If you ever find yourself traveling through Wyoming along Interstate I-80, and have a free half hour or so on your agenda, take the Vedauwoo exit twenty miles east of Laramie and drive a couple miles south on a dirt road to the 60 foot tall granite four-sided pyramid that was built in the 1880's in commemoration of Oakes & Oliver Ames efforts to get the First Transcontinental Railroad built.
The building of the First Transcontinental Railroad was no small feat. First proposed in the early 1830's, it wasn't until after more than 30 years of planning, exploration, and wrangling between the US government and various business men (some honest, some not so much) that construction got underway (in 1863, during the American Civil War).
The logistics of the engineering and construction, not to mention the financing, of the First Transcontinental Railroad have been compared to what it would take to send a manned mission to Mars.
The Ames Brothers were charged with building the largest section, that of the Union Pacific Railroad - over 1,000 miles of track built from Omaha to Utah, along windswept plains, over rivers and gorges, up and around mountains - all largely by manual labor using hand tools.
Considering that the country was at war with itself for the first few years of construction, it is extraordinary what those two men were able to accomplish.
The monument was built in what is essentially the middle of nowhere (though there is a very nice, very modern Bed & Breakfast just a mile down the road) due to it being near the highest point of the railroad, at an altitude of just over 8,200 feet.
There was also a small town named Sherman nearby at the time, and railroad passengers could disembark at the station there and take in short visits to the monument as they made their way east or west across the country.
However, the route of the railroad through this part of Wyoming was changed in 1901 to eliminate having to travel over a dangerous single-track bridge just two miles from the town, and once the route was changed Sherman became a ghost town, and visits to the monument pretty much came to a complete stop.
The Monument, which was owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, sat alone on the wind swept summit and little was done in the way of upkeep after the town of Sherman disappeared.
Vandals (the 9 foot tall bas-relief portraits of the Ames brothers that were created by sculptor August Saint-Gaudens and grace the east and west faces of the pyramid look like they have had their noses shot off) along with weather took a toll on the monument in the years that followed the relocation of the railroad tracks.
But not to a point beyond repair.
In the early 1980's, Union Pacific donated the Monument to the state of Wyoming, and in 2010 & 2011 the Wyoming State Parks & Cultural Resources department undertook a much needed rehabilitation of the Ames Monument, and it now sits on the high prairie looking almost like the day it was finished back in 1872, and is open to the public free of charge, year round.
Weather permitting, of course - snows a lot and gets pretty cold up there (30 degrees yesterday, so you may want to bring at least a jacket, unlike the two two chowderheads, MJM and yours truly, seen in the pics).
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