Up until now, I've somehow managed to miss putting up a photograph of this former Chicago & Northwestern Depot in Lander, Wyoming, which now serves as the Lander Chamber of Commerce building. That may be because, as these photos suggest, downtown Lander, in spite of Lander being a small town, is pretty crowded in some ways and I missed the depot early on, and had a hard time catching it in a photographic state later.
Indeed, I never really did catch it in an ideal state to be photographed.
Lander was the western most stop on the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. The line sometimes called itself the "Cowboy Line" and this lent itself to the slogan "where the rails end, the trails begin". In 1973 the railroad abandoned the stretch of the line between Riverton and Lander, and since then of course it's ceased operation entirely. The railroad, which like many railroads, was the product of mergers and acquisitions and was doing that right up to the late 1960s when its fortunes began to change.
In Wyoming its line ran astride the Burlington Northern's in many locations but it alone ran on to Lander. Starting in the early 70s, it began to contract in Wyoming and then pulled out altogether. The Union Pacific purchased its assets at some point, although its now the case that all of its old rail has been pulled. Indeed, unless you know that the CNW had once run to Lander, you wouldn't know that Lander had once had rail service at all, let alone that it had it as far back as 1906.
