#bosler

[top100journey]

Corner House, Bosler Wyoming 2025 by Gregory.Urbano Via Flickr: Photograph of one of the few remaining buildings in the ghost town of Bosler Wyoming, a wooden house on the corner. Found off Hwy 80 just north of Laramie.

[oogleboogleoogle]

Something a little bit different today. Most people like to dull photos of places like this down, turn 'em black and white or spooky, even, but I couldn't bear to rob this one of its inviting golden color.

[railwayhistorical]

Howell Road

This is Howell Road, north of Laramie, Wyoming. It is former roadbed of the first transcontinental railroad—the Union Pacific.

The active rail line was relocated in the early part of the 20th century, and so now one can drive upon the Laramie Plain, north to Bosler, and imagine one is seeing the continent as the Irish graders of 1867.

Three images by Richard Koenig; taken June 24th 2018.

[railwayhistorical]

Westbound at Bosler

This is a westbound container train at Bosler, Wyoming, with the Laramie Plain visible in the background. This spot is about twenty miles north of Laramie itself and along the route of the first transcontinental railroad—the Union Pacific built through here early in 1868.

Five images by Richard Koenig; taken June 24th 2018.

[americanbuildings]

VIEW LOOKING NORTH TOWARD CENTER PIER - Laramie River Bridge, County Road 740, Bosler, Albany County, WY

[railwayhistorical]

Original Roadbed of the First Transcontinental Railroad

  The curving former roadbed one sees above was originally part of the first transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific Railroad built through Bosler, north of Laramie, early in the year 1868. I’m really attracted to these former bits of abandoned bits of meager roadbed as it makes it easy to imagine Irish immigrants building them by hand nearly 150 years ago.

This ancient trace is visible because a fairly long section of the line, from this point down to Laramie, was moved due to new earth moving equipment being available in the early part of the 20th century. One can now traverse the old roadbed for the entire stretch, between Laramie and Bosler, on Howell Road, which runs to the west of the active, modern railroad. In this way one can see the landscape more akin to how the surveyors and builders may have in the mid-1860s.

The eastbound train we see above was hauling nothing but empty cars on September 11th 2011. Image taken by Richard Koenig.

[oogleboogleoogle]

Bosler WY. 

I’ve been dying to visit Bosler, WY for years, ever since I read about it in the Ghost Towns of Wyoming book that my great friend David gave me after one of his hot shot jobs. Information about it was tantalizingly minimal, even the excerpt in the book was a meager three quarters of a page and Google didn’t have very much more information. But from what I could see, there was a lot to see there by way of old decrepit homes and buildings and it was my ‘ideal’ ghost town. So for years I have pestered and hinted and all but begged five or six different people to go with me (I have an intense fear of traveling alone) and everyone just brushed me off until this week when I decided I was going... whether I had to go alone or not. My mom finally decided she and her boyfriend would go with me after hearing that. Waiting the three days for the weather to be just right was almost more painful than the two or three years I had waited just for someone to say they would go with me. But finally, I got to go on 2/26/16. 

The trip was a hassle. It was always supposed to be just a day trip, so I wanted to leave home by no later than 10 AM, arrive by noon, wander for 2-3 hours and leave no later than 3 PM so we could make it home before dark (and, coincidentally, for dinner with my dad). My mom, true to form, was not ready when I arrived to pick her and her boyfriend up and ran around their apartment gathering up everything they thought we would need... then asked me to stop at the grocery store so we could pick up food. We didn’t make it out of Casper until right about 11 AM and fought wind (sometimes really high wind) and a really long pee break in the “ghost town” of Medicine Bow on the way there, pushing our arrival back to a little after 1 PM. When we did finally get to Bosler, we pulled off onto a muddy little side road and mom and I started unpacking our cameras to take pictures of the beautiful abandoned house I parked next to and right away, a man in a truck spotted us and came over. 

I immediately thought we were going to be asked to leave, but the older man turned out to be the friendly owner of the town coming over to warn us to be extremely careful about where we walked since there were large holes around town where outhouses used to be. Apparently, some older woman had ignored his warning some time ago and went inside one of the structures, then fell through one of the holes and broke her arm. Doc told us that nothing on the side of the road we were looking at was insured, then about his furniture store and a few other items he had for sale, and moved on to a little history about himself. He’d been living in Bosler since 1979 and slowly bought the town piece-by-piece until he had owned nearly everything, aside from the one or two other pieces of land owned by folks who were still living there (we didn’t quite catch how many other residents were actually there - himself and one other woman for sure, and maybe one other man but we didn’t see another livable house anywhere nearby). Then, his tone changed and he told us the sad news that the woman who lived about half a mile down the road from him had had a barrel fire get away from her a few years ago, and nearly everything on the other side of the road had been claimed by the resulting blaze. The library, gas station, a couple empty businesses, and all but one of the 8-9 truly abandoned houses were gone. His home survived only because of a wide mud driveway that kept the fire from spreading through the rest of town. All that survived of Bosler were their two homes and outbuildings, the school building, a few really old cars, his furniture store, one very old house and garage, a mechanic shop, and what appeared to be a motor motel from the 1930s and the assorted outbuildings associated with it. 

It was certainly disappointing to find out that more than half of the town had been claimed by this fire, but Doc tried to lighten the mood by joking about how old he was because he didn’t look it at all. When we guessed he was maybe near his 60s, he put on a big grin and told us that he was born in 1938. That made him nearly 80 years old! He got a big kick out of our reaction, told us a few more stories and then went on his way back to his house. We wandered what was left of the town for about an hour and a half, taking pictures and poking through all the old junk left lying around behind the buildings, poking our heads carefully into broken windows for a peek inside of what buildings were left. It wasn’t long before we’d seen all there was to really see and decided to head back home. (I regret being in such a hurry to get home and have dinner with my dad that I didn’t let my mom and her boyfriend stop in at the Virginian Hotel for a beer in Medicine Bow, but it is what it is.) We made it home before 5:30 PM and unloaded the car quickly so I could run off to have dinner with my dad, and that was it for the day. 

Now to find a new ghost town to visit...