stagecoach routes

In 1890 Confederate veteran Frank Nevin established a small, 160-acre homestead southeast of Rawlins. As the old open-range system was fast disappearing, he and his family grew vegetables and ran small herds of cattle and sheep. Archaeological excavations at the site have provided provide rich information about these changing times on the range.

Freight, mail and stagecoach passengers endured the rough, dangerous road from Rawlins on the Union Pacific through Lander to the Shoshone reservation for 27 years. “God bless the old stage line; she is doomed,” one postmaster wrote in 1906, when a railroad first reached Lander, “but it beat walking.”