Wyoming’s Piedmont Charcoal Kilns

Photographer: Ray BorenSummary Author: Ray Boren 

Taking advantage of a sunny late-summer day, I rambled off to explore a sequence of remote, unpaved backroads in southwestern Wyoming and managed to find a set of photogenic charcoal kilns — built a century-and-a-half ago — that still stand in the high, grassy ranch lands of the area, although they have been out of service since the turn of the 20th century.

As illustrated in the images here, taken on September 6, 2024, the beehive-shaped furnaces of what is now Wyoming’s Piedmont Charcoal Kilns State Historic Site produced hot-burning charcoal from timber hauled from the nearby Uinta Mountains, an east-west trending sub-range of the Rocky Mountains, and down to a stop along the early Transcontinental Railroad. The charcoal, most of which was shipped to more-populous Utah by rail, was used for metal blacksmithing and smelting in the 19th century. Three-and-a-half of five kilns still stand, built of local sandstone and limestone by pioneer Moses Byrne. Each conical oven stands about 30 feet (9 m) high. The important rural industry faded away after 1901, when Union Pacific Railroad changed its route by building long tunnels through hills to the north.

The settlement called Piedmont — literally “mountain foot” — lies appropriately among rolling hills north of the Uinta Range, along the Utah-Wyoming state line. The name is attributed to two sisters among the early settlers, who were from Italy's northwestern Piedmont region, below the Alps. The railroad’s Piedmont Station and the village that grew beside the vanished rail stop is now a ghost town, marked by dilapidated houses and other decaying structures scattered on the hillsides and meadows. The photographs show the line of still-existing kilns, with high access openings in their thick walls; one kiln with a wide, low arched entrance; and an interior perspective taken with a flash, revealing interior walls still darkened by sooty residual carbon. The Piedmont Charcoal Kilns were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

 

Piedmont Charcoal Kilns State Historic Site, Wyoming Coordinates: 41.21972, -110.61861

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