Sinclair put the Sinclair in Wyoming

I got a latish start on my long awaited trip to the Heart Mountain Internment Camp near Cody, Wyoming. That allowed for a sleepover in Fort Collins before really getting on the road in earnest. As usual my route plan was sketchy. It’s better that way.

Along about Cheyenne, just 45 minutes above Fort Collins I opted for a couple of hours of I-80 to Rawlins where I would turn north in the general direction of Cody.

Then maybe ten miles east of Rawlins I spied the minarets of a major industrial something or other. “Eureka” I thought. Thermonuclear blight is right up my alley. I got off at the next off ramp to find out who or what was trashing the pristine high desert. What sinister robber baron was having his way with the natural world?

At the nominal first intersection I saw that the town’s name was Sinclair. That alone was not noteworthy till the dim reaches of my dim brain computed that this was, if not the home of Sinclair Oil, at least a satellite branch of same. That there would be a flame belching behemoth of petro production astride the steppes of southeastern Wyoming did not induce amazement either. This, after all, is the state where precisely one third of all pick-up trucks say Halliburton on the door.

Tidy little Sinclair population 437 is a company town. It exists solely to provide labor to Sinclair Oil. At last count there exactly were two commercial enterprises in the town, a Mexican restaurant and the bar called the Corner Bar. If you lived in Sinclair you could live without the Mexican joint.

The Spanish colonial PARCO Hotel circa 1925 has long been stuttered and now houses a fundamentalist Christian church.

Next stop Heart Mountain.