Just west of Green River, standing between Wyoming Highway 374 and Interstate 80, is one of the most distinctive landmarks in Sweetwater County - Tollgate Rock. 374 passes along its western base and has seen several designations since the early 1870s. The Sweetwater County Historical Museum recently received a research inquiry about the origin of the promontory's name; specifically, whether or not it was ever the site of an actual toll gate. The answer is "yes."
The Green River-South Pass Stage Road
The Union Pacific Railroad reached Green River in 1868. By that year the gold rush in South Pass City was well underway, with some 1,500 people in residence there and in nearby Atlantic City. There was a demand for wagon and stagecoach service from Green River to South Pass City, and a rough stage and wagon road was created, running west from Green River, then generally north along the route of what is now the Blue Rim Road and Alkali Creek, and on to Pacific Springs and South Pass City in present-day Fremont County.
The road began in Green River and extended west about a mile and a half to the base of an enormous rock formation along the eastern bank of the Green River. The formation was a solid barrier, negotiable at the time only through a narrow cleft between it and a rock outcropping called Split Rock. The cleft was widened, a heavy chain was draped across it, and a toll was charged to pass through. It didn't take long for the rock formation to be named Tollgate Rock, the name it still bears.
Not surprisingly, there was considerable opposition to the toll. Nevertheless, according to records in museum archives, "In 1872, the County Commissioner records show that a man named Matthews was given permission to operate and build a toll road between Green River City and Pacific Springs."
By the mid-1870s, the gold boom in South Pass City had peaked and the little town went into a long, steady decline. How long the Tollgate Rock toll was collected is uncertain.
The Lincoln Highway
In September of 1913, it was announced that the first transcontinental highway, designated the Lincoln Highway, would extend from New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, a distance of some 3,380 miles. Far from the modern paved highways and interstates of today, it was - and remained for many years - only a route marked on the map; a series of dirt and gravel roads that saw incremental improvement over the decades.
The Lincoln Highway "reached" Green River that same year. It ran from the present-day cemetery on the northern edge of town down Elizabeth Street (now North 1st East) past the site of the Tomahawk Hotel to the railroad tracks, then across the Green River on the old wagon bridge, built in 1896. From there it turned generally west and followed the corridor of the Overland Trail up Telephone Canyon to Peru Hill. (It was said at the time to be among the worst stretches of the Lincoln Highway in Wyoming.)
In 1924, a new bridge across the Green River west of Jamestown was built and the route of the Lincoln Highway changed to the old Green River-South Pass Stage Road, running past Tollgate Rock and The Palisades to the new structure on what is now Wyoming 374, abandoning the old Overland Trail - Telephone Canyon - Peru Hill route.
U.S. Highway 30
In 1941, the name of the roadway was changed to U.S. Highway 30 and it was determined that the roadbed was in need of realignment. The road was widened past Tollgate Rock and through Split Rock and, on March 20, 1942, Split Rock was blasted out with a heavy charge of explosives. In addition a stretch of the adjacent Green River was re-channeled to accommodate the changes.
Wyoming Highway 374
In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Highway 30 segment from Green River west to the Peru Cutoff was redesignated Wyoming 374, the name it continues to carry today. Every month well over a thousand cars and trucks now cruise along what started out as a rough, rutted frontier trail for freight wagons and stagecoaches.
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