Winton, Wy
Directions: Go approx 10.5 miles north on 191N, turn right onto County Road 4-18, this road forks, you want to bear right at the fork to stay on 4-18, if you continue north the road turns into 4-17 (the road looks like it ought to go this way :-) If you see the 4-17 sign, turn around and go back a couple hundred feet and you'll see the road you need to be on. 4-17 is an interesting road in itself...there are several herd of wild horses there, it leads to the turn off to the White Mountain Petroglyphs and if you just keep going on it as far as you can with 2WD, you end up at the largest moving sand dunes in the Americas. If you want to look at the dunes, take the Study Area road, it's much prettier than the Off Road Vehicle area. The road actually continues past the dunes, you can drive a loop that will take you through South Superior (4-16) and then back through Winton from the other side, but you'd likely need 4WD to get through the sand that's blown across the road. Winton is quite a ways back, I've never marked the mileage, but you can pretty easily think that you must've missed it, it will come shortly after going up a fairly steep hill (don't try this in the winter in a 2WD, nearly got myself stuck out there). Winton is right there on the road, there's a really large concrete foundation and some remaining structural walls on the left, on the right across a ravine is a crumbling brick wall (no idea why it was there), there's no way across the ravine except by foot and it's very steep. If you wander around this area, you'll find something to the right of the big ruin that looks like some sort of cellar. Up the hill behind it is some kind of barbed wire fenced in area, the fence is falling down. You can go a little further up the road and see a few more ruins. You probably wouldn't really want to go up here in the evening, it's pretty easy to get lost on these roads if your not familiar with them and during the summer and weekends during the school year kids use the Winton area for keggers and other mischief :-) Anyone heading out on these Country Roads should probably stop by the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce on Dewar Drive and ask to purchase a Sweetwater County Search and Rescue map...$3.00 and worth every penny :-)
I was surprised to read that Winton, Wyo. was deserted in the 1930's. In fact, I lived in Winton in the early 1950's. My aunt, Gaila Griffin, owned and operated the boarding house located approximately 50 yards west of the cement foundation mentioned in your article. The boarding house was home for some 50 miners working in the six operating mines in Winton.
The foundation and basement structure you mention is all that remains of the Union Pacific store. The brick wall was part of a retaining wall for the road up to Number 1 mine. In all, there were six mines operating in the early 1950's and a few hundred single family dwellings were occupied at that time. Winton was laid out in a hodge-podge fashion with the main street running east and west in front of the company store. In addition to the store was the boarding house, a pool hall, doctor's office, elementary school, post office, tiple, bath house, and, of course, the mine office. The high school students from Winton, Dines, and Stansbury attended a modern facility in Reliance. Others went in to Rock Springs.
My wife and I visited the site in 1997 in an automobile but due to limited (non-existing) road maintenance I would recommend a 4WD today.
And yes Winton is also a car, one of the very firstto travel across the United States.
In the spring and summer of 1903, H. Nelson Jackson completed the first transcontinental automobile trip in this car. Jackson, a physician from Burlington, Vermont, was on vacation in San Francisco and made a bet at a gentlemen’s club that a car could endure the grueling trip through the rugged West, where there were virtually no roads, and across the East in less than 90 days. He purchased a slightly used Winton touring car, hired mechanic Sewall Crocker to accompany him, stocked up on supplies, and took off for New York City. The trip took 64 days, including breakdowns, delays while waiting for parts to arrive, and hoisting the Winton up and over rocky terrain and mudholes. Jackson and Crocker were hailed as heroes and inspired a generation of automobile enthusiasts. Their much-publicized journey caused people to think about the possibilities of long-distance auto travel, and think of cars as an alternative to railroads.