ghost town - Winton, WY - THE DAINTY SQUID

Throwing it back to June’s massive road trip again today. Check out the bottom of this post for links to previous posts.

After a short stop at a neat old cemetery and some ooh-ing and ahhh–ing at wild horses, our next stop was the ghost town of Winton. Just to reiterate, we really went into this trip with basically no plans at all. The general idea was that we were going to drive to Phoenix, Arizona and that we’d be taking interstate 80. Beyond that, we didn’t have any stops planned. While that sometimes leads to missing cool stuff, it’s also just really fun to accidentally stumble upon places.

I managed to find Winton while searching for ghost towns near where we were right before losing service. We really had no idea what to expect as we drove twenty some minutes out of our way down a bumpy dirt road but Winton at least sounded like it was worth checking out.

The road progressively got worse and worse until we finally spotted the ruins of a building. The road leading up to the building was far too deteriorated for our rental car so we pulled off, parked, and grabbed our camera gear.

Rusted out old car half buried in the dirt in the ghost town of Winton, Wyoming.

Established in the 1920s, Winton was a small mining town with roughly 700 residents of all different nationalities. The mines closed in 1952 and that began the downfall of the town. Over the next few years residents began moving to nearby towns. Sixty odd years later, Winton is little more than ruins. There are a couple of standing buildings, only one with a roof (that I personally saw) but the majority of what’s left is rubble.

When we first pulled up, I was a bit disappointed. From the car I could only see one building and it was covered in scribbles of spray paint. I think at this point I’ve made it abundantly clear how I feel about vandalism on ruins. Go paint something else! It felt like a long drive out there for something like that. Still, it was something to photograph and somewhere to stretch our legs.

As we began to explore I realized just how awesome Winton was. There was far more than meets the eye initially. More ruins than you could shake a stick at! I have no idea how long we were there but it felt like every few minutes we were discovering a spot where a building once stood.

We explored until we were too hungry to go on, leaving knowing that there was still lots left to discover. I love leaving a place wanting more. It gives me an excuse to come back, and makes everything feel a bit more magical and mysterious.

Until next time, Winton! xoxo