Arminto - The Ghost Town

All I know about Arminto is this...The town was named after Manuel Armentam who owned the “Jack Pot” ranch which was near the station of the railroad. The railway company eventually changed the spelling.

It's now a ghost town with only a couple of families living there. Notice the old house below with the neglected curtain hanging in the window. The whole town basically looked like this.

Joe and I ate our picnic lunch in the driveway heading to this old abandoned log cabin. This was a good sized one - must have had lots of children.

518 Miles

Since we'd been on the go so much for the past several weeks, I needed, wanted and had to stay home on Friday just so I could get control of the house before heading out again. And I needed, wanted and desired some sleep in time with no particular time to roll out of bed.

So we stayed home on Friday and "cleaned our room" before we could go out and have a good time. Saturday morning came, after sleeping in a little, and I got up, made our customary picnic sandwiches and packed our chips and drinks and off we went once again.

We were heading towards a very small spot in the road called Arminto. We had been told we could find fossils here. About 15 miles from Casper, I spotted a sign for the South Bighorn/Redway National Back County Byway out of the corner of my eye. That sounded interesting and so off we went and began our approximately 100-mile, mostly gravel byway though remote open range with cows and horses and pronghorn antelope standing in the roads. Did I say remote? 5 vehicles in 3 hours!

This interpretive sign showed the trail as well as warnings for sufficient fuel and water and the need for high-clearance vehicles in places. We had a full tank of gas, lots of food and water, but no high clearance vehicle but decided that since it had not rained for awhile, we might be fine. Hey, if we had to turn around, we'd turn around and come back. Fortunately we didn't have to do so.

I will admit after almost stranding ourselves in the Utah desert last week, I was a tiny bit apprehensive about taking off on a 100+ very remote drive. But I'm so glad we did! It was fantastic. A must see when we have out of town company who wants a real adventure.

About midway along the horseshoe-shaped byway on Red Wall/Roughlock Hill, we saw where early pioneers maneuvered down a steep, rocky slope by locking their wagon wheels and sliding.

Some of the fantastic views we saw...
By the way...did I mention how remote it was?!?!?!? So for less than a half of tank of gas, some lunch meat and bread, we had a fantastic time while staying in our same county and a few miles from home.