Ames Monument

The Ames Monument is a large pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated to brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames Jr., Union Pacific Railroad financiers. It marked the highest point on the first transcontinental railroad, at 8,247 feet (2,514 m).

Richardson designed the monument midway into his career. His work was largely unknown to the public until around 1870, when he helped design Trinity Church and the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane.^{[better source needed]}

The town of Sherman rose up around it, but then Union Pacific moved its tracks to the south,^{[citation needed]} leaving Sherman to become a ghost town.

Oliver served as president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1866 to 1871, while Oakes, a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, asserted near-total control of its construction. In 1873, investigators implicated Oakes in fraud associated with financing of the railroad. Congress subsequently censured Oakes, who resigned in 1873 and died soon thereafter.

The Ames Monument is located about 20 miles (32 km) east of Laramie, Wyoming, on a wind-blown, treeless summit south of Interstate 80 at the Vedauwoo exit. The monument is a four-sided, random ashlar pyramid, 60 feet (18 m) square at the base and 60 feet (18 m) high, constructed of light-colored native granite. The pyramid features an interior passage, now sealed, alongside the perimeter of the structure's base.

American architect H. H. Richardson designed the pyramid, which includes two 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) bas-relief portraits of the Ames brothers by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the east and west sides of the pyramid's top. Saint-Gaudens chiseled the bas-reliefs from Quincy, Massachusetts, granite. The north side, which at one time faced the railroad tracks, displays 1-foot-high (0.30 m) letters grouted in the granite noting: "In Memory of Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames". The monument is one of a half-dozen or more projects that Richardson did for the Ames family.

The pyramid is one of only two examples of Richardson's work west of the Mississippi River, the other being the Isaac H. Lionberger House in St. Louis less than 2 miles (3.2 km) from the river. Richardson's structure employed rough-hewn granite boulders in its construction. The monument's stones at the base are 5 by 8 feet (1.5 by 2.4 m) and weigh thousands of pounds each. The pyramid narrows from the base to become progressively smaller towards the top at a ratio of four inches to the foot (1:3).

The reasoning for the building of the monument was H.H Richard's desire to honor Oliver and Oakes Ames for building and completing the railroads: specifically, the Union Pacific Railroad, part of the country's first transcontinental railroad, which included a route through the mountains of Laramie and northern Utah.