Goshen County History: Well-worn trails led to the establishment of Wyoming’s agriculture-dominated Goshen County
The North Platte River is a major tributary of the Platte River, which branches off of the Missouri River in southeast Nebraska and winds through the Cornhusker State before heading southwest to central Wyoming.
Back in the day, the historic trails used by settlers moving west – including the Oregon and Mormon trails – shadowed the North Platte River, and present-day Goshen County laid in the crossroads of these paths.
In the 1850s, this route was used by regularly-scheduled stagecoaches carrying passengers and U.S. mail west, as well as the short-lived Pony Express which hauled mail from Missouri to California.
In the early 1860s, transcontinental telegraph lines were installed along the route, and in the late 60s, the Cheyenne-Deadwood stage coach line ran through the county to gold fields in the Dakota Territory.
Evidence of the bustling transcontinental traffic through Goshen County is evident in the wagon ruts, place names and historic landmarks that remain today.
One of these is the name Goshen County itself, although the whereabouts of its origin come from two different stories.
Some suggest the area is named after Goshen Hole, a valley south of Torrington, originally called Goshés Hole after an early Native American warrior or a French trapper.
Others believe the county is named after Egypt’s fertile Land of Goshen outlined in the Bible’s 45th chapter of Genesis because of its highly-fertile soils and semi-arid climate which makes it a powerhouse for agriculture production.
Early ranching
Agriculture has been an integral part of Goshen County throughout its rich history.
Cattle production began as early as the 1850s, when Fort Laramie Post Sutler Seth Ward supposedly left a small herd of cattle out on the open range during the winter of 1852-53. Surprised they survived, Ward continued the practice, which was later adopted by other ranchers settling in the area.
About 15 years later, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 required Native American Tribes in the area to restrict hunting to north of the North Platte River. White settlers began moving cattle herds across the plains north of Cheyenne, along Chugwater Creek and the Laramie River.
The first permanent breeding herd was started by W.G. Bullock and B.B. Mills at Fort Laramie.
Other pioneer ranchers in the area included John Hunton, Hiram Kelly, John Kessler, Charley Coffee and Philip Yoder. The Union Cattle Company and Swan Land and Cattle Company were the area’s largest early ranches.
Cattle production continued, and in 1934, the Torrington Livestock Commission was started by the Petsch family of Scottsbluff, Neb. The commission later became Torrington Livestock Markets, Inc. in 1989, which is now the largest auction in Wyoming and one of the largest in the country, selling cattle from the nine-state region and attracting buyers from across the nation.
Today, Goshen County produces more cattle than any other Wyoming county.
According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Goshen County is home to 736 ag operations and 109,449 cattle and calves.
Early farming
The North Platte River was also critical in the formation of Goshen County’s prolific farming industry, and in the beginning, settlers used water from the North Platte, Rawhide Creek and Horse Creek to irrigate their fields.
The first water right was claimed from Rawhide Creek in 1881.
Then, the Reclamation Act of 1902 provided funding for irrigation projects across 20 Western states, and revenue generated from the sales of semi-arid public lands was used for the construction and maintenance of these irrigation projects.
Newly-irrigated lands would then be sold, and the revolving funds were used to support more projects.
Through $10 million in funding, nearly 250 miles of the interstate and Fort Laramie canals were constructed.
By 1947, the Fort Laramie canal on the south side of the North Platte provided water for 53,000 acres, and those who used this water established the Goshen Irrigation District. On the north side of the river, the canal provided water for 15,000 acres, and water users created the Lingle Water Users Association and the Hill Irrigation District.
In Hawk Springs, water drawn from Horse Creek was used by those in the Horse Creek Conservation District for 10,300 acres. Later, farmers and ranchers began drilling wells for irrigation water and to fill stock water tanks.
Today, irrigated and dryland farming still dominate in Goshen County, with farmers growing a variety of wheat, dry beans, barley, corn, potatoes, hay, sunflowers and sugarbeets.
By the early 1950s, the county boasted 13 grain and bean elevators and six potato docks.
In the 1920s, Holly Sugar Company built a factory in Torrington – one of five factories in the state.
In 1926, the first year of operation, the factory processed 21,000 tons of beets. Although a large figure at the time, this number is slight in comparison to the 745,000 tons processed in 2012 by the Western Sugar Cooperative, which took over Holly Sugar in 1943.
After 95 years of production, Western Sugar’s Torrington factory closed in 2018.
Early towns
The first permanent settlement in Goshen County was Fort William, a trading post built in 1834 near the junction of the Laramie and North Platte rivers.
Here, Fur Traders Robert Campbell and William Sublette established and built the original wood stockade buildings, which later became known as Fort Laramie.
After the original structures deteriorated, employees of the American Fur Company built a new post in 1841 and named it Fort John, although many still used the popular name of Fort Laramie.
The fort offered a place for weary travelers heading west to rest and replenish their supplies.
In 1849, Fort Laramie was purchased by the U.S. government and operated as a military post, where it grew in size and importance, becoming the principal military outpost on the Northern Plains before it was abandoned in 1890.
Situated on the banks of Horse Creek, LaGrange is another one of Goshen County’s oldest communities and is named after Stage Coach Driver Kale LaGrange.
Supposedly, LaGrange claimed water rights for the area in 1883 and platted the townsite in 1889.
Wyncote was established around 1900, but because the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad was unable to obtain enough land for the townsite, land to the east was donated to create the town of Lingle instead. This town was named after Financer Hiram D. Lingle.
In 1911, Gov. Joseph Carey officially declared the formation of Goshen County, and the county’s government was organized in January 1913.
At this time, the town of Torrington became the official county seat.
The UP Railroad influenced the creation of several more towns in the area, including Huntley, Cottier, Yoder, Hawk Springs and Veteran.
In the 1860s, Jim Moore claimed and settled near one of the last watering holes south of Lusk, and nine years later, he was the owner of the second largest cattle operation in the Wyoming Territory.
His brand, the J Rolling M, inspired the name of Jay Em, which was a bustling center of commerce throughout the 1920-30s.
Today, there are only a few residents in Jay Em, and the town center is mostly vacant.
Jesse Yoder, the head of the Goshen Townsite Development Company, is the namesake of smalltown Yoder.
His hopes were to combine the two settlements of Springer and Lacy Corners into one town located beside the UP Railroad which passed close by his ranch. The town thrived and quickly established real estate offices; grocery, hardware and dry goods stores; a bakery and a creamery.
In 1922, a schoolhouse was erected and a newspaper started publishing weekly.
In 1925, Yoder was home to more than 500 people, as well as three new drugstores, two barber shops, a hotel, a bank, several churches, a doctor’s office, a community hall, a telephone office, a rooming house and a livery stable.
Yoder became the county’s business and trade center for a short time. However, by 1970 the population decreased to 100 and the town has remained quiet to this day.
In 1920, the town of Veteran was also established, named for a military program which allowed returning World War I Veterans and their families to qualify for an 80-acre irrigated plot of land.
Today, the majority of Goshen County’s population lives in the county seat of Torrington and agriculture remains one of the most predominant industries in the area, ranking first in the state for total market value of ag products sold at a whopping $204,618,000.
Information in this article was compiled from the Wyoming Historical Society, Geology of Wyoming, Goshen County’s official website and USDA NASS.
Hannah Bugas is the managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.
