The Ames Monument is located 18 miles east of Laramie, WY, and 36 miles west of Cheyenne, WY. It is 2 miles off exit 329 on I-80.

The monolith was erected by the Union Pacific Company in 1882 to honour brothers Oakes Ames (1804-1873) and Oliver Ames, Jr. (1807-1877), both of whom played significant roles in the company from 1865.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The monument is 60 feet square at the base, 60 feet high, and constructed of native pink granite. It was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson, with plaques by noted sculptor August St. Gaudens, and was built by Norcross Brothers of Worcester, MA, at a cost of $65,000 to the company.

Although their reputation still remains tarnished more than 130 years later, the brothers’ role in the Crédit Mobilier scandal was not quite as ghastly as popularly thought either then or now, and they both gave unstintingly to make the UP a success through some of its toughest crises.

The monument was erected at the highest point (elevation 8,247 feet) on the transcontinental railway close to Sherman township, where helper locomotives were switched out after assisting trains up the notorious Sherman grade out of Cheyenne.

This view shows where the old grade ran. The settlement and station are long gone (UP rerouted the grade about 3 miles south in 1901), but the old grade is still partly discernible. However, it is clearly visible in close up satellite view on maps.google.com running east-west along Klondike Road and just north of the monument.

Related links:

www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2259

www.maps.google.com

www.biographybase.com/.../Ames_Oakes.html

www.novelguide.com/.../eueh_01_00045.html

www.novelguide.com/.../eueh_01_00044.html

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An even-handed telling of the Ames brothers’ involvement in the Union Pacific and Crédit Mobilier is found in the first volume of Maury Klein’s thoroughly readable, Union Pacific, published by Doubleday in 1989 (click on the cover to search for these books on Bookfinder.com).

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