Historical Marker
Bryan
Sweetwater County · Wyoming
The panel's surveyor was an Army topographical engineer, and the road he laid out runs past here. In 1856 Lieutenant Francis Theodore Bryan surveyed a military road from Fort Riley, Kansas, toward the Salt Lake valley, moving his wagons through Bridger's Pass that August, and in 1857 he went over it again with laborers to clear obstacles and grade the stream banks. West of the pass it followed Muddy Creek and Bitter Creek to the Green, the line the Overland stage and then the railroad would take. The town named for him lasted barely four years.
What the plaque says
Bryan In September 1868 the Union Pacific Railroad established the town of Bryan, named for Lt. Francis Theodore Bryan, a surveyor. The town was located eleven miles west of Green River and north of this location. Passing beyond the settlement at Green River, the Union Pacific planned on Bryan serving as the 1868 terminus for the railroad. Within a few months, Bryan contained a twelve-stall roundhouse, warehouses, and machine shops as well as restaurants, a boot maker, gunsmith, bank, and concert hall. As an "end of the tracks" town, Bryan thrived — a wild "hell-on-wheels" frontier community. Bryan also served as the major jumping off point for travel north to the Sweetwater Mining District and the gold mines around South Pass City eighty miles to the northeast. Would-be miners and canvas-topped wagons piled high with goods of all types departed daily for South Pass. Bryan's population reached an estimated 5,000 before December of 1868. At the end of that year, the crucial water supply from the nearby Black's Fork River dried up. As a result, the roundhouse, other facilities, and much of the population moved back to Green River. By 1872, Bryan existed only as a ghost town.
Where it stands
41.54558, -109.69699 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Expedition Island — 12 miWhere John Wesley Powell's 1871 survey left for the canyons of the Green and Colorado; where his 1869 trip started has never been proven.