The HOV Lane Blog

Chugwater, Wyoming. I love this town’s name, Chugwater.

As soon as my GPS unit served it up, I knew I had to be a part of the Chugwater experience.

The town is situated a stone’s throw off if I-25, just North of Cheyenne. It is a small, sleepy town of approximately 224 people (2000 U.S. Census).

From where does such a great name hail? The town was once nourished by Chugwater Creek, which some say is the town’s namesake. Those namesake sayers must be Chugwater Legend naysayers.

The Legend of Chugwater

Once upon a time, this land was looked over by an Indian Chief who begot a lazy son. Couches had yet to be invented. Potatoes had yet to be planted (around here). So, the lazy son didn’t grow up to be a ripe, old couch potato. Instead, his destiny was to become known as “The Dreamer.”

Laziness often proves to be the mother of invention, “There has to be a way to do this without working so hard.” The inception of Chugwater was no exception.

Pining away another lazy day, “The Dreamer” dreamed up a scheme for transforming his never-ending need to “hunt & gather” into a proverbial walk in the park.

“Rather than hunt down and gather up buffalo, what if I were to set a trap conveniently located at our tribal village’s doorstep?” he purportedly pondered. The lazy, tribal inventor then set forth to dream up the seemingly impossible scheme, “I’ll stampede buffalo to, and over, the chalk cliffs that tower over our town.” Eureka! It worked. The resulting rain of buffalo led to the town’s being known as “Buffalo Jumps.”

When a buffalo falls off a cliff, it apparently raises quite a rukus. The Dreamer’s buffalo trap eventually became known for the unique sound buffalo make when they hit the ground from a relatively high altitude, “water at he place where the buffalo chug.” But, at this point in the town’s history, we still didn’t have a great name for this place.

Then, there was a lucky strike!

Pioneers arrived and adopted an abbreviated version of the Indian Name. “Chugwater,” they called it.