Buford, Wyoming: The Highest Point on I-80

Buford sits at about eight thousand feet above sea level, making it the highest community along the entire length of Interstate Eighty from New Jersey to San Francisco. The site was established in eighteen sixty-six as a military fort and supply stop for Union Pacific workers pushing the transcontinental railroad west across the Wyoming high plains. It was named for John Buford, the Union cavalry general whose stand on the first day at Gettysburg helped turn the tide of that battle.

At its peak Buford held two thousand residents. Then the fort relocated to Laramie and the railroad rerouted, and the population drained away over the following century. By the time Don Sammons bought the whole town in nineteen ninety-two, he was essentially the only person in it.

The last resident left in the two thousand teens, and the official population is now zero.