Newcastle, Wyoming

Newcastle is in a beautiful location in northeastern Wyoming: where the Great Plains and the Black Hills meet, about halfway between Devil's Tower National Monument and Mount Rushmore. For all the Wild West history buffs out there: just east of town is the route of the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Line. Just off the old stage route on Salt Creek a speculator decided to build a town in the place where he thought the railroad just had to go through. His name was DeLoss Tubbs, and his "town" was called Tubbtown (although it was also called "Field City"). It was about 4 miles east of today's Newcastle in big cattle country, near a hand-dug oil well, so you can imagine the clientele in the many saloons... although one of the more famous genteel visitors was Calamity Jane Canary. Anyway, the railroad did bypass Tubbtown and when lots in the town of Newcastle went on sale on September 10, 1889, everyone in Tubbtown moved. Seems one saloon owner just jacked up his bar, put it on a wagon and sold drinks all the way to Newcastle.

So Newcastle was founded in the days of the great range wars in Wyoming, that time in history when the great cattle barons and their cowboys were busy trying to drive out the flood of new homesteaders (see Johnson County War). About 7 miles northwest of Newcastle was the coal camp at Cambria, a place where 31 different nationalities lived in harmony (there were no saloons allowed) between 1887 and 1928. If folks from Cambria just had to go out and whoop it up, they went to Newcastle.

These days, Newcastle is quite a bit more peaceful. The BNSF still has 2 sets of tracks running through Newcastle and a large railyard in town. This is still big cattle country but there are no desperados making their way through the area headed for the saloons, gambling tables and gold mines of Deadwood and the Black Hills. The last local hanging and the last Indian War happened back in 1903... but if you're in the area you might want to check out the Anna Miller Museum and get a good look at how it used to be around here.