Rock Springs
South west Wyoming is mining country but here it was black gold, i.e. coal. In 1850 a US Army survey team was seeking a quicker route through Wyoming when they noted that they had found a ‘bed of bituminous coal cropping out of the north bluff of the valley, with every indication of its being quite abundant’. Maybe a fast route through Wyoming was not quite so important after all! It was the Overland Stage Company who established Rock Springs because the water supply from the spring made it an ideal location for a stage stop. Coal could not be transported by stagecoach so it was not until 1868 that brothers Archibald and Duncan Blair opened the first coal mine in Rock Springs in time to serve the newly arrived and coal hungry Union Pacific Railroad. Rock Springs became a hub for the shipment of coal from mines across the area, and there was so much of it that in winter the snow turned black. People of many nationalities flocked to the area and in 1885 tensions boiled over. 150 white miners launched an attack on Chinese miners. The Chinese Massacre left 28 Chinese dead, 15 wounded and hundreds more were run out of town. Rock Springs was incorporated in 1888 and despite suffering during the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s, coal mining remained its core source of wealth. The end of steam power on the Union Pacific in the 1950s brought a final downturn in coal mining and many mines closed. A few still operate but Rock Springs has found new sources of wealth such as mining for a sodium carbonate compound and exploiting natural gas reserves.
Jail Cell, Historical Museum
The original jail cells have been retained in the Historical Museum, a reminder of the multiple purposes that the old city hall served.
Rock Springs Historical Museum
This building dates back to 1894. It was built as the city hall but it also housed the police station, jail, fire station, judge’s chambers, court room, and municipal offices. In the early 1980s a new city hall was built on D street and the old city hall was left empty until in 1988 when it was used as a temporary museum to celebrate the centennial of Rock Springs. Between 1992 and 1992 the building was restored to the way it would have looked in the 1890s and it then became a permanent history museum. Rock Springs Historical Museum has on display a vast amount of information about the history of the city. This includes one of its more infamous residents, Robert Leroy Parker, who worked in a butchers shop in the city thereby earning his nickname of Butch Cassidy. Click Tab 2 to see the original walk-in safe that remains from city hall days.
Masonic Temple
A Masonic lodge was established in Rock Springs in 1889. Having no temple to meet in the lodge initially met in the W H Mellor building in Front Street. In 1911 the lodge purchased a plot of land in B Street on which to build a temple. It was completed in late 1912 and remains in use to this day. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 19, 1994.
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© Mike Elsden 1981 - 2025
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