3 mi. NW of Sherman, Sherman, Wyoming. County/parish: Albany.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places July 24, 1972. NRIS 72001296.
1 contributing structure.
The Ames Monument is a large pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated to brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames Jr., Union Pacific Railroad financiers. It marked the highest point on the first transcontinental railroad, at 8,247 feet (2,514 m).
Richardson designed the monument midway into his career. His work was largely unknown to the public until around 1870, when he helped design Trinity Church and the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane.
The town of Sherman rose up around it, but then Union Pacific moved its tracks to the south, leaving Sherman to become a ghost town.
Oliver served as president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1866 to 1871, while Oakes, a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, asserted near-total control of its construction. In 1873, investigators implicated Oakes in fraud associated with financing of the railroad. Congress subsequently censured Oakes, who resigned in 1873 and died soon thereafter.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/73730107