Glenrock, Wyoming

Glenrock sits where Deer Creek meets the North Platte River, a spot that mattered to travelers long before Wyoming was a state. In the eighteen fifties and sixties, Deer Creek Station here was a mail and Pony Express relay point on the Oregon Trail, one of the few reliable supply stops in this stretch of the journey west. On June twentieth, eighteen forty-seven, a group of Mormon emigrants camped here and dug into a hillside, producing the first coal mined in what would become Wyoming Territory.

That small discovery started something. When the railroad arrived in the late eighteen eighties, Glenrock became a coal shipping town, and it has stayed in the energy business ever since. A landmark known as the Rock in the Glen was noted by fur trappers as early as eighteen twelve and seen by many emigrants.