Sinclair, The Refinery Town Built for Show

The town of Sinclair, Wyoming looks like it was dropped in from somewhere else entirely. That is essentially what happened. Oil magnate Frank Kistler began building a refinery here in the early nineteen twenties and then commissioned Denver's Fisher and Fisher architects to design a workers' town around it.

The result was Spanish Colonial Revival: stucco buildings with polychrome clay tile roofs arranged around a central plaza with a fountain. The town was originally called Parco, an abbreviation of Kistler's Producers and Refiners Corporation. The Depression forced the company into bankruptcy, and the refinery passed to Harry Sinclair's oil company, and the town eventually took his name.

The original refinery operates to this day.