Medicine Bow

Town in Carbon County, southern Wyoming, on the Medicine Bow River, 80 km/50 mi northwest of Laramie; population (2000) 300.

Medicine Bow developed as a water-pumping station for the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1870s, but is now a supply centre in a region known for oil extraction and livestock. Deposits of oil, magnesium sulphate, and bentonite have been found nearby. Medicine Bow is largely indistinguishable from other local towns, but was immortalized by the writer Owen Wister, who rode for the Two Bar ranch here and used it and its surrounding forest as the setting for his best-selling novel The Virginian (1902). Beyond the town, the Medicine Bow National Forest covers 5,760 sq km/2,224 sq mi of southeastern Wyoming. The forest is divided into four separate sections. The Douglas District, its northern portion, is in the Laramie Mountains, with its highest point at Laramie Peak (3,133 m/10,272 ft). The Haydn District lies in the Sierra Madre Mountains on the Continental Divide and west of the town of Encampment. The Pole Mountain area is situated east of Laramie. The fourth and final section is in the Medicine Bow Mountains, which reach their greatest elevation at Medicine Bow Peak (3,664 m/12,013 ft).