Buford is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

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 ...

Albany County, Wyoming Albany County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Wyoming. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 37,066. Its county seat is Laramie, the site of the University of Wyoming. Its southern border lies on the northern Colorado ...

, United States. It is located between Laramie and

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the (also spelled Tsitsistas, The term for th ...

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one of the ori ...

. Its last resident, who had been the lone resident for nearly two decades, left in 2012. As of the 2020 US Census, the population of the community is 0.

Location

Buford is located in the Laramie Mountains, between the towns of Laramie and

. The town is along the eastern approach to Sherman Hill Summit, the highest point along all of the transcontinental

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is one of the first transcontinental highways in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated Octob ...

and the Overland Route. Buford is also an access to reach the Ames Monument, which marks the highest point along the original routing of the

First transcontinental railroad America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad), Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the exis ...

History

The original town was founded in 1866. A ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'' article from 2012 stated that the locale began as a military outpost during the construction 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 ...

, but shrank when the fort moved to Laramie. The town once boasted a population of 2,001. The Buford post office was established in August 1900, originally attributed as being in

Laramie County Laramie County is a county located at the southeast corner of the U.S. state, state of Wyoming. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 100,512 or 17.4% of the state's total 2020 population, making it the List of counties in Wy ...

but attributed to Albany County beginning in 1901. The post office suspended service on February 1, 1999, and the post office itself was discontinued on July 24, 2004, with mail service given to the post office at Cheyenne. There was a school operating in Buford from 1905 to 1962. The railroad sold the Buford site to a private buyer in 1970. Don Sammons moved to Buford from California in 1980 with his wife and son. Archived as In 1992, he bought the parcel of land, of around , that comprises Buford, including the Buford Trading Post and its gas station. Sammons was the officer-in-charge of the post office beginning in 1993, and postmaster from April 1994 until the post office closed. Around 1995, Sammons' wife died, and around 2008, his son moved away. When Sammons decided to move to be closer to his adult son, he auctioned off the site in April 2012. Promotional Sign of Buford under new owners 4 April 2020

Promotional Sign of Buford under new owners 4 April 2020

The town was put up for auction on April 5, 2012, with the highest bid of $900,000 having been made by two then-unidentified Vietnamese men. Later, it was revealed that one of them was Pham Dinh Nguyen. The new owners sold "PhinDeli" brand coffee, imported from Vietnam, in the convenience store. In 2013, the new Vietnamese owner re-branded the site as "PhinDeli Town Buford". In September 2017, the manager resigned and the store was boarded up. The GasBuddy.com website indicated the PhinDeli fuel station/mini-market is running and has been since at least August 2021. In 2024, the owner announced the addition of a diesel fuel island.

References

External links

Buford Wyoming: Dan Sammons, Author Buford One
— official site of Buford owner in 1990s and 2000s, including information about a book Sammons wrote about Buford
2010 video interview
from CNN {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Albany County, Wyoming Unincorporated communities in Wyoming

Location

History

See also

References

External links