Saratoga

Warm Springs on the North Platte

Saratoga lies in south central Wyoming between the Sierra Madres and the Snowy Range, at hot springs the tribes held as neutral territory, and it calls itself the place “where the trout leap in Main Street.”² Dick Perue, a former owner of the Saratoga Sun, credits Irving S. Cobb with one version of the line, but “Gee-String” Jack Fulkerson, an Encampment freighter tired of waiting for help unloading at a saloon, probably contributed to it by throwing lighted dynamite off the bridge into the North Platte River.²

The Union Pacific Railroad, laid about 20 miles to the north, and Fort Fred Steele, established in June 1868 to guard it, brought soldiers and officers who hunted the country and soaked in the springs.^1,2 Taylor Pennock, a Civil War veteran who came to Fort Steele in 1872, recalled that during the smallpox outbreak of 1874 the Indians raised a tall pole with a sling to dunk the sick first in the hot water and then in the cold river, and many died.² William Cadwell, a Civil War veteran from Elmira, N.Y., built a cottonwood log structure and a bathhouse near the springs, and a post office named Warm Springs was established there Oct. 4, 1878.² Perue counts the log Hugus & Chatterton building, put up on the east side of the river in the late 1870s, as the first structure in what became Saratoga; it served as post office, general store, saloon and gambling hall until it was burned in 1949 to make room for the Saratoga Inn bar.²

Renamed for Saratoga Springs

In 1884 Fenimore Chatterton, clerk and bookkeeper for Fort Steele post trader J. W. Hugus, had the town renamed Saratoga, remembering the mineral water he drank as a child in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.¹ The name is said to come from the Iroquois word Sarachtoue, “place of miraculous water in the rock,” and by one account the town hoped visitors would link it with the New York resort.^2,3 That same year Cadwell opened the Hot Springs Hotel, built for $24,000, with a black walnut staircase and bedrooms for 50 guests.³ One account has Chatterton platting the east side in 1885 and the west side, where downtown now stands, in 1888; a National Register nomination dates the eastern section to 1886.^2,4

Englishman Henry Seton-Karr, later a member of Parliament, organized the Sand Creek Land and Cattle Company in 1883 and with Frank Earnest of Warm Springs bought 2,000 head that spring; Earnest’s pick-and-bar brand named the Pick Ranch.^1,2

Stores, Presses and the Hotel Wolf

By the summer of 1889 Saratoga had two general stores, a stable and livery, a blacksmith shop, two hotels, two saloons and two newspapers, the Platte Valley Lyre and the Saratoga Sun.² The Lyre, founded in 1888 by George R. Caldwell, was bought in the mid-1890s by Laura and Gertrude Huntington, whom a photo caption calls Wyoming’s first women newspaper owners, and they sold it to the owner of the Sun in 1904.² In 1893 German-born Frederick Wolf built the three-story Hotel Wolf of bricks made in Saratoga, as a stop for stages running from Walcott on the Union Pacific up the North Platte River to Encampment.^1,2 Hugus put up the store now known as Shively Hardware, in 1888 by one passage of its National Register nomination and 1889 by another, to house a general merchandise store, post office, saloon and the Saratoga State Bank.⁴

Saratoga served as a supply point for the Grand Encampment mining boom of the 1890s, and when it was incorporated in 1900 the town was reached mainly by the Scribner Stage.⁴ The Hot Springs Hotel burned to the ground in April 1902, and residents organized a fire brigade in its wake.³

The Slow and Easy and the Sawmill

In July 1907 the first locomotive of the new Saratoga and Encampment Railroad came the 20 miles from Walcott, and its engineer greeted the crowd with “prolonged tooting of the engine whistle.”^2,5 The town held its celebration in late August, after the ranchers finished haying, and the newspaper estimated 3,500 trout and more than 1,000 loaves of bread were served; the county history puts the catch at 3,100 trout.^1,5 The first passenger train reached Encampment on July 18, 1908, but by then the copper boom was over, and instead of ore the trains hauled lumber, cattle and agricultural products.^1,5

In 1934 R.R. Crow and Company started a sawmill near the present mill at 507 Bridge Ave.² In 1976 the Union Pacific began abandonment proceedings over local protests and removed the tracks from Encampment north to Saratoga.⁵ The Louisiana-Pacific sawmill, which the county history calls formerly the community’s largest employer with 100 employees, shut down in January 2003, taking the revenue from the remaining line to Walcott, and the last train left Saratoga in 2007.^1,5

Hobo Pools, Mill and Grade

In June 1929 work began on the east-side springs, the flow rose to one million gallons a day, and after consulting a Denver architect, workmen dynamited the springs.³ In 1936 the CCC set stones around the west-side springs to make larger pools, and legend has it that hobos of the Great Depression jumped off the train to bathe there, so the springs became the Hobo Pools.³ Saratoga Forest Management bought the mill and began running it in 2013, though its products now leave by truck.⁵ By one account all that remains of the “Slow & Easy” is its two depots, and Saratoga’s houses the Saratoga Museum.⁵ Mike Glode of Shively Hardware, who rode the caboose from Saratoga to Encampment as a boy, says the grade is visible all the way between the two towns “if you know where to look.”⁵