Bryan is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in
Sweetwater County
Sweetwater County is a County (United States), county in southwestern Wyoming, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 42,272, making it the List of counties in Wyoming, fourth-most populous county in Wyoming. Its ...
in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...
of
Wyoming
Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...
.
Bryan is located approximately west of
Green River along the
Blacks Fork
Blacks Fork (also referred to as Blacks Fork of the Green River) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. , accessed March 18, 2011 tributary of the Green River in Utah and Wyoming in the United ...
River, and for a short time was the local headquarters and division point of the
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...
. Today, only a few concrete foundations remain.
History
As with other cities in Wyoming, squatters rushed to occupy land in Green River City, in anticipation of the arrival of the
transcontinental railroad
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous rail transport, railroad trackage that crosses a continent, continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks may be via the Ra ...
, in 1868. Unwilling to negotiate with the squatters, the railroad instead laid out a new town to the west of Green River, along the Blacks Fork River, and established it as the local headquarters of the railroad. Stage service was established between Bryan and Green River and from there connecting to mines and towns throughout Wyoming.
Once passed over for the headquarters, the population in Green River dropped rapidly. Several years later, Blacks Fork dried up due to a drought and the railroad was concerned that there was not enough water in Bryan to service the locomotives. The railroad was able to acquire enough land to move the headquarters to Green River and completely abandoned Bryan. Green River thrived, but Bryan's population plummeted and never recovered.
[ Ancestry.com]
References
{{Sweetwater County, Wyoming
Ghost towns in Wyoming
Geography of Sweetwater County, Wyoming