100 Years of the Canyon Highway

The Yellowstone Highway through the Wind River Canyon was a radical idea when it was first proposed. A few remote ranchers protested that they didn’t need a road and didn’t want to pay a new tax for one since they would never own a vehicle. The town founders, however, were desperate for an easier route for autoists to reach the inaccessible town of Thermopolis and met personally with these protesters, trying to explain the importance of these new contraptions.

In 1915, it was a dangerous, long trip to get to Thermopolis over the Wind River Canyon in your automobile over Birds Eye Pass. Some even failed in their attempt to drive over the pass and abandoned their Model T’s rather than take the treacherous path ever again. During the more passable summer months, the alternative was to ride the stage which ran from Shoshoni to Thermopolis daily, taking 12 to 14 hours to get passengers to their final destination.

To illustrate the desperate need for a safe highway, stories were shared of just how dangerous even the stage could be. John Hulse, a coal miner from Gebo, reminisced about some of his own personal mishaps when he worked for E. J. Richards as stage coach driver over Birdseye Pass.

Hulse recalls that the stage was 18 miles from Thermopolis to Birdseye and 18 more miles into Shoshoni. Lunch was served at the Half-Way House to the dusty passengers who felt each mile seemed longer than the previous mile.

The trail was perilous with one particular spot, Devils Slide, only about 30 feet wide. Hulse related that “you really had to be careful and stay on the trail; if you didn’t it was a sheer drop off the cliff.”

During the winter, Hulse drove the stage through snow, belly deep, the lead team rearing and lunging to break trail, and the wheel team pulling the load. It wasn’t just the weather and terrain that made driving stage over Birds Eye so hazardous.

One summer day, three men lay in waiting along the trail, with plans to hold up the stage.

Hulse was driving and ‘Old Man Moore’ was riding shotgun. As they approached, the men attempted to stop the stage. The team halted and the shooting began. “Old Man Moore” fell to the floor of the driver’s seat, and Hulse and a passenger held off the bandits. The passenger, who used a Luger, was wounded and his gun jammed. After some time, the bandits, seeing that their attempts were futile, gave up and left without the loot.

This treacherous road was preventing travelers from arriving in Thermopolis, especially in their new automobiles, and a radical idea was proposed in 1916. Wyoming Governor Kendrick was in town to meet with locals about badly needed road improvements and the proposed tax to help form a new road department for the State of Wyoming.

Hot Springs County Attorney Fred E. Holdrege was armed with facts and figures, according to the Thermopolis Record, and supported his arguments in a way that did not leave room for contradiction. He stated, “If this were Colorado instead of Wyoming, the highway, instead of finding a way around, would go directly through the great canyon south of this city!”

Holdrege predicted that someday the road would be built through the canyon and the room erupted into applause.

Governor Kendrick heartily agreed with the radical idea and said, “I believe that the canyon route is an entirely feasible one and that when the money for building it is available, it will become one of the best scenic routes imaginable!”

That fall, the vote passed in Wyoming to permit the state to use its funds in road building. Immediately, Thermopolis autoists joined with others to promote the idea of building one of these roads through the canyon. Their enthusiastic lobbying worked. Six years later, work began in June of 1922 on the new Yellowstone Highway to replace the route over Birds Eye Pass. The highway was finished two years later, over-budget but well appreciated.

The Thermopolis Chamber of Commerce wrote “The building of Wind River canyon road five miles south of Thermopolis, Hot Springs, Wyoming, has united two great empires of the west. Until the construction of that highway the northwestern and eastern and southern parts of Wyoming were separated by natural barriers which prevented all kinds of vehicular traffic except light passenger conveyances, the latter being possible during only 100 days of the year.”

The finished highway through the Wind River Canyon was 12 miles long and was the most expensive road in America at the time. The main cost occurred when the crews had to blast and drill their way through solid granite with specially-made tools. The price of these 12 miles came to over $750,000, $13 million in today’s dollars, and the state was able to pay for it using federal aid.

The first automobiles passed through the canyon January 22, 1924. The highway was then thrown open to Sunday drives in July of 1924. The official opening to year-round traffic was in October. Wyoming Governor Brooks arrived for the grand ceremony and a convoy drove to the canyon tunnels to celebrate this radical new highway.

Howard Jackson, deputy sheriff of Converse County, was one of the very first autoist to drive down the new “Canyon Boulevard”. He told the Casper newspaper that it was a harrowing drive, “I’ll bet many old women will faint and drop into the bottom of the car as they go through those tunnels and come out suddenly onto a shelf hung two or three hundred feet above the water where you can look straight down into a raging river, and then look straight up for half a mile and find that you are hung up there in mid-air as it were.”

However, he added, “The road is fine, and there is no place where a Ford car cannot go through ‘on high’ without missing a lick. The roadway is smooth and there is plenty of room so that there is no danger of a traffic jam, or of anybody being crowded off the highway.

“At no place either going or coming back through the canyon is there a grade of more than 5 percent, think of that, and then think of the ten thousand feet of mountain piled up on top of you as you go through the tunnels, and then look back to the climb over the top of Birdseye that this new boulevard is saving you, then you will realize what the state of Wyoming is doing with the money that is being used for our highways.”

Today, as you drive through the Wind River Canyon Scenic By-Way, you can still enjoy the views that were seen one hundred years ago when the highway first blasted its way through the granite. The cliffs that soar into the sky and the sparkling Wind River can now be easily enjoyed thanks to the radical idea of our town founders to build a highway through the Wind River Canyon and not around it.