The Ames Monument is 18 miles east of Laramie and 35 miles west of Cheyenne, WY, 2 miles off the Wedauwoo exit (329) on I-80. It was erected by the Union Pacific Company in 1882 to honour brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames, Jr., who both played major roles in the early company.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and Union Pacific donated the monument to the state of Wyoming in 1983.

I visited in September 2008 and then again in October 2009, when the first winter snow had begun to settle. The photos on this page are from both visits.

A passage runs through the monument at ground level, although this has long since been sealed off.

The pyramidal shape narrows from the base at a ratio of four inches in width to every foot in height.

Oakes Ames had defended himself by claiming he was being purely patriotic, as the railroad was so important for national development. He also pointed out that he had not profited from the business dealings in question because the railroad was actually $6 million in debt when it was completed. In fact, many members of Congress and the public thought that, while he had engaged in legally compromising activities, he had not been consciously corrupt. Instead, an overriding desire to complete the Union Pacific project had perhaps clouded his judgment.

Although Oakes’ reputation still remains suspect more than 130 years later, the brothers’ role in the Crédit Mobilier scandal was not quite as out of the ordinary as popularly thought either then or now. Similar practices were not uncommon at the time and, in fact, they both gave unstintingly to make the Union Pacific a success through some of its toughest crises.

Oakes put up nearly all his family's holdings to help capitalise construction of the railway, and Oliver provided a sure and steady hand as company President for five of its most challenging years. In its turn, the Congressional resolution against Oakes may partly have been driven by partisanship and the opportunity publicity surrounding a scandal offered to discredit a leading Republican.

Finally, in 1883, soon after dedication of the Ames Monument in Wyoming, the state legislature of Massachusetts passed a resolution vindicating Oakes Ames.

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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 Union Pacific, published by Doubleday in 1989 (click on the cover to search for these books on Bookfinder.com).

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The monument was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, at the time, one of the most acclaimed architects working in the eastern U.S. He is now mainly remembered for his highly personal, medievally-inspired “Richardsonian Romanesque” style that characterised much of his output. Evidence of his style in the Ames monument is the massing of the structure’s profile, the rough hewn stone and the use of “random ashlar” or the randomly jointed blocks.

The Union Pacific’s Board of Directors voted in 1875 to erect the monument, and Richardson completed his design in 1879. The Norcross Brothers of Worcester, MA, then started work in 1880. Eighty-five workers cut stones from a local pink granite outcrop known as “Reed’s Rock”, and hauled them the half mile back by ox cart.

When completed in 1882, the monument had cost the Union pacific $65,000, but the national importance of the transcontinental railroad and the part played by the Ames brothers in its construction was attested to by the attendance of the U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, at the monument’s dedication.

The monument is just off Monument Road (along the left of this October 2009 panoramic view). It stands 300 feet south and 32 feet above the highest elevation of the original tracks of the transcontinental railroad at 8,247 feet above sea-level. Nearby, at what was once the township of Sherman, helper locomotives were switched out after assisting trains up the notoriously difficult Sherman grade out of Cheyenne.

                                                                       You can see a full, 360° flash panorama made from this location by clicking on this link:

This August 2008 panoramic view above is looking north from the base of the monument and shows where the old Union Pacific grade ran. There was once a roundhouse here with five stalls and a turntable, two section houses and a windmill feeding a water tank. Trains were inspected before starting their descent east towards Cheyenne or west across to the Laramie Valley. Several hundred people lived in the adjacent township to service the railroad, as well as two hotels, two saloons, a general store, post office and schoolhouse.

The settlement and station are long gone. Union Pacific rerouted the grade about 3 miles south in 1901, after which the township quickly declined, but the old grade is still partly discernible (shown in this thumbnail by the dotted yellow lines), and it is clearly visible in close up satellite view on maps.google.com running east-west along Ironhorse Road and just north of the monument.

The monument is 60 feet square at the base (i.e. 60 feet long by 60 feet wide) and 60 feet high.

The base stones are five feet tall by eight feet wide and weigh several tons.

The Wyoming Recreation Commission’s 1971 application for inclusion of the Ames Monument in the National Register is at:

pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/72001296.pdf

The north side faces the old grade with the words ”In Memory of Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames".

The west side features a similarly sized bas relief of Oliver Ames Jr.

The east side of the monument bears a 9 foot by 9 foot bas relief of Oakes Ames.

The bas reliefs were designed by the Irish-American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) and cut from Quincy, MA, granite in his New York studio.

Saint-Gaudens moved to New York from Dublin with his parents when he was only 6 months old. He was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter there, but also took art classes at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. In 1867, he travelled to Europe to study in Paris and Rome, and returned to the U.S. to achieve great critical and financial success through the design of monuments commemorating heroes of the American Civil War, free-standing sculptures and funerary monuments such as the Ames Monument.

Saint-Gaudens was also interested in numismatics, designing the $20 "double eagle" gold piece for the U.S. Mint in 1905–1907, the $10 "Indian Head" gold eagle, and various commemorative medallions. After retiring to Cornish, NH, in 1900 because of ill health he founded the "Cornish Colony", an artistic colony that drew many notable painters, sculptors, writers and architects of the day.

With his brother, Oliver Ames Jr., Oakes Ames (1804-1873) established the Massachusetts firm of Oakes Ames & Sons, based on his father's shovel manufacturing business. With America's westward expansion and the growth of British colonies, business boomed and the Ames made a large fortune.

Oakes was member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Massachusetts and member of the committee on railroads. In 1865, the brothers became interested in the Union Pacific Railroad and invested heavily in a company called the Crédit Mobilier, the construction company and investment vehicle for the railroad.

The company was organised by T.C. Durant, Vice President of the Union Pacific, and engaged in questionable business practices in which a small group of financiers contracted with themselves and their associates to construct the railroad. They then charged inflated prices for their work and made large profits from the purchase of Union pacific stocks at par value, which they sold on at market value.

Oliver Ames, Jr. (1807-1877) became acting President of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1866 and elected President from 1868 to 1871. Despite engineering difficulties, rough terrain, and labor problems, with his careful management, four-fifths of the line was built during his tenure as President. However, that success was marred by the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which erupted during his Presidency, although he was never implicated in the comp[any’s questionable practices.

In 1872, it was disclosed that Oakes Ames had sold Crédit Mobilier shares to fellow Congressmen at a price greatly below the true value of the stock. The subsequent scandal led to a House investigation, which found that the company had given discounted stock to more than thirty representatives on both sides of the House.

On February 28, 1873, the House passed a resolution formally censuring Oakes Ames "in seeking to secure congressional attention to the affairs of a corporation in which he was interested". He died soon after at North Easton, Massachusetts.

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