DIVIDED PROSPECTS
THERE IS A ROAD LEADING OUT OF EVANSTON, Wyoming, that is known as the Road to Nowhere. It runs through dry sagebrush bluffs along the edge of Bear River State Park, a green corridor through the rolling high desert just outside of town. Just under 12,000 people live in Evanston, which lies in Uinta County, near the state’s southwestern border. There is a small downtown surrounded by a smattering of residential streets lined with modest, single-family homes. Beyond that, on the windy and treeless outskirts of town, is a Walmart, chain restaurants and a few hotels. To the north, eighteen-wheelers rush by along Interstate 80 on their way to Salt Lake City, while to the south, Highway 150 leads to the Uinta Mountains, a blue smudge across the sky.
Evanston grew up alongside the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 and became a thriving oil and gas town during the late 1970s and early ’80s. But by the mid-1980s, the boom began to sputter out, and many of the long-established businesses in downtown Evanston closed their doors, including Blyth & Fargo, one of the West’s first department stores, which had operated for 107 years. Over the next two decades, the town’s economy fluctuated as the price of oil rose and fell again and again. Since 2015, the last major oil downturn, Evanston’s economy has worsened; the average salary in Uinta County has been consistently $4,000 to $5,000 lower than the Wyoming average. Storefronts have boarded up, and oil workers have left for Texas. But those who remain love Evanston, with its slow pace and family-oriented feel, its homegrown celebrations like Cowboy Days and Cinco de Mayo, the “Fresh Air, Freedom and Fun” heralded in Evanston’s official slogan. They like the low taxes, the nearby mountains, and the fact that Evanston is not California. The town leans Republican, and the few Democrats are mostly moderate. It is a live-and-let-live kind of place, one longtime resident told me. “We all got along OK,” she said. “Or, we did.”
A few miles outside of Evanston, the Road to Nowhere ends in a patch of open land. An ambitious new facility was supposed to be built here and help lift Evanston out of its
