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Show WIPED OFF THE MAP. Sherman Station, Wyoming, 9,000 Feet in the Air, Deserted. (Cheyenne (Wyo.) Cor. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.) Post-Dispatch.) Since the great railroad tunnel through Mt. Sherman, Wyoming, has been completed and trains now run under un-der instead of over the giant steep, there has passed forever what has been for thirty-five years one of the most peculiar railroad stations in the world. Mt. Sherman station stood on the very top of a mountain 9,000 feet high, i . in possibly as desolate a spot as j human eye has ever gazed upon. No-j where is there ' ever visible any veg- etation beyond a few scraggy tufts of alkali wire grass. Even this can hard- j ly exist in that region, where one may encounter almost any day in the sum- j mer rain, sleet, snow and hail, with a' temperature that often varies from 75 degrees to 40 and back again within a few moments; where the wind never ceases to blow from twenty-five to seventy sev-enty miles, an hour, and where the nerves of many a tenderfoot have received re-ceived terrible shocks during the passing pass-ing of storms, with the clcuds touching the ground and here and there hurling angry lightning bolts into the mineral , rocks. . . I Nov.- the map no longer has a Mt. i She-man station. Nothing in the way of habitation . remains to denote the p.st existence of man on that dizzy height, and it is very probable that the weird, rock-clad spot will never again be visited. If, however, in some future age science sci-ence or quest of adventure shall lead some curious person over the summit, he will find standing silhoutted against the sky a massive pyramid-shaped pile of chiseled granite, sixty-five feet high and sixty feet at the base, erected there years ago in honor of the Ames brothers, bro-thers, who made it possible to complete the Union Pacific railroad. A feeling of sentimentalism will doubtless now and then creep into the minds of those who have often passed this monument, at the thought that it now stands so far out of the path of commerce, so far from the haunts of man, deserted, to remain there almost as long as Time shall endure, '?'.$ Several years ago two tramp telegraph tele-graph operators' devised a scheme for making a few dollars without much effort. ef-fort. They erected a small shanty at Sherman,, gathered pieces of rock of different formations, colored some of them with dyes, and over others poured melted lead in spots or pounded small bits of copper into the cracks. These, when finished, were "specimens of gold and silver ores," and found a ready market. All trains stopped just in front of the shanty where the two geniuses gen-iuses held forth, to have the air brakes tested and the wheels examined prior to the descent of the mountain. During these stops passengers were wont to run over to the shanty to make purchases pur-chases of curios. . If th?re was ever a time whn the wind did not blow a gale at Sherman i 1 it was a period previous to the advent of man up there, and it was this everlasting ever-lasting wind that oddly blew nond V: the tramp storekeepers. One morning, : when tin- Overland liver drew up at the old red depot, an aproiu-d man stood at the door of the shanty on th.- oppo- site side of the track, beating a gon.s; with a vigor that s.mn attracted' the attention of the passengers. Head.--i popped out of the windows, and in a : moment people came tumbling out ot ' the cars and made a grand rush f r the I supposed luneh counter. The wind was whistling u merry tun over th- sum- mit, anil in a Aery few seconds several ! hats were rolling amonr the roeks iit;j I down into the gloom of the canyon, (if course the recovery of the headgea? was mpossiblo. Wnen a lot of passen jet s had been "unroofed" it was the signal for the I man with the gong to disappear, and I in his stead came anotner with a string j of ( heap hats and caps, which were I easily disposed of to the unfortunate I at fabulous prices. |
