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Bed & Breakfast Inns and Ranches of Wyoming |
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| Rock Springs, Wyoming | ||
| Rock Springs was named for a spring flowing out of the rocks. |
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| Established |
1868 |
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| Elevation (ft.) | 6,271 | |
| Population in 2000 | 18,708 | |
| Population in 1940 | 9,827 | |
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The region around Rock Springs has rich underground stores of coal, oil, natural gas, trona, and phosphates. The Union Pacific Railroad had been given the rights to the coal along its route, and it immediately opened coal mines near Evanston and Rock Springs and began bringing in Chinese miners to break strikes as early as 1869. The racial tensions in Rock Springs continued to simmer and on September 2, 1885, disgruntled white coal miners in Rock Springs attacked their Chinese counterparts. Twenty-nine Chinese died, Chinatown was burned to the ground, and rioting spread elsewhere in the west. By December of that year 85 whites and 450 Chinese were back on the job, and the U.S. government established Camp Pilot Butte (an international treaty post) as a buffer between the Chinese and white communities Rock Springs continues to have an ethnically diverse population and restaurants to match. In the boom years of the 1980's, it was the richest city in the nation on a per capita basis -- its crime rate was one of the highest in the nation, as well. Then came the bust, and the jobs disappeared as the town's underground coal mines began subsiding, creating physical sink holes to match the psychological ones. The town is currently suffering neither bust nor boom, but is slowly stabilizing both its economy and its appearance. If you walk downtown, take note of the building at 432 Main. It was once the butcher shop where employee Robert LeRoy Parker gained the "Butch" portion of his alias Butch Cassidy.
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