Rawlins: Where Outlaws Became Shoes

Rawlins was founded in eighteen sixty-eight when the Union Pacific Railroad reached a spring on the Wyoming plains. General Grenville Dodge's survey party, traveling with Army Chief of Staff John Rawlins, found fresh water here and named it Rawlins Springs. It became a Union Pacific division point and the seat of Carbon County.

The town produced one of the strangest relics in frontier history. In eighteen eighty-one, a train robber and double-murderer known as Big Nose George Parrott was lynched in downtown Rawlins after attempting a jailbreak. Local physician John Osborne had portions of Parrott's skin sent to a Denver tannery and fashioned into a pair of shoes.

Osborne wore those shoes to his inaugural ball as Wyoming's governor in eighteen ninety-three. The shoes, along with Big Nose George's skull and death mask, are displayed today at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins.