Half-Way Days

Half-Way Days marks Rawlins, in Carbon County, as the halfway point on the Continental Divide Trail between Mexico and Canada. The first one ran from 3 p.m. Friday, July 10, 2026, to 8 p.m. Sunday, July 12. It spread across Depot Park, the Depot at 407 W. Front Street, the blocks around 4th and Cedar streets, and the Blake House on West Cedar. The Rawlins Downtown Development Authority managed it. Some of the people who came had walked there. Matther Nasrallah of Seattle had started the trail at the Mexico border and was picked up in Lander so he could attend. When the Rawlins Times found him, he had just reached town and was at Great Divide Outdoors, a gear shop for trail hikers, “to unload a bit.” “It’s important to be here,” he said.

Friday at the Depot

July 10 is Wyoming Day, and in 2026 it was the 136th anniversary of statehood, six days after the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The sources frame the day differently. The Downtown Development Authority listed Friday’s program under both the 250th Celebration and Half-Way Days. The Rawlins Times called the Depot Park program from 4 to 10 p.m. the Carbon County 250 Celebration, hosted by the Carbon County 250 Committee, and placed Half-Way Days on Saturday and Sunday. Separately, the Harvey Field Sky Festival filled the same Friday at the airport on Airport Road.

The day opened at Red Desert Arts, 116 4th Street. From 3 to 8 p.m. it held an open house for the Faces of Carbon County portraits, pictures of county residents hung throughout downtown. At 4 o’clock, cyclists and hikers met at The Blake, and Candy Moulton spoke at the Depot on the making of a documentary. The film was “Legacy for a Nation: Journeys to Carbon County,” made by the 250 Committee with interviews of prominent residents and reenactments of historical events. County Commissioner Sue Jones said the committee used artificial intelligence to bring old black-and-white photographs to life for it. It showed at 4:30 and 7:30 inside the depot and at 9:30 p.m. outdoors in Depot Park.

Also at 4, in front of the Rifleman Club Bar, Rawlins Outlaw Wrestling ran a cornhole tournament. According to Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Pam Thayer, it raised over $2,000 for wrestling. At 5:30, in front of the Depot, the birthday ceremony gave historic remarks, award presentations and cake. Then the park took the evening. The Grand Encampment Cowboys played at 6:30, Rawlins in Motion gave a Star Spangled dance at 7, and Still House Blues played at 7:30. The program described the band as “an eclectic mix of people with one goal, making a bluesy funky music.”

Saturday on Cedar Street

Saturday began at 8 a.m. with a pancake breakfast at the Elks Lodge, 403 W. Buffalo Street, at $10 a plate, the proceeds going to Ribbons of Hope. At 10, the Friends of Outdoors Group led a hike up ‘R’ Hill from the lodge parking lot. By then, food trucks were parked at 4th and Front, vendors lined Cedar Street, and cars, bikes and Jeeps sat on display along Cedar for a Best in Show prize. At 4th and Cedar, the Rawlins Music Academy ran a game of musical chairs. From 11 to 2, children climbed through emergency vehicles at a Touch-a-Truck.

The Blake House held hiking and biking gear demonstrations, sales and giveaways from 10 to 4. The listed sponsors ran from Merrell, Chacos, Darn Tough and Gossamer Gear to Mountain Hardwear and Liberty Mountain. Before the weekend, Thayer told the city council there was $8,000 in gear and prizes to give away, tents, hiking socks and shoes among them. She also said trail hikers were adjusting their schedules to be in town. Bigfoot 99 Radio reported that representatives of the Bureau of Land Management, the Wyoming Office of Recreation and the Continental Divide Trail Coalition were also scheduled to speak.

At 10:30, in the Depot, Derick Lugo spoke about the Appalachian Trail. Lugo has thru-hiked all three trails of the Triple Crown: the Continental Divide, the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest. He told the Times that very few hikers do the Continental Divide Trail, and that on the more traveled trails the halfway point is not always a town. “It’s a place where hikers want to go and a milestone where hikers want to reach,” he said. “Places like this are important for hikers. It’s important for hikers to hook up with other hikers, so a place like this gives them an excuse to come together.” Two other Triple Crown hikers in town were Kevin Reilly and Connor Mahoney of New Jersey, longtime friends known on the trail as Captain Crunch and Gnarly. They told the paper they loved the vastness of the country around Rawlins.

Sunday in Depot Park

Pastor Mark White of Victory Baptist Church led a church service in Depot Park at 9 on Sunday morning. At 10, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition led families from the Depot onto the trail for a hike. Several downtown businesses stayed open for the day. At 4, the 250th Parade, sponsored by the Rawlins Chamber, came through downtown in red, white and blue. Judges picked a best float, a best decorated car, and best costumes in two classes, human and non-human.

A barbecue dinner in the park from 5 to 8 benefited the Carbon County Library System. Susan Gibson played from 5 to 6. She wrote “Wide Open Spaces,” which the Dixie Chicks released and which the program notes was the CMA Single of the Year. DJ Salzman and Outlaw Sound took the park from 6 until the festival closed at 8.

A gear shop and a trip to Silver City

CDT hikers have long stopped in Rawlins to rest and pick up packages of gear, the Times noted. Don and Christy Hall, hikers themselves, moved to town and opened Great Divide Outdoors to supply them. Thayer credits them with the festival. “It was Don and Christy’s idea,” she said. “They said we can do it but the city had to time it right.” Thayer is also the state representative for House District 15.

Discussions began in October 2025. The organizers settled on the second week of July, picking up where SummerFest had left off. Townspeople had voiced concern about losing that event, so much of its program was carried over. In April, at the start of the trail season, a group from Rawlins went to Silver City, New Mexico, to see how that town ran its own trail festival. There they met Teresa Martinez, executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. Rawlins had been named a Continental Divide Trail Gateway Community in September 2016. “This year is the tenth anniversary of Rawlins’ gateway destination,” Martinez said. “We wanted to celebrate that with them. They made it happen. … This is the community setting a standard.” Carbon County and Journeys to 250 joined after that, which put the nation’s birthday and Wyoming Day on the same weekend.

Accounts of who organized the festival vary. The Times named the Downtown Development Authority, Great Divide Outdoors and dozens of sponsors. Bigfoot 99 described a collaboration between the city and the Coalition. A later city notice listed local businesses, the Development Authority, Discover Carbon County, volunteers and residents. The counts vary as well. Before the event, Bigfoot 99 reported Thayer as saying over 50 volunteers and 40 sponsors. Afterward, she told the Times there had been over 250 volunteers, over 40 sponsors, and over 1,000 attendees by the end of Friday alone. The city later wrote that thousands took part.

City Councilman Steve Sanger saw the festival as a way to draw people from outside. “We’ve been trying to find our hook,” he said. “A lot intersects here or has intersected here — air mail, bike trails, the CDT. … We want people to know this is an interesting gathering spot, not just a spot along the interstate.” Thayer put it shorter: “It will turn into more.”

Rawlins’ Spring at the edge of the Basin

The town sits near the midpoint of the more than 3,000-mile Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. It also sits at the midpoint of the mapped sections of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. To the northwest lies the Great Divide Basin, where the Continental Divide splits in two around a stretch of high desert. Rawlins is at its southeastern edge. The Carbon County Visitors Council writes that the Basin holds wild horses, sand dunes, archeological relics and the world’s largest herd of desert elk.

The town itself began with the railroad. In 1867, Army General John Rawlins was surveying the transcontinental route with a Union Pacific crew and became thirsty. A spring was found nearby, and he thought its water particularly refreshing. “If anything is ever named after me,” he said, “I hope it will be a spring of water.” The settlement that grew up around the railroad was first called Rawlins’ Spring.

Water was still the business of the town in the summer of 2026. Residents installed new caches north and south of Rawlins to give hikers reliable drinking water on the dry stretches of the trail. These joined caches south of town that residents had kept up for years. The city reported that the caches saw heavy use, and that a logbook left with them recorded hikers from around the world.