Questions About
High Iron

High Iron is a mobile monument built inside a transformed 1950s railroad boxcar. To date, eleven public artists created installations that honor the immigrant and migrant labor communities that built Wyoming's rail and mining economy. The car tours the I-80 corridor through 2029, stopping in the former rail towns of Laramie, Cheyenne, Rawlins, Rock Springs, and Evanston — free and fully accessible at every stop. High Iron partners with each community it visits, ensuring the descendent stories inside the railcar are from that community's descendents, and our programming and activation is tailored to that community, its artists, and its memory keepers.

The short answer: very carefully. High Iron's boxcar doesn't have wheels and doesn't run on tracks — we move it to our next destination with the help of a crane and a hired semi truck. The car was first hauled from a field in Rigby, Idaho to Laramie by semi-truck, then lifted into place by crane. That same process happens at every stop on the tour. It's one of the more spectacular things you can witness — a 42-foot painted boxcar swinging through the air before it settles into its new home.

Not exactly. High Iron is a public art and history installation, an living and evolving archive, and a community gathering place all at once. There are no velvet ropes and no admission fee. You can come inside, engage with stories of ancestors who built the state and shared their cultural traditions, participate in programming, and add your own story to the archive. Think of it as a living and evolving monument that moves directly to the communities it is celebrating and honoring. It listens and it changes at every stop.

Everyone — and especially the communities whose ancestors built Wyoming's rails and worked its mines, and the Indigenous nations dispossessed of their land to make that construction possible. It is for everyone who has had roots in the I-80 corridor, artists, students, educators, organizers, historians, and anyone curious to learn and appreciate the full story of Wyoming.

High Iron is the anchor project of ALCES Community Works, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Laramie, Wyoming. The project has received support from a number of local, state, and national grantmakers — check out our funders in our Team section.

For our Laramie residency and project debut, we issued a national call — in several languages — for interested artists, and we prioritized those who had ancestral ties to railroad labor. We worked with first-time public artists as well as more seasoned creators. As we move forward, we commission artists whose work is in line with our mission through individual invitations while also working within the communities we visit to cast an open call for local artists. We deeply believe in artist equity and mentorship, paying artists what they are worth while providing the support they need to share their talent.

We once had a descendant tell us, "You can swing a cat and hit someone in Wyoming who worked for the railroad." It's true — Wyoming is full of descendants whose ancestors built our economies, infrastructure, and communities.

In each community we work with, we use a methodology called "snowballing." Drawing on relationships we've nurtured locally, we ask folks, "Do you know a descendant we should connect with?" We take a lot of people out to lunch and answer a lot of questions along the way. From there, we work with each descendant storyteller for about a year — sometimes longer — to bring their ancestors' stories to life. We walk through every step together, checking in continually: does this feel good to you?.

We'd love that. High Iron is built on relationships with communities along the I-80 corridor, and partnerships take many forms — hosting a stop on the tour, co-organizing programming, contributing oral histories, or helping spread the word. Reach out to us directly and tell us a bit about your group and what you're imagining; we'll find the right starting point together.

Yes — and we hope you will. The oral history archive at the heart of High Iron grows with every stop on the tour. You can record your story inside the boxcar during open hours, submit photos, audio, or video through our website, or simply write to us. You control how your story is shared and whether it's attributed to you by name.

If your group is under 10, just show up! If you are a larger group, we ask that you use the group visit form on our Visit page. We ask for a minimum of 72 hours notice for groups of 10 or more. Educator guides and curriculum-connected materials are available for K–12 groups. Reach out even if your timeline is tight — we do our best to accommodate all requests.

Donate at any level through our donation link — all donations are tax-deductible. You can also become an organizational sponsor, volunteer at events, share our programming with your networks, or simply show up. The most important thing you can do is come, and bring someone with you.

We have partnerships with the American Heritage Center and the Wyoming State Archives. If communities are interested in archiving their labor histories in these archives, we are here to help. We also have our own online archive — launching September 2026 — that will be accessible globally and digitally.