Carbon County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Carbon County

One hundred and nineteen degrees Fahrenheit, 24 hours a day, year-round, free of charge — Saratoga's Hobo Hot Pool, fed by a continuous-flow mineral spring and operated by the Town of Saratoga as a public free-soaking pool with no posted hours and no admission, is the geothermal anchor of Carbon County WY's tourism economy. Carbon County's 7,896 sq mi wrap the Snowy Range (peaking at Medicine Bow Peak 12,013 ft, a sheer quartzite face that is the most-photographed Wyoming mountain outside the Tetons), the Sierra Madre Mountains, and Wyoming's southern transit corridor between Cheyenne and the Utah line on I-80. The Snowy Range Scenic Byway WY-130 from Centennial through Saratoga crosses Snowy Range Pass at 10,847 ft and is the second-highest paved through-road in Wyoming after the Beartooth Highway (US-212 at 10,947 ft in Park County), with the pass closing by snowfall typically late October and reopening late May per WYDOT seasonal closure schedule.

Medicine Bow National Forest dispersed camping is permitted on most forest roads under the standard 14-day stay limit, with rigs to 30 ft accommodated; the Lake Marie and Mirror Lake developed campgrounds inside the Snowy Range corridor accept rigs to 30 ft on first-come basis with no hookups. Rawlins (population 8,221, the county seat at the I-80 / US-287 interchange) is the only I-80 corridor town in Carbon County with full-service grocery, propane, diesel, and 24-hour fuel — the next eastbound full-service town is Laramie 100 miles away and westbound is Rock Springs 110 miles away. The Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum in Rawlins (the 1888 territorial penitentiary, closed 1981, now open for guided tours) operated as Wyoming's only state prison until the 1981 transfer to the modern Wyoming State Penitentiary 4 miles outside town. Encampment (population 449) and Riverside anchor the southwestern Sierra Madre approach. The Continental Divide Mountain Bike Route (the longest off-pavement bike route in the world per Adventure Cycling Association) crosses through Encampment. I-80 is the only paved year-round through-route; US-30 north and WY-789 north are seasonally chained per WYDOT advisory.