Railroad and River

At Fort Fred Steele, the Union Pacific Railroad and the North Platte River met to provide the supplies, water, transportation, and commerce on which the fort and nearby industries depended. Because steam railroad engines in the American West relied on often-scarce water sources, Fred Steele became a major water-loading stop, where a traditional wooden trackside water tower was eventually replaced by a brick pumping station with steam-driven, coal-fired pumps that filled a large underground reservoir on a hill above the tracks. The pumping station still survives, though the dome of the reservoir on the hill southwest of the railroad bridge has collapsed. For many decades, the North Platte also carried ties from the forests of the Medicine Bow Mountains to the railroad at Fred Steele, with several thousand ties floated downriver each year for loading onto railroad cars bound for railroad and mining operations, and the last tie drive occurred in the 1940s. The river also supported an ice-cutting industry, as frozen North Platte ice was cut and stored during winter to provide relief and refrigeration during Wyoming summers for soldiers, lumberjacks, travelers, and railroad refrigeration cars.

Wyoming · United States