Qualla: Ames Monument

Ames Monument: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Koenig, CC BY-SA 4.0. President Abraham Lincoln once told Oakes Ames that if he could get the transcontinental railroad built, he would be 'the most remembered man of the century.' Lincoln was assassinated before the last spike was driven. Ames saw the railroad completed, then died in disgrace during the Credit Mobilier scandal. Now a granite pyramid stands at 8,247 feet on a treeless Wyoming summit, marking where the highest point of that impossible railroad once passed - a monument to the Ames brothers built by the country's most celebrated architect, in a place so remote that a scheming homesteader tried to buy it and plaster it with advertisements.

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Image: Richard Koenig | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ames Monument: The Mission to Mars

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Qqqqqq (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Building a transcontinental railroad in the 1860s was, as University of Wyoming historian Phil Roberts wrote, 'today's equivalent of the mission to Mars: Big, expensive and impossible.' The Ames brothers made it possible. Oakes Ames, a Massachusetts congressman, used his family's...

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Image: Qqqqqq (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ames Monument: Richardson's Pyramid

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dacoslett, Public domain. Henry Hobson Richardson was America's most influential architect - the man who designed Boston's Trinity Church and gave his name to an entire architectural style. For the Ames monument, he chose an ancient form: a pyramid of native Wyoming granite, 60 feet square at the base and...

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Image: Dacoslett | Public domain

Ames Monument: The Town That Vanished

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brantley Eaton, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sherman sprang up around the monument where trains stopped to change engines before descending from the summit. The town had a roundhouse with five stalls, a turntable, section houses, and a windmill with water tank. Trains were inspected here before tackling the long grade down ...

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Image: Brantley Eaton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ames Monument: The Would-Be Billboard

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vulcano, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1885, a local resident named William Murphy discovered that Union Pacific had made a surveying error. The monument stood not on railroad land but on an adjacent plot available for homesteading. Murphy filed a claim, bought the parcel, and announced his intention to cover the p...

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Image: Vulcano | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ames Monument: Wind and Stone

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mschiavi, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Ames Monument stands today where it has stood for nearly 150 years, on a treeless summit south of Interstate 80 near the Vedauwoo exit. No town surrounds it anymore. No trains pass. The wind never stops. The granite has weathered but holds. Richardson's pyramid and Saint-Gaud...

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Image: Mschiavi | CC BY-SA 4.0