thumb|Boarded-up abandoned housing in Jeffrey City, Wyoming, former uranium boomtown

Jeffrey City is a former uranium mining boomtown located in Fremont County, in the central part of the U.S. state of Wyoming. The town is known in Wyoming and the American West as symbol of a boomtown that went "bust" very quickly, as the mine was shut down in 1982 and over 95% of the inhabitants left the town within three years. The population was 58 at the 2010 census, far lower than its onetime population of several thousand people. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Jeffrey City as a census-designated place (CDP).

History

Jeffrey City began in 1931 as "Home on the Range", the homestead of a Nebraska couple named the Petersons, who relocated because Mr. Peterson was sick after having been gassed in World War I. Mrs. Beulah Peterson (later Walker) opened two gasoline pumps when the highway came through, and began cooking for those who stopped. The post office at Split Rock, away, closed in 1943, and Mrs. Peterson took up the task of handling the ranchers' mail. She canceled the letters with "Home on the Range". She retired her post office cancellation stamp in 1957 when Home on the Range became Jeffrey City. Her family members are currently restoring the old Home on the Range post office site.

Home on the Range became Jeffrey City when those who came to mine uranium sought to honor Dr. C. W. Jeffrey, a wealthy doctor from Rawlins, Wyoming, who initially financed the costs for prospector and businessman Bob Adams to start the Western Nuclear Corporation mining firm and open a uranium mine near the area in 1957, during the Cold War and the height of uranium demand. a restaurant and bar called the Split Rock Café that caters to the few local residents and those passing through on the highway, and Monk King Bird Pottery, a pottery studio. The Green Mountain Motel provides perhaps the only lodging along the route between Rawlins and Riverton.

Geography and climate

Jeffrey City is located in southeastern Fremont County along U.S. Route 287, northwest of Rawlins and Interstate 80, and southeast of Lander, the Fremont County seat. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Jeffrey City CDP has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.56%, is water.

|source 2 = XMACIS2 (records & monthly max/mins)

Demographics

As of the census

See also

  • Uranium City, Saskatchewan
  • Yellowcake boomtown

References

  • Home on the Range No More: The Boom and Bust of a Wyoming Uranium Mining Town 1957 -1958.
  • Jeffrey City: Uranium mining ghost town