By Phil Roberts
Wyoming towns have some pretty strange street names. Take Obie Sue, CY, Hobbit Hole and Hog Eye, for instance.
But most street names in Wyoming are pretty standard—named for pioneers, trees, presidents, states. In some cases, letters of the alphabet or simply numbers are applied to Wyoming streets.
Main Street appears in many Wyoming towns—Buffalo, Torrington, Riverton, Lander, Lovell, Kemmerer, Sheridan, are among the towns with a Main Street.
Center streets are popular, too. Green River, Casper and Douglas each have one. Evanston has a Center Street, a Main Street and tops it all off with a Front Street.
Trees are popular for street names in Wyoming towns. Spruce, Cedar, Cottonwood and Elm are named for indigenous trees. Lusk, Glenrock, Douglas, Wheatland, Rawlins—all have tree streets. Along with Pine Street, Pinedale has a Magnolia Street, but the tree is not native to that area.
Lusk and Kemmerer have streets named for minerals. Names of states are used for streets in Lovell, Meeteetse, Basin and Green River.
U. S. Presidents are honored with street names in Afton, Riverton, Casper and West Laramie. Streets named for military figures are common in Laramie, unfortunately named, in some cases, for soldiers who fought Indians, often quite brutally.
Gillette has several streets named for Wyoming governors. Cheyenne changed the original names of two of its streets to honor two local men who served as governor and senator. Warren Avenue—for Francis E. Warren and Carey Avenue—for Joseph M. Carey replaced earlier names of surveyors for whom Cheyenne’s streets were initially named.
There are some oddities. Worland is county seat of Washakie County, but main street is called Big Horn Avenue. Other streets were named for early investors in the Hanover Canal Company that organized the town. (The county, briefly, was named Hanover county).
In Cody, there is a Cody Street, but the main downtown street is Sheridan Avenue. It was in the Sheridan Inn in Sheridan where William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”) and business partners laid out the street plan for his new city. Cody, an admirer of General Philip Sheridan, named the main street for his favorite commander, who headed the army for whom Cody once scouted. It made sense to name more minor streets for company investors (Rumsey, Bleistein, to name two).
Rock Springs and Green River both have streets named for John Wesley Powell. But in the town of Powell, named for the explorer, there is no Powell Street (or Green River Street), but there is a Cheyenne and a Douglas street.
Oh, and Obie Sue, CY, Hobbit Hole and Hog Eye? Obie Sue is a Worland street; CY, named for the cattle brand of Joseph M. Carey, is in Casper. Hobbit Hole is in Douglas and Hog Eye is in Gillette. Those names alone ought to convince anyone that Wyoming towns never will run out of names for their streets