A Modern Day Ghost Town
Imagine, if you will, walking
down empty suburban streets,
past modern apartment buildings
with doors swinging on
their hinges and birds flying
through gaping windows. Prairie
grass pokes through the asphalt
streets. Tumble weeds blow
along the sidewalks. The wind
whistles around crossed signs
that marked Uranium Drive and
Larsen Lane. You almost expect
to see Rod Serling step out from
behind a fence and say “You
have just entered the Twilight
Zone.”
What nuclear disaster
wiped out Jeffery City?
Unlike 19th-century mining
towns, Jeffery City’s origin was
the atomic bomb. Cold War uranium
mining built the city in
the early 1950s, but Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl killed it
30 years later.
Sixty miles from Lander, the
nearest municipality, Jeffrey
City now rests virtually forgotten
on the isolated two-lane U.S.
Highway 287. Adjacent to the old
Oregon Trial, the town’s once modern
duplex apartments and
miners’ dormitories sit boarded
up on weed-choked streets.
Nobody wanted Wyoming uranium
anymore. Thus, almost no
one wants Jeffrey City. Several
years ago, half of its K-12
school system closed, leaving
more vacant buildings, including
a huge multi-million dollar
Reagan-era gymnasium that
now languishes alone on the
vast range land.
Antelope roam its grounds and
peer through the dusty grand
glass doors. Inside, a lobby
clock’s time is frozen at 8:25,
when electrical power ceased.
A short distance away, rows
of cable TV service boxes
line empty streets – a hightech
graveyard for signals also
long dead.
During its heyday in the early
1980s, over 5,000 people called
it home. Now only 50 residents
live on its otherwise empty
streets. That is just enough
to keep one bar and the post
office open. When all else fails
one might as well have a burger,
a brew, play darts, write
family and hope for the best.
Occasional sleepy drivers can
find a bed at the only motel.
Jeffrey City is located on U.S.
287, 23 miles west of Muddy
Gap and approximately 20 miles
east of Sweetwater Station.
Written by Mike Jamison |
Empty buildings and streets of Jeffrey City • Population 50
The town is home to the JC Motel • 307- 544-9317 and the High Plains Bar & Cafe • 307-544-2361
Sweetwater Station Between Jeffrey City and Lander on Highway 287
Atlantic City | Hudson
Jeffery City | Shoshoni | BLM
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