[piano playing] [Narrator] The Rocky Mountains cut a path through the nation.

A dividing line between waters of the Atlantic Ocean and those of the Pacific Ocean.

A land of vast skies, rugged terrain, and untamed rivers.

Carbon County, Wyoming is defined by the divide.

This always has been a place of journeys across the nation involving land mammals, indigenous people, overland migration and transportation.

From the transcontinental railroad, to interstate highways.

Today, people come to the area for recreation and the raw magnificence.

[piano serenades] [Mark Miller] Carbon County occupies a unique place in the United States.

Between the central and southern Rocky Mountains.

Which are part of a 3,000 mile spine of North America that has a 35 mile gap between the central and southern Rocky Mountains.

The gap between the Rockies is crucial because of the needs for mobility and transportation east to west, primarily.

And it's been used since there have been land mammals.

I mean, it was used 13,000 years ago by the earliest Native Americans by the animals they hunted, right on up to the present times where we've used it for trappers, for telegraphs, for the Union Pacific Railroad, for U.S.

30, for fiber optic lines.

It's a natural low elevation corridor between the Rocky Mountains.

And by virtue of that existence, it is a place that was essentially an interaction sphere for different cultures for thousands of years.

Picture it, if we're flying over and you're looking down on this area, a hourglass laying horizontally with sand in it.

This sand opens up wide to the west, where the Great Basin is, and it can scatter all over out there.

This sand opens up wide to the east, you can scatter all over the Great Plains.

But if those grains of sand are going to meet, they have to go through a narrow bottleneck, a corridor, to meet, to go from east to west or west to east.

That's what happened with people in Carbon County.

[cheerful melody] Carbon County is very unique in that it is so large and so diverse.

You can almost see four distinct areas in the county.

The Hanna-Medicine Bow- Elk Mountain area, the Rawlins, the Little Snake River Valley with Baggs and Dixon, and of course, you have the Platte Valley with Saratoga, Encampment, and Riverside.

[Voiceover] “The Government will have to pay for people to like it up here.” -General William T Sherman, August 1866.

[Voiceover] “The country has little value.

It will be settled by a scanty pastoral population.

No amount of railroads, schemes of colonization, or government encouragement can ever make more of it.” -Major General W.B.

Hazen, October 1866.

[music intensifies] [Narrator] Long before settlers arrived, indigenous people came to the area to hunt and trade.

[John Washakie] Our ancestors that came up out of the Great Basin, the Eastern Shoshone, actually moved on to the plains, and they adopted the plains lifestyle.

As the Comanches brought the horse to the Shoshone.

The Shoshones were the first tribe in the Mountain Plains area to have the horse.

They quickly mastered the horse.

It made life much easier for transporting their belongings as well as hunting buffalo.

They would move around.

Of course they're going to follow a food source, which is the buffalo.

[Chris “Chilly” Rollison] Prehistoric Indians would have been utilizing this area for hunting and for trading.

In proximity to not only the Great Basin but to the Southwest, here in the Rockies and then the Great Plains this whole area, this county and this valley would have been really a middle ground for trading.

We had predominantly the Shoshone tribe the Ute tribe, the Lakota, and to the east, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho tribes.

[flowing stream] [Narrator] Mountain men came to the region in 1825.

Seeking beaver in the cold mountain streams, they brought change to the West.

[Mark Miller] On or about the 1820s, we start seeing a lot more emphasis on trapping.

Mountain men coming into this area, negotiating with Native American marrying into some of the tribes and beginning to trap for beaver and exploring what is Carbon County.

Jim Bridger is one of the most notable mountain men from this region.

[John Washakie] Probably the the best connection that that my family had as well as the tribe was with Jim Bridger.

Chief Washakie was born somewhere late 1700s or early 1800s.

But we know as a young man that he met Jim Bridger and that they trapped together.

They hunted together.

And sometimes fought other tribes, battled other tribes.

But they had a long friendship.

[rattling bushes] [Candy Moulton] In 1843, John C. Fremont led the first government expedition into Carbon County.

He was looking for routes into the West.

The most important thing that he found was he identified strata of carbon, or coal in the area north of Elk Mountain.

And he knew then that there would be a fuel source for the engines of the trains that would ultimately come with the transcontinental railroad.

[Mark Miller] Fremont conducted several expeditions into this area to explore westward routes and actually mapped part of what eventually became the Oregon Trail.

[Narrator] June 13th, 1844, atop the Continental Divide.

Fremont wrote: [Narrator] Six years later, in 1850, Jim Bridger brought Captain Howard Stansbury’s party of topographical engineers from Fort Bridger.

They traveled east, seeking a route that could be used for a transcontinental railroad.

[Mark Miller] Bridger showed Stansbury the pass, known as Bridger Pass today, right along the Great Divide Basin, southern edge, which if people traveled through that instead of South Pass on the Oregon Trail, they could cut off a significant distance heading west.

[Mark Miller] And that route, actually became part of what we know today as the Overland Trail and, which probably was more significant to Carbon County even more than, than the Oregon Trail.

The Overland Trail is a low rolling gap in the landscape.

Low elevation, relatively speaking and much easier for wagons, horses, and pedestrians to travel across than many other places, and much shorter than having to go up to on the Oregon Trail to South Pass.

[Narrator] The journeys to Carbon County were just beginning.

[Candy Moulton] In the 1860s, the Overland Trail became the main travel route from east to west.

And it was used for the mail, it was used by wagons.

It had military on it, but the most important thing was they were mining gold in California and Nevada.

[water trickling] The Civil War was beginning.

The Union needed money, and so they had to keep this route open and connected.

It was the absolute link to the East and the West to provide the money to fund the war, to hold the Union together.

[Narrator] The importance of the government surveys conducted by Fremont and Stansbury became clear to the nation after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862.

[Mark Miller] The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad had been in the planning stages for years.

And it came through southern Wyoming because of the landscape once again, and when it got to the Carbon County area, it essentially followed the southern route that had been surveyed and recorded by Stansbury.

[Narrator] Small hell-on-wheels towns sprang up with the tracklayers, including Rawlins, located near an important spring, and the town named Carbon, which had coal - a rich, and important source of fuel for the trains that would follow.

[Mark Miller] Rawlins became the county seat of Carbon County, a main transportation point on the Union Pacific, both for people and commerce.

[Narrator] Cornish, Welsh, Danish, Finnish, Greek, and Japanese workers journeyed to Carbon to mine the coal seams, supplying fuel for the Union Pacific trains.

[train whistle] A lot of what happened in the American West we owe to the foresight and vision of President Abraham Lincoln, who had his hands full during the Civil War but still managed to do some pretty important legislation.

He signed the act that triggered the final push to construct the railroad, transcontinental railroad, which brought the best transportation network available to our culture into Carbon County.

And he established in the same year, 1862, the Homestead Act, which allowed heads of household 21 years old or older to occupy federal land, 160 acres of federal land, for a filing fee, and prove up on it after initially only six months or so, they could turn around and buy it for $1.25 per acre, and they would own a piece of the West.

[music intensifies] [Narrator] Cattle and sheep [Narrator] Cattle and sheep were brought to the range.

[Mark Miller] Carbon County is probably one of the best winter sheep ranges on the globe.

In the early 1900s, Wyoming led the nation in sheep production.

In the 1890s, when there were about 2 million sheep in Wyoming, Carbon County sheared at least 200,000 of them between Cosgriffs and Millers.

[Candy Moulton] In the 1880s, there was a man named James Candlish in Rawlins, who was a blacksmith, and he took a wagon and he modified it and developed it into what we know today as the modern sheep wagon.

And this was a wagon where the sheep herders would live.

They had their bed, they had their camp stove.

It was really the first travel trailer of the West.

[Narrator] With the Pacific Railway Act and the Homestead Act, increasing numbers of settlers and immigrants came west.

They began developing the vast deposits of coal, timber, and copper.

By the late 1890s, Carbon County was transformed from a frontier wilderness to to a bustling hub of industry.

[Candy Moulton] During the construction of the railroads in the West, they needed ties, and the Sierra Madre and Medicine Bow Mountains had resources, pine trees.

And so there were tie camps that were established in both mountain ranges.

Men and women lived in them.

Families lived there.

[Mark Miller] And their whole means of livelihood was to cut and shape, trees fashioned roughly, and float them down the North Platte River that were picked up at Fort Steele, unloaded and treated, and sent out on the railroad to replace the ties that were already there or to be used as new ones.

[Narrator] The county had become a melting with immigrants from many nations arriving to work the coal, timber, and livestock industries.

But change was coming.

[train whistle] [Voice-over] The pitbuzzer, the hooter, the long blast, the whistle.

Whatever the piercing sound was called, it dominated the lives of the mining camp.

[explosion] More commonly, it signified death.

[mine whistle] During the day, if the whistle blew she knew it meant death.

Somebody's papa or brother, perhaps her own, in that fearsome place below the ground, the mine.

Waiting for the whistle... we were always listening and when it came, we would wonder who it was.” -Muriel Kitching [Voice-over] “I got the next meal ready for all of them, and set the table and waited, and waited, and waited.” “Then at 10:15 that night it blew up again.” [mine whistle] “There was my father, Andrew.” “Uncle Johnny, Uncle Andrew, two young fellows that were pals of Uncle Andrew.” “I had made dinner for every one of them that day.” “The next morning was Sunday.” “I put the game away, and the dishes and the food that I had cooked.” “You see, it was up to me to do all those things.” “I didn't have a relative at all nearer than England.” “I was all alone.” “If you understand what that is.” “Edith Birchall” [Candy Moulton] In 1896 Ed Haggarty was a sheepherder.

He was working for George Ferris out of Rawlins, and he was working in the Sierra Madre.

But he had heard and thought that there might be ore up there.

He wanted to be a miner.

He was from England, and he found the first deposit of copper that became the main mine of the Grand Encampment Copper District.

It was originally called the Rudefeha, and then ultimately it became the Ferris-Haggarty mine.

But it was the primary mine in the Grand Encampment District most productive, and led to a copper boom that lasted for approximately 11 years, from 1897 to 1908.

[Mark Miller] The name Grand Encampment came from French-Canadian trappers.

But it was rich ore there.

And to get the ore down to market, they built a large tram, which carried the ore hundreds of pounds per carload or something down to Encampment.

[Candy Moulton] In 1903 we had the Grand Encampment Copper District was going gangbusters.

We had tie hacks.

We had coal miners over in the Hanna area.

We had sheep and cattle raising.

Everything was going on here.

The only other period in Carbon County history that was as busy and as populated with people was during the 1970s, 1980s, when we had uranium mining in Shirley Basin, we had coal mining in Hanna, we had other energy development out farther west.

[upbeat jazz music] [Narrator] Wyoming Governor Joseph M. Carey issued a proclamation on October 11th, 1913, regarding a proposed transcontinental highway, saying: “The Lincoln Highway Association has determined that the great highway to forever be called the Lincoln Highway as a memorial to Lincoln, should cross the state of Wyoming from east to west.” [old fashioned car exhaust] [Mark Miller] With the Lincoln Highway going through every 20 miles or so, you'd have a town.

And there were filling stations at those places, rest stops, areas.

With the construction of the Virginian Hotel in 1911, in Medicine Bow, the traveling public had a historically significant place to stay and enjoy the history of, of Wyoming and hopefully buy a copy of Owen Wister's book.

Owen Wister was a writer who traveled through Wyoming and wrote The Virginian, the first Western novel that established a genre in literature, and it captured the stoic, independent minded, handsome Wyoming cowboy and his travails in life.

[Woman] What a lovely hotel, I certainly didn't expect anything this impressive in such a remote area.

Ah, Owen Wister, the novelist who said this town looked as if it has been “strewn there by the wind” certainly stayed here.

It's where he was inspired to write The Virginian.

[Man] Let's settle in and then adjourn to the dining room.

[classical music plays] [Narrator] U.S.

Highway 30 - The Lincoln Highway - became an important link for the nation.

It followed the route of overland trail travelers, a path for both commerce and leisure travel.

[smooth jazz] The Garden Spot Pavilion in Elk Mountain was located just south of the Lincoln Highway and became a stop for big bands to perform as they traveled between Denver and Salt Lake City.

[Candy Moulton] It was a dance hall in Elk Mountain, and these bands found out about it.

And so they would make it a stop... Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Lawrence Welk, they all played at the Garden Spot Pavilion.

[smooth jazz continues] [A radio plays...] “Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods.” [Narrator] The importance of transcontinental highways cannot be understated.

They connected the nation and led to many journeys in Carbon County.

Today, the land that has witnessed struggles for survival, industry, and expansion, draws people from around the world seeking adventure, history, and the tranquility of our wide open spaces, rivers, and forests.

The county has a rich history, preserved at museums in Medicine Bow, the Little Snake River Valley, Rawlins, Hanna, Elk Mountain, Saratoga, and Encampment.

[C. J. Box] There's such a variety of things in this county and in this valley that I really love.

And I think it really goes back to authenticity.

I mean, I love the the Western lifestyle.

We not only have super high end resorts, we also have authentic, real working ranches at the same time.

There's nothing like a river town, hard to believe, but you can float it even though you're not fishing.

But you can do that.

[Narrator] Every town has annual celebrations ranging from Woodchoppers Jamboree in Encampment, to Fourth of July celebrations in Baggs and Saratoga.

Activities range from rodeo and river floating in the summer to snowmobiling during the winter.

The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail attracts hikers, making their own journey across the spine of the country.

[Sue Jones] It's a beautiful place, and everyone should experience it at least once.

[Narrator] The history of Carbon County started long before the birth of America, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

[soft piano] [Mark Miller] Carbon County is important to the history of the United States building of the nation as a gateway for human transportation east to west, across the Continental Divide.

[Narrator] From the indigenous people who first journeyed here centuries ago, to the mountain men, miners, settlers, and travelers who followed.

Carbon County remains a place where the journey is never just about reaching the destination - but leads to understanding the land, its stories, and the people who have passed through it or those making their homes here.

[cheerful melody]