Rawlins Springs

Rawlins was on the survey for his lungs. Grant had suggested that Dodge take his friend and chief of staff west in 1867, hoping the dry air of the plains would ease his tuberculosis, and it did not. Grant made him Secretary of War in March 1869, and he died that September 6 at thirty-eight, a year after the railroad founded a town at his spring. Not every traveler shared his taste for the water: an 1871 guide to the Union Pacific dismissed the springs as alkali pools, unpleasant to drink and to look at.

What the plaque says

Rawlins Springs In the summer of 1867, a survey party led by General Grenville M. Dodge seeking a route for the Union Pacific Railroad stopped here. General John A. Rawlins, a member of the party, spoke of the spring as "the most gracious and acceptable of anything he had had on the march" and said that if anything was ever named after him he wanted it to be a spring of water. General Dodge replied: "We will name this Rawlins Springs." Tablet designed and placed 1957 by the Carbon County Chapter of the Wyoming State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Fred Steele State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A fort built in 1868 to guard the Union Pacific's North Platte crossing, which became the collecting yard for railroad ties floated down the river.

More markers nearby

• Rawlins — 0.5 mi
• Wyoming State Penitentiary — 0.7 mi
• Rawlins Paint Mines — 2.9 mi
• The Parco Inn — 6.7 mi