Evanston, Wyoming

The county seat of Uinta County, Evanston is located in southwestern Wyoming on the Bear River with the Uinta Mountains rising to the south. On the eastern outskirts of town is Bear River State Park with a herd of bison freely wandering the grounds. Between Bear River State Park and the city limit is the Bear River Greenway, with fishing, boating (whitewater rafting, too) and crawdads in the summer, and ice skating in the winter. The Wyoming Downs race track is about 10 miles north of Evanston and offers live horse racing on Saturdays and Sundays during June, July and August. Evanston also features the Purple Sage Golf Course, a 72-hole championship course that sets the bar for golf in Wyoming. In the winter Purple Sage also offers prime cross-country skiing with equipment rentals available for all ages.

Evanston was founded in 1868 as the crews building the Union Pacific Railroad approached. Harvey Booth pitched a tent and opened a restaurant and saloon inside the wooden-floor-and-canvas-sided structure near what is now Front Street. That signaled the beginnings of Evanston as a frontier railroad camp. Within a few weeks of the opening of Booth's establishment, the site had 650 new residents. The first train arrived on December 16, 1868 and by July 4, 1871, the Union Pacific Railroad had located a roundhouse and machine shops in Evanston, assuring the town's viability. In 1872 Evanston was designated as the county seat of Uinta County and Harvey Booth was contracted to build the courthouse.

In the early days, Evanston had a large Chinese population, folks who came with the railroad construction crews. Many stayed and labored on the railroad, in the nearby Almy coal mines, and as restaurant employees, vegetable peddlers and laundrymen until the early 1920's. From about 1900 on, the Chinese population slowly declined until the local Joss House (one of only three in the state of Wyoming) burned to the ground in 1922. At that point nearly all the remaining Chinese folks left the area.

Evanston has an original Carnegie Library in town. The Union Pacific built a Gothic-style brick railroad station in 1901 and then presented the depot to the city in 1985. There are several other of Evanston's original buildings around that original Depot Square that have been refurbed in recent years and still offer that same turn-of-the-century ambience and decor while featuring new shops and businesses.