Photographing Rock Springs, Wyoming
Spending 35k miles a year on the road photographing America brings you to a lot of interesting places. Most are often a welcomed surprise, but this visit to Rock Springs was a forced hiatus. While driving through Wyoming on the way to a ranch further out west, my truck broke down in the middle of nowhere, an hour outside of Rock Springs. After having it towed into town, and a series of unfortunate events, I was stranded there for four days waiting for a new fuel pump to arrive.
Rock Springs sits in Sweetwater County along Interstate 80, a corridor that thousands of travelers cross every day on their way somewhere else. Many of them never leave the highway. But like a lot of towns shaped by mining, railroads, and the boom-and-bust cycles of the West, Rock Springs carries a deeper history beneath its surface.
Rock Springs, Wyoming: A Town With a Complicated Past
Rock Springs has a deeper history than many travelers realize. In 1885 the town became the site of one of the most violent anti-Chinese riots in American history when tensions between white coal miners and Chinese workers erupted into violence. Dozens of Chinese miners were killed and much of the Chinese community in town was burned to the ground. Today the streets of Rock Springs appear quiet and ordinary, but like many Western towns the landscape holds layers of history that aren’t always visible at first glance.
People of Rock Springs
Each day in Rock Springs blended into the next as the arrival of the truck part kept getting delayed, souring my mood by the hour. With little else to do, the only productive option was to keep walking around with the camera. Naturally, that led to some interesting encounters with the locals.
The first portrait below is of a lone protester I approached and asked to make his photograph. “I sure wish you would,” he replied immediately, then pulled out a gun that had been sitting on the passenger seat beside him and held it up for the picture. After a few minutes of conversation he asked what I was doing in town, so I explained the situation with my truck. Without missing a beat he asked if I was doing alright—if I had money for food and gas to get back home. It was a very genuine response, and one I hadn’t expected.
A few hours later I was still wandering around shooting when it started to rain. I ducked under the entrance of a karate dojo to wait out the storm. Not soon after, the owner arrived and asked, “Do you want to come inside and warm up?” What the hell—why not.
Once inside he launched into an impromptu oral history of Rock Springs during its oil boom years. “These streets right here were filled with nothing but drunks, whores, and pimps,” he told me. Then went on to describe finding a dead man outside his building one morning and how the girls working the streets would sometimes come inside to warm themselves on his couch during the winter months.
Today the town is quiet and well past it’s prime, like many American boomtowns after the rush has passed. Most residents now work in the nearby trona mines, but you can still feel what is was like during the days of rough bars, gambling halls, and brothels. The locals sure haven’t forgotten that history.
A Town Along The American Railroad
I never planned to spend four days in Rock Springs, but sometimes the road decides where you stop. In the end I left with a set of photographs that feel true to the town and to a larger project I’ve been working on for years — documenting the overlooked places that quietly shape the American landscape.
Explore more photographs from the America project
View more photographs from an another overlooked American mining town - Helper, Utah
Railroad tracks stretch toward downtown Rock Springs from an overpass above the line.
A small house and backyard sit quietly behind a chain-link fence in a Rock Springs neighborhood.
An aging computer sits in a storefront window along a downtown street in Rock Springs.
A protester with a gun and political flags attached to his truck.
Personal items gather across the dashboard of a pickup truck parked in Rock Springs.
A framed painting of calla lilies hangs awkwardly on the wall of a Mexican restaurant in Rock Springs.
A small dessert arrives on a diner table in Rock Springs.
An old Mercury Cougar rests beside a weathered house in Rock Springs, a scene that feels suspended somewhere between the past and present.
A roadside shrine in Rock Springs pairs a statue of Jesus with an unexpected “No Smoking” sign above it.
Reflections of winter trees and a park bench appear in a storefront window along a quiet Rock Springs street.
A neighborhood cleaners sits on a quiet corner in downtown Rock Springs.
An aging pickup truck sits along a residential street in Rock Springs beneath a web of overhead power lines.
New Life Ministries occupies a brick building along a quiet street in downtown Rock Springs.
A narrow hallway opens into the lobby at the Park Hotel in Rock Springs
A rainy street corner near the Rock Springs Coal arch in the center of town.
An older sedan sits parked along a wet street lined with boarded windows in downtown Rock Springs.
Satellite dishes and overhead wires crowd the skyline above a quiet back street in Rock Springs.
An old Chevrolet pickup truck with “Boobie Bouncer” stickers on the tailgate.
Flowers and small objects hang from a chain-link fence marking a roadside memorial.
A pickup truck moves slowly through a quiet neighborhood street in Rock Springs.
A rusted basketball hoop stands beside a long brick wall near the edge of town.
A faded Quiznos sign hangs on a dilapidated wood billboard in Rock Springs
A car rests beneath winter trees in a backyard on the edge of a Rock Springs neighborhood.
A weathered pickup truck sits at a quiet residential corner beneath a web of overhead wires in Rock Springs.
A church rises behind fences and bare winter trees along a quiet street in Rock Springs.
A pickup truck sits tucked beside a small garage at the end of a narrow driveway in Rock Springs.
A Bruce Lee poster hangs behind a thin curtain beside framed martial arts photos inside a karate dojo.
Old rail tracks cut through an industrial alley in Rock Springs, a quiet reminder of the railroad and coal economy that built the town.