315 1st Street, Chugwater, Wyoming 82210, United States
respite from the road for over 100 years
Chugwater Valley viewed from the top of the Tri-County Mercantile
Our history
The Railroad
" In 1886, with the assistance of the Legislature, Philip Dater, William W. Corlett, Erasmus Nagle, F. E. Warren, Thomas Sturgis, and Henry G. Hay, chartered the Chyenne and Northern Railroad. The incorporators were certainly not without political influence. Warren was territorial governor, Nagle a leading merchant, and Dater, a stockgrower, was the first president of the Cheyenne Club. It was the intent that the railroad was to extend all the way to northern Wyoming, cross Montana, and reach British North America. Unforturnately, for the investors they lost the race to reach Douglas to the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley. Construction was abandoned at Wendover on the North Platte. Thus, the railroad was sold to the Union Pacific which extended the tracks to a connection with the F. E. and M. V. at Orin. The Union Pacific combined it with other snippets of railroads it owned in Colorado and Texas making it a part of the Union Pacific, Denver and Gulf Railroad. With the receivership of the Union Pacific in 1890, the road was sold becoming a part of the Colorado & Southern, now a part of the Burlington System. " - http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/swan.html
The Swan Land and Cattle Co.
"Alexander Hamilton Swan built the empire that became the Swan Land and Cattle Company. Born in 1831 in Carmichaels, Pa., near Pittsburgh, Swan settled in Indianola, Iowa, in 1862 [...] In 1874, Swan and his family moved to Wyoming Territory and filed on a homestead on Chugwater Creek, near present Chugwater, Wyo. Swan joined with his older brother, Thomas, to form the Swan Brothers partnership. During the next six years, the partnership bought land and cattle.
Alexander Swan owned or controlled a vast territory, though somewhat less than Lawson’s estimate. A map from the mid-1880s, possibly Lawson’s, shows Swan’s holdings and later the company’s: a rough rectangle about 110 miles wide, east to west. These borders were the Laramie Mountains on the north, and on the south, the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad running west through Medicine Bow to Fort Steele on the North Platte River.
The east side was about 35 miles north to south; mostly ranches along Chugwater Creek. The west border ran about 70 miles along the North Platte River from Fort Steele north to Bates Hole south of present Casper. This area measures approximately 5,775 square miles, or 3.7 million acres—nearly 6 percent of Wyoming.
In spring 1883, the year before the Maverick Bill conflict, Swan traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, to meet with potential investors. The cattle business, still in the heyday of the open range, had been booming, and successful early investments by the English and Scots were still motivating other moneyed British to seek opportunities in the American West.
[...] After many offers and counter-offers, the Swan Land and Cattle Company Ltd. was registered in Scotland on March 30, 1883. The capitalization was between $2.6 and $2.9 million, about $60 and $67 million in today’s dollars. Alex Swan was named manager at a salary of $10,000 per year, or approximately $231,400 in today’s money, with the freedom to spend some of his time on other ventures.
The company purchased two lots in Cheyenne, for a headquarters and stable. With the consent of board Chairman Colin MacKenzie, Swan also arranged for about 52 miles of telephone lines to connect the Cheyenne headquarters with Hi Kelly’s, the headquarters ranch on Chugwater Creek, and other Swan Company ranches. The installation cost about $4,850—about $112,000 in today’s dollars—plus approximately $184, or about $4,257 in today’s dollars, in annual rent on the telephones." - https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/inland-empire-swan-land-and-cattle-company-ltd
We love where we live, and we know you will too. Come see where we work every day!
Tri-County Mercantile
315 1st Street, Chugwater, Wyoming 82210, United States
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