Wright, Wyoming, began taking shape in the spring of 1949 when the Wyoming Highway Department started building the Reno Junction Maintenance Camp about two and a half miles south of the junction of Wyoming State Highways 59 and 387 on land obtained from Harlie Cosner. After the hard winter of 1949, the need for manpower and equipment for snow removal and regular maintenance on the two roads had become obvious, and a permanently stationed crew could reduce problems previously faced by crews from Gillette, Douglas, and Midwest. The original camp included a large Quonset shop and two small bedroom houses built with half Quonset and half frame construction, rented to two full-time workers for thirty five dollars per month, with water supplied by a hard water well, a Dempster windmill, and an underground storage tank with a pressure pump. In early January 1975, Atlantic Richfield won county commissioner approval for the first 108 mobile home park spaces in Wright without submitting the final plat, and eighteen months later the Campbell County Planning Commission again considered expansion of the Cottonwood Mobile Home Park amid a dispute between planner Joe Racine, who insisted on a final plat, and attorney Wade Brorby, who argued that requiring it would delay needed expansion; the commission reluctantly recommended approval of the addition.