Laramie’s Living History — Places
A series of stories prepared for the Albany County Museum Coalition, an alliance of institutions that promote Laramie’s historic and cultural resources. This series originally appeared in the Laramie Boomerang.'
Towns in Albany County have come and gone with Laramie being the county seat and major population center.
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Mysterious stones of the Laramie Mountains: Vedauwoo granite, tors, and grus
If you wander the summit of the Laramie Mountains as dusk falls, chances are you will spot mysterious creatures silhouetted against the evening sky—giants forever waiting by their castles, life-like but never moving. But if you get too close, they disappear, no matter how stealthily you approach. In their place are peculiar stacked stones and huge rounded masses of rock.
Why we’re here (geology is destiny)
If you’ve lived in Laramie long, you know why we’re here: 150 years ago, the Union Pacific (UP) passed through the Laramie Valley during construction of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.
But that’s only part of the story. The full explanation begins much earlier, back when a fortuitous combination of mountain-building and erosion created an easy route over the Laramie Mountains—the Gangplank.