Wagonhound Rest Area
The area near the Wagonhound Rest Area has played an important role in western transportation since the earliest days of human activity in the Rock Mountain west. The area has provided Wyoming's earliest inhabitants, explorers, westbound settlers, and modern travelers with a viable rout around the formidable Elk Mountain and the Medicine Bow range. numerous teepee rings in the immediate vicinity attest to the fact Native Americans utilized the area for thousands of years as they lived and traveled through Southern Wyoming.With the westward expansion of the United States, the Wagonhound area took on great importance as a southern transportation corridor. During the 1850's, Captain Howard Stansbury lead an expedition near this area to document and survey potential routes for the future Union Pacific Railroad located approximately 30 miles north. In 1862, stagecoach operator Ben Holladay transferred his transcontinental operations from the established Oregon Trail route to a shorter and safer route known as the "Overland Trail." This trail crossed Rock Creek as Arlington to the east and passed Elk Mountain through Rattlesnake Pass on the mountain's north flank. In the opening years of the Twentieth Century, the Wagonhound Area saw increased use with the construction of the Lincoln Highway in 1913, the nation's first transcontinental automobile road. In the 1960's, surveyors for the new Interstate Highway System returned to Wagonhound for the route of Interstate 80, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Highway.In recent years the region has become a favorable location for the wind power generation business. Travelers along I-80 can see one of the largest wind farms in the west from miles away. Over one-hundred turbine windmills generate over 91.4 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply 23,764 homes with electricity for an entire year.
Marker can be reached from the intersection of Interstate 80 and Elk Mountain Arlington Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
