The story
Piedmont grew up around 1867 to serve the arriving Union Pacific Railroad, supplying wood, water, and railroad ties. Its most distinctive works were charcoal kilns: in 1869 the Mormon pioneer Moses Byrne built a set of tall beehive-shaped kilns that burned local timber into charcoal for the smelters of Utah, shipped out on the same railroad. Byrne named the place for the Piedmont region of Italy, where his wives' families came from.
For a few decades Piedmont was a real town, with a hotel, saloons, stores, a school, and a post office. Its dependence on the railroad also killed it: around the turn of the century the Union Pacific drove the long Aspen Tunnel through the mountains to avoid the steep grade past Piedmont, then rerouted the mainline through it. The trains stopped coming, and by about 1910 the town was stranded and dying.
Three of Byrne's stone charcoal kilns still stand beside the crumbling townsite, preserved as the Piedmont Charcoal Kilns State Historic Site. They are the main reason to make the drive out onto the sagebrush flats southwest of Evanston.
What remains today
Three tall beehive charcoal kilns, plus foundations and scattered ruins of the railroad town. A Wyoming State Historic Site.
Questions from the field
- What are the Piedmont charcoal kilns?
- Beehive-shaped stone kilns built by Moses Byrne starting in 1869 to make charcoal for Utah's smelters. Three of the original kilns survive as a Wyoming State Historic Site beside the ghost town.
- Why did Piedmont, Wyoming become a ghost town?
- It depended on the Union Pacific mainline. When the railroad completed the Aspen Tunnel and rerouted the line away from Piedmont around the turn of the century, the town lost its traffic and emptied by about 1910.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Piedmont — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1609138
- — Wyoming State Parks — Piedmont Charcoal Kilns State Historic Site
- — WyoHistory.org (Wyoming State Historical Society) — Piedmont Charcoal Kilns