Hanna Wyoming Tourism

Hanna and the surrounding area offer a concise course in the history of the West. To the south is Medicine Bow Butte, now Elk Mountain, which served as sentinel to Native Americans and fur trappers. At the village of Elk Mountain, once “The Crossing,” Overland Trail travelers forded the Medicine Bow River

Nearby are the ruins of Carbon, first coal camp (1868-1902) on the original Union Pacific Railway. Hanna, company town and successor to Carbon, offers lessons in mining realities: alternating periods of full and empty dinner pails and the dangers of the pit. The 1903 and 1908 Number 1 Mine Disasters claimed the lives of 230 miners. There is also the triumph of a close-knit community persevering from the age of mule power to that of modern gasification technology. To the north, fiercely independent homesteaders and ranchers fought isolation and bad weather to establish homes and livelihoods. Threading through the area are remnants of the first transcontinental route, the Lincoln Highway (1914) and its successor, present-day US 30.

Near Elk Mountain is Interstate 80 (opened 1970). Sites of land beacons mark the route of the first US transcontinental air mail planes (1918). Hanna and its corner of Wyoming - history where it happened.

Elk Mountain