's Mansion, a state historic site, Quebec One, Missile Alert Facility, National Historic Landmark, and of course Kirk Gowdy State Park.

- And in the list you just mentioned, do you cite us in places we've been to?

We did on your recommendation.

We went to Quebec one and territorial prisons.

We're glad to be here today.

I said during the promotion for our visit here today that people would have seen the brown sign probably on the interstate many times.

I don't know how many have come over.

I'll say I've lived in Wyoming for dozens of decades and I've never been here before today.

- Oh.

- It's really something.

- It is really cool.

What - In the world is this doing here?

- Ames Monument is 100% here because of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Everything about this monument has to do with the Transcontinental.

We're really no more than a couple of miles away from I-80.

You can't see it from the interstate.

So you really do have to get off the interstate and come down the dirt road to take a look at the monument.

- Yeah, we did that this morning.

It was foggy up here.

This is Memorial Day weekend where you never know what kind of weather you're - Going - To get, but we're up at 8,300 feet or something.

We're on a mountaintop.

- It's a little chilly.

- Wyoming.

It's breezy chilly up here, but we came down the road in the fog this morning and there it sort of looms out.

And boy, it's not some, it's not a road sign.

It's not a little cabin or something.

It is a manmade pyramid of, and like so many things in Wyoming had to do with the arrival of the railroad.

- Yeah.

- What we know is the two railroad companies started from the West Coast and the Mississippi River essentially and built toward each other and not quite in Wyoming - - No - Quite.

But just below the border in Utah they met.

The Ames brothers were part of the, what was known then as the Union Pacific and eventually that was the name for all of it coming from East to West.

- Oaks and Oliver Ames had joined in a business with their father very early on in the you know, in the 1840s, 1850s.

And their business was agricultural equipment.

Shovels, - I - Read.

Specifically shovels.

And so you can still buy an Ames shovel.

They're no longer owned by the family company, but you can still buy a shovel.

And they were founded out of Easton, Massachusetts of all places.

And these two brothers became very active in railroads and in politics.

And Oliver became the president of the Union Pacific and Oaks became a congressman in our United States Congress.

I - See.

So you know how to make shovels.

Let's build a railroad across the country.

Now, railroads existed before the Transcontinental Railroad did.

Yes.

But the, the prospect and the idea and the concept of building, it was about 1800 miles, I think, across parts unknown, a lot of it still, largely unexplored, uninhabited territory.

Safe to say an absolutely monumental undertaking.

- Incredible.

Incredible undertaking.

And my understanding is that when President Lincoln pulled in Oaks Ames into his office and said, "You got to help us build this railroad," they had only built about 12 miles a track.

- 12 miles.

- 12 miles a track.

Over the course of a couple years.

Oaks and Oliver were kind of tasked with creating the financing to be able to move this railroad forward.

- Now, I think any student of American history understands the term you just used, the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Of course, it was a success because - The - Railroad was built.

- Yes.

- But also one of the great scandals really of all American history and the way that the public and the government and the landowners and the people, the investors, everybody was ripped off.

millions of dollars even in those days.

And there's no question about it.

The Ames Brothers were implicated in some of that.

There were other more notorious scoundrels in this and we're not breaking any news - Here.

No.

- This has all been investigated, but that's what happened.

But it was an odd time sort of, wasn't it?

The Robert Baron era, these were the people who sort of got things done in a way before the regulatory and oversight - Climate - Really even existed.

Yeah.

- The Transcontinental was quite the public-private partnership.

Yeah.

And Oaks Ames was in a really unique position as a congressman in the United States Congress and got involved in what became the Credit Mobile scandal.

And unfortunately, was probably more of a scapegoat than anybody else.

It kind of crushed his spirit.

He was centered by Congress and didn't live very long after that.

- And that's sort of what led to this.

There were people who decided that at the very least we want to try to restore his reputation a little bit.

Is that how you've - Come to see it?

- And restore.

The Union Pacific, hands down, probably would not have gotten nearly as far without these two gentlemen.

And so the Union Pacific really wanted to honor that, wanted to have a monument, of course, with Union Pacific money to be able to put something that would honor both them as well as in my personal opinion, the Union Pacific.

- Yeah.

And this was a time of monument building.

Yeah.

I was just looking at the timeline of it, commissioned I think about maybe exactly 150 years ago in 1876, I think, or thereabouts, and then completed, finally they got up and running, completed in 1882 or something.

- Yes.

And - That's only, that's not even 10 years after the Washington Monument had been built.

- Yeah.

- So there was a view that.

I'm not saying that they viewed the Ames Brothers as equivalent to George Washington.

Of course they didn't, but this was a powerful organization that had a lot of money, proud of what had been accomplished and maybe though they.

We want to remember who did this.

- Yeah.

- And we'll let other people criticize what they did.

- Yeah.

- And that did happen justifiably.

- Yep.

- But let's build this here.

- And why here?

- Why here?

In 1882 before statehood - Before - Statehood.

The railroad - Completed in 1869.

- Yeah.

So if you look around this site today, it's just, it's not particularly a place where you would think you might put a big large monument.

Yeah.

But this is actually the highest point on the Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad coming from East to West.

Right.

- To the west of us, they cross the Sierra Nevada - Range and - There's some - Pilot.

- But this is a - - On the Union Pacific, on the tour of the Union Pacific, this is the tallest point on their section of the Transcontinental Railroad.

- And it's an area still referred to along the interstate highway as well as the Sherman Summit.

- Yes.

- And there was a town called Sherman.

- There was.

- Essentially where we are now, - Of - Course, looking at now, completely gone, which - Was the - Case with many towns that came and went during the railroad.

But Sherman actually was a going concern for a long time, wasn't it?

- It was.

Sherman was just down the hill from Ames Monument, you know, boasted about 800 residents.

It had a Wells Fargo exchange.

It had a steam tower.

It had a couple of saloons.

It had a hotel or two.

And so it really was a going concern.

It had a five stall turnstile here.

And so really here to focus its efforts on getting that train up and over the summit.

Up and - Over the mountain.

- Yeah.

- Come up here.

If you need a new engine, you could switch - It out here.

You need water, you need, you need a break, you need to cool something, you need to exchange crews, you need to pick up, drop off.

Whatever you needed to do, Sherman was the place to do it.

If you - Needed to turn the engine around and send it back - To - Cheyenne to repair, you could do that.You - Could do that as - Well.

Yeah.

Lots of, I guess what we call infrastructure and human, human development was here.

So that now as we come out again and see it, what could be described as out in the middle of what seemingly is, is nowhere.

- Yeah.

- But at that time, it made sense.

Yeah.

There was the.

And, and as you, as we view the monument now looking up at it, it's not all that easy to sort of take it in from very close up.

But I unders - I realize now that when the train was here and you're a passenger on the train, that was a great way to view it.

- Well, sure.

And it, it wasn't uncommon for the train to stop here.

Yeah.

And you might have a couple hour layover where you could rest or you could get a good meal or you could walk up to the monument.

Yeah.

I have heard reports that you used to be able to climb the monument and get all the way to the top.

Now, it's 60 feet high and, and up here 60 feet high with the winds that sometimes blow, that must have been quite a feat into itself.

Yeah.

- I mean, it's craggy.

You can see you could get a hold on it, but still.

And there's, this is an area near the - Yeah.

Part of, of Wyoming, just on the other side of the road where a lot of climbing takes place.

And it, the structure itself is reminiscent of some of those natural - Formations.

- Yes.

And that comes from the eye - - Yeah.

- In the mind of the designer.

Yeah.

And again, Union Pacific had money to spend and hired one of the great architects in the country.

- Yeah.

And, and it's, it's his name was HH Richardson.

And Mr.

Richardson was an architect in the Massachusetts area.

So of course that family tie back to the Massachusetts.

Right.

The family had commissioned him to build a couple of structures in honor of the two brothers.

And as well, Mr.

Richardson had built the Trinity Church in Boston.

Yeah.

And so this type of architecture, not really uncommon to him.

This was kind of his style, but very much fits into the landscape of all of the granite and all of the, you know, all of the rock faces that we have out here in Wyoming.

- Yeah.

We sort of hand it to him, don't - We?

Yeah, kind of.

- He's a guy who built churches and of inhabitable buildings - - Yeah.

- And from big cities that he came out here and realized where he was.

- Yeah.

And - What it ought to look like.

I can, where I'm sitting, and we'll make sure we get a shot of it, can look over and see the place, the actual place, the only place where the rock came from.

- Yeah, Reed's Rock.

Reed's Rock is just over my left shoulder.

And Reed's Rock was the source for much of the monument.

Yeah.

And you.

There's, you know, there's very few pictures of the monument being built.

But the ones that we do have kind of include crews pulling pulling rock from Reed's Rock.

Yeah.

- And you say pulling, they were pulling how?

- Well, you know, chisel, you know, if you walk around the monument, you can see, you know, the monument has some, has, has good chisel marks.

Yeah.

It's got some - - Drill - Holes in it.

Drill holes in it.

And so they were, they were doing what they knew how to do, and they were drilling away the rock, and they were you know, making big blocks to be able to pull over here to create the monument.

And they pulled it - Over with horses - On - Big, heavy sledges or - Something.

Yeah.

- I asked you - Not uncommon.

I asked you specifically if you thought that there was the railroad itself helped transport the rock, and you said as far as you know, maybe it didn't.

- I, I, I have never seen any evidence to show that any of the rail car had been involved in the rock.

- But it's built by design.

It's the same width on the ground as it is - Tall.

Yep.

It's 60 feet long, 60 feet square and 60 feet tall.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And so it wasn't.

It's not just a pile of rock.

It was a - - No.

- It has this, obviously you can tell from looking at it, it looks quite a bit like the, the source rock over there in a way.

- Yeah.

- But with the, the architectural touch.

- Yes.

- So they, they built it here and the track then, the town of Sherman ceased to be.

Yes.

And because has happened in a lot of other places, including some we've been in Wyoming Chronicle, notably in my memory recently, the Piedmont Charcoal Kilns.

There was a town there - Too.

Yeah.

But the - Same thing happened there.

The track that originally was there was moved.

- Yes.

- Why did that happen?

- The track was moved.

It was moved about three miles to the south of us.

And it was moved to be able to better accommodate the needs of the railroad.

Dale Creek Trestle Bridge, which was quite the engineering marvel in the state of Wyoming for the UP.

- Spectacular.

- Spectacular.

Went over a very deep gorge made of wood.

My understanding is that people who traveled over it pretty held their breath a whole bunch of the time.

Close your eyes were.

Close your eyes.

We're going over the bridge.

Because the wind would oftentimes, especially when it was wood, the bridge would sway back and forth.

And so, rebuilt several times, once in steel, and then finally the UP said, "This is ridiculous.

Let's figure out a different way."

And they were able to do that just about three miles south of us.

And - Again, demonstrating the the clout and the power, I guess you'd say that the railroad had, too bad for your town of 800 people.

- Yes.

- We're leaving.

- Yes.

- And you're on your own.

- Yeah.

- And most of those towns where the railroad either came and passed through or rerouted - Yeah.

That was the end of them.

- Well, and not uncommon.

The, the, the towns were built to 100% to support the railroad.

Yeah.

You know, Julesburg, Cheyenne, Laramie.

The ones that stuck were the lucky ones.

Yeah.

But there were an awful lot of towns along the line that didn't stick.

- And Sherman was - One.

And Sherman was one of them.

- So they pulled up the tracks and all the water towers, the steam towers, the hotel, all the things you mentioned went away.

- Yep.

Just went away.

- This stayed.

- This, this stayed.

This, this is a bit more beastly to move.

- Yeah.

The Union Pacific Railroad owned it - Till the 80s - Or something?

- Well into the, almost, yeah, into modern times.

- Yes.

- And it was in the early 80s, I think, that it came to be part of the state of Wyoming.

- Yes.

- That's been a good thing, you'd agree?

- Oh, I think, you know, having this monument in our system of state parks and historic sites is absolutely fantastic.

To have the monument that marks the highest point on the Transcontinental Railroad is, to me, what an impact on national history, right?

Yeah.

The Union Pacific had an impact, and this is really the last thing that marks the highest point on that railroad.

We do have the Lincoln Head at the Summit, and that marks the highest point on the interstate.

But really, this marks the highest, the only thing left out here that marks the highest point on the - Transcontinental.

And there are some parts of the original Transcontinental Railroad route that are still in use.

Oh - Yes.

A lot - Of it's been moved though too, - Including - From here.

But this is where it was.

Yeah.

And it's, there are lots of vantage points where you can, this is what it looked like - Then.

This is what it looked like then.

And you know, I always tell people if you have bad eyesight like me and you squint a little, the houses become blurry.

You can feel the railroad chugging along.

You can feel one of the big boys coming up the hill and, and just be in that space.

Yeah.

- At one time, it was possible to go inside it.

- Yes.

- What about that?

- Yeah.

So the monument here had an entrance on the west side of the monument, which has since been closed, but it's not uncommon to run into some folks around the area who, who have been inside.

- What's in there?

- Well, it's really just the framing.

It's the framing for the inside of the monument.

And so in order to put the hundreds and thousands of pounds of granite, you need some sort of way to frame it.

And so it really is just a tunnel that shows off the framing.

And so the pictures that I was looking at this morning are actually rock framing.

I don't know if there was ever wood in it.

- And the point of being able to go in, I guess, was to inspect that or - Something.

- Probably.

- Probably to inspect it.

While it was - Under construction, you might still need to get - Inside.

Yo might still need to get inside.

- What sort of shapes it in 140 years later, would you say?

- You know, it has had its rough days, but I would say that it is actually in really, really good shape.

- That had to do, I'm sure, in part with the way it was built.

- Yeah.

- It wasn't designed to be a polished super finished structure.

It looks a lot like the rock that it came from.

- You know, the, the largest amount of damage we have on this monument right now is to the relief, the relief of Oliver and Oaks at the top of the monument.

At the very top, - These two, I don't know what you'd call them, reliefs.

I've heard them.

It's a 3D sculptural sort of plaque - Showing - Their faces and then their names are increased.

- And then their names on it.

So people have - Got up.

Is that believed to be sort of vandalism related or weathering?

- It is believed to be vandalism related, that the noses have been shot off of the reliefs.

We're in - Wyoming.

- We're in Wyoming.

But the reliefs themselves were done by a nationally a famous artist as well as the architecture for the monument.

So the Union Pacific didn't spare - They - Did it - Right.

Any expense.

- Tell us what's happened just since you've been in charge of overseeing the site.

There have - Been some - Changes.

- So before I was in charge of the site, they have come through and they have re-mortared most of the granite.

Yeah, I can see some of that.

We on a regular basis do inspections of the monument to make sure that there isn't anything else that we need to take care of.

And on my walk around this morning, I noticed a couple of other things I'd love to get taken care of, put on the list.

We in the last two years have made the site much more accessible to everybody.

We've put in a rail.

We've made the path handicap accessible.

We are also working on new interpretation to go around the - Monument.

Yeah.

I think people who might look at travel and tourism sites see some signage there.

Yes.

- But at - The moment that's not here because it's being replaced and reworked a little bit.

- It is being replaced and reworked.

And so we want to, for folks who come off the interstate to see it, may not know the full story, we want to give them some good, interesting information that'll hopefully make them go dig a little bit deeper into the Transcontinental Railroad and the gentleman who the monument is for, their part in making it happen.

- Imagine you're the brothers and President Lincoln calls you in - - Oh yeah.

And - Says, "Get this done."

- Yeah.

- What are you going to say?

No?

- Right.

- We're in the middle of the Civil War at the time.

- Yes.

- And he viewed this as a huge priority and an semi-impossible dream.

- Yes.

- And there were people from both the west and the east sides coming toward each other, the western side being called the Central Pacific.

And it was done.

It was accomplished.

And it's an incredible accomplishment that still is being used today just like it was then.

And I'm not sure how many, what would you say, industrial accomplishments of the 1860s are still essentially performing the same function the same way as they, today as they were then.

- I love coming out here on a summer day just to visit with people who have come out.

A lot of them come out because they are following the Transcontinental Railroad.

Yeah, railroad - Buffs.

- Railroad buffs.

And they are intimately familiar with the story and are so excited to get to the highest point along the Union Pacific part of the Transcontinental Railroad.

And then I see visitors who come for the love of Wyoming and visitors who come for the love of history.

- Yeah.

- And I - Suppose for the love of construction and - Architecture - Too.

- Oh gosh, yes.

It's a - Highly unusual thing to see anywhere.

- Yes.

Well, and this monument is here.

It has become a national historic landmark with the National Park Service because of the architect and the architecture, not because of its history.

So to me, that adds another layer to the story that is not something everybody knows.

- Yeah.

And because of what Wyoming's doing, it's here.

It's going to stay here.

It's going to be a little better visitor experience all the time.

Yeah.

Keeping working with it.

And there's no guest book or anything like that.

No.

Do you have any sense or can you calculate how many people stop and see it in a year's time, say?

- We do.

We get, we have trail counters.

We have car counters.

And so we estimate we get anywhere between 30 to 50,000 visitors a year.

And that's a lot of visitation for a site like this.

- It is.

- A lot.

Because you - Have to make the effort.

- You really do.

You - Can't see it.

All you see is the sign.

- Yeah.

- And the sign doesn't mean much unless you know.

And a lot of times in Western states where you see a sign for some monument, they're all interesting.

Yes.

And they're all worthy, but they're much smaller or less conspicuous or less important.

There's just, I don't, I'm not a full-time railroad buff.

I've read quite a bit about it.

I'm not aware of anything else to compare to this and the whole system.

I don't - - Probably.

I mean, definitely not in Wyoming, right?

Yeah.

And I think, you know, if you are an aficionado or a history buff or a train buff, this is one of the engineering marvels along the Union Pacific Line.

Yeah.

You know, that natural gangplank that made them come in through the territory at that time is, is one of the, one of the marvels that you get, you still get to see.

- Yeah.

During the course of our interview, and I think it's due to your arrival, the weather has improved greatly.

It's much warmer.

It's less windy and the sun is out.

So thanks for showing up when you did and for telling us more about this just fabulous, unique thing in Wyoming, really in the whole country.

Christina Byrd, appreciate your contribution again to Wyoming Chronicle.

- Well, thank you so much and we're happy to have you anytime.

Okay.

- Thanks.