Not far east of Rawlins, WY is the town – so to speak – of Sinclair. In 1922, the Producers and Refiners Corporation selected this location for a refinery; it started operation in 1923. The company bought the land surrounding the refinery as a location for its employees. The resulting planned community was considered one of the most modern at the time. Mail arrived at the refinery addressed to “P&R Co” which led to the town to be named Parco.

Sinclair bought P&R Co and renamed the town in 1943. The town never had more than a few hundred inhabitants – latest census puts the population at around 350 – but the original refinery is still active and most of the original town structures remain as part of a historic district. However, most commercial activity occurs in Rawlins – only about 7 miles west.

Funny thing: there’s a Sinclair gas station at the east exit off I-80 leading into town. It is not cheap.

A few miles east of town is the location of the Hell-On-Wheels town of Benton. For three months during the summer of 1868, Benton was notorious as the most devilish of the hell-on-wheels towns that existed during the construction of the Union Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad (“transcontinental” being Omaha to Sacramento). Nothing remains of Benton.