What Got
Left Out
After the Civil War — on the occupied lands of the Shoshone, Crow, Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, Ute, and Lakota peoples — the territory we know as Wyoming was one of the most diverse regions in the nation. As settlers moved west, infrastructure was essential, and the labor to build it was urgent.
Immigrant workers came to do extraordinarily dangerous work: digging coal in the mines, laying rail across mountain and plain. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese labor was curtailed and other immigrant communities were recruited to fill the void — workers brought in from across the globe, the diversity itself a calculated strategy to prevent unionization.
"These stories of critical labor, community creation, and people taking care of each other have been erased from this state's origin story — replaced by the myth of the rugged lone white cowboy."
And yet: Wyoming became home to robust, living cultural communities. African Americans, Mexicans, Swedes, Greeks, Italians, Japanese, Slovenians — and dozens more — worked the rails and the mines while also building churches, social clubs, mutual aid societies, and labor organizations that crossed ethnic lines.
They built a national industry and strengthened the U.S. economy and transportation system. They made Wyoming. Their names are not on any monument.
High Iron honors the labor, the community, and the people the official record chose to forget.
The People
Who Were Here
High Iron acknowledges that the I-80 corridor runs through land that was never ceded — the ancestral territories of the Shoshone, Crow, Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, Ute, and Lakota peoples. The rail and mining economy was built on dispossession. We hold both histories simultaneously.
Communities whose stories High Iron carries:
Rock Springs, Wyoming boasted over 60 nationalities during the peak of the rail and coal era. That history is not an asterisk — it is the story.
Highlighted communities have direct representation in High Iron's current installations. All communities are part of the history we honor.