10 Wyoming Roadside Oddities Worth Pulling Over For

Wyoming is a long-drive state. A cross-state trip can put a few hundred miles on the truck in a day, and the entertainment value of those miles depends entirely on what you stop for. The state has an overlooked density of roadside oddities, the kind of unexpected sights that justify a 15-minute pullover and a few photos and a story for the rest of the drive.

This is the working list of Wyoming roadside curiosities that earn the stop. Some are official monuments. Some are private buildings the owners are happy to have you photograph from the highway shoulder. One is a town that put an eight-foot jackalope in its town square. All are real, all can be seen from public ground, all reward the detour. If you’re only stopping for two, make them the Smith Mansion and the Lincoln Memorial Head.

1. Devils Tower National Monument, Hulett

Where: On WY-24, which leaves US-14 north of Sundance, in Crook County in the northeast corner of the state. The park road starts 9 miles south of Hulett.

What you’re looking at: An 867-foot vertical rock tower that rises out of the surrounding pine forest. Geologically, it’s the eroded core of an ancient igneous intrusion (technically a phonolite porphyry) that pushed up through sedimentary rock and resisted erosion long after the surrounding rock washed away. The vertical columnar jointing is the visual signature.

The story: Theodore Roosevelt designated Devils Tower the first National Monument in American history on September 24, 1906, using the new Antiquities Act. The Lakota name for the formation is Mato Tipila (Bear Lodge), and the tower remains an active sacred site for the Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and other Plains nations. Pop culture knows it from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), where Steven Spielberg cast it as the alien-contact landing site.

The visit: Entrance passes run $15 to $25 depending on how you arrive, valid 7 days, and the park does not take cash. Trails range from the 1.3-mile paved Tower Trail (loop around the base, easy) to the longer Red Beds Trail. Climbers register with the park; about 5,000 to 6,000 come each year. A voluntary climbing closure runs every June out of respect for American Indian ceremonial use.

2. The Smith Mansion, Wapiti

Where: US-14/16/20 about 24 miles west of Cody, on the route to the East Entrance of Yellowstone, in the Wapiti valley. Visible from the highway.

What you’re looking at: A hand-built wooden tower house of five stories or more, with stairs, balconies, and porches at every level, built from local logs by one man over about two decades.

The story: Francis Lee Smith, a Cody engineer, started building in the early 1970s without blueprints, intending it as a family home. He never stopped building. The house grew taller and more elaborate every year, with each level added on top of the last. He fell to his death while working on the structure in 1992; the building was still unfinished. His daughter, Sunny Smith-Larsen, led preservation efforts and occasional tours until the property was sold in 2019.

The visit: Free to view from the highway. The mansion sits on private land; respect the boundary. The exterior is photogenic at any time of day.

3. Hell’s Half Acre, west of Casper

Where: US-20/26 about 40 miles west of Casper in Natrona County, on the way to Shoshoni and the Wind River country.

What you’re looking at: About 320 acres of severely eroded badlands, full of deep gullies, hoodoos, and pinnacles in shades of white, pink, and pale orange. The site is dramatically out of character with the surrounding flat sage prairie, which is part of the appeal: you drive across hours of nothing and then this opens up beside the highway.

The story: The badlands are an exposed section of the Wind River Formation, carved by erosion into ravines and caves, on land Natrona County has owned since 1924. It was a roadside attraction for decades; the motel and restaurant at the site closed in 2005 and were torn down, and a fence kept visitors out for years after. The 1997 film Starship Troopers used Hell’s Half Acre as the planet Klendathu.

The visit: The site reopened in May 2026 with a new viewing platform and picnic tables. The terrain below the rim is steep and exposed.

4. Tree in the Rock, I-80

Where: In the median of I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie, about 30 miles west of Cheyenne, with a small parking area between the lanes.

What you’re looking at: A limber pine growing out of a crack in a single granite boulder. A plaque on the rock says the tree was already growing from the crevice when the Union Pacific built its original main line fifty feet south of the rock in 1868.

The story: Stories about railroad crews sparing the tree are often repeated and hard to pin down. What is documented is that the tree became a favorite subject of early postcards and photographs, and that the interstate now splits around it. The protective fence and the steel cable cinched around the boulder were put up by the Union Pacific at the request of Wyoming’s Historical Landmark Commission.

The visit: Free. Park in the median and walk up to the rock.

5. The Lincoln Memorial Head, I-80

Where: Summit Rest Area on I-80 (Exit 323), about 10 miles east of Laramie, where the interstate reaches its high point at 8,640 feet.

What you’re looking at: A bronze head of Abraham Lincoln more than 12 feet tall on a tall Wyoming granite pedestal. Robert Russin, a University of Wyoming art professor, sculpted it for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth in 1959. It first stood at the old Lincoln Highway’s summit on Sherman Hill and was moved to the I-80 rest area in 1969, after the interstate was finished.

The story: The Lincoln Highway, often called America’s first transcontinental highway, was officially dedicated on October 31, 1913, and ran from Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. Its highest point was on Sherman Hill, where the head first stood. Russin’s bronze became one of the more recognizable roadside monuments in the West.

The visit: Free. Combine with the Ames Monument (entry 6) for a single Sherman Summit oddities loop.

6. The Ames Monument, Buford

Where: Just south of I-80 near Buford, between Cheyenne and Laramie. Take Exit 329 (Vedauwoo Road) and follow Monument Road about 2 miles south.

What you’re looking at: A 60-foot granite pyramid in the middle of nothing, designed by H.H. Richardson (one of the most important American architects of the 19th century) and completed by the Union Pacific in 1882 to honor the Ames brothers, financiers of the transcontinental railroad. The pyramid was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.

The story: Oakes and Oliver Ames put up much of the capital that built the Union Pacific Railroad through Wyoming. The pyramid stands at 8,247 feet, the highest point on the original transcontinental railroad route, where the rail town of Sherman once stood. In 1901 the Union Pacific moved its line several miles south, leaving the monument isolated in empty country, where it remains. Richardson designed it with sculpted reliefs of both Ames brothers (executed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, no less). The site is desolate, photogenic, and almost always empty of other visitors.

The visit: Free, open daily sunrise to sunset. The setting (a 60-foot pyramid alone in high prairie above 8,000 feet, with no other structures visible) is the actual draw.

7. Jackalope Square, Douglas

Where: Town square in Douglas, Wyoming, about 50 miles east of Casper on I-25.

What you’re looking at: An eight-foot jackalope statue, plus jackalopes on the city seal, the entrance signs, and plenty else in town. Douglas was billing itself as the “Jackalope Capital of the World” by the late 1940s.

The story: The jackalope (a horned-rabbit hoax) is credited to Douglas taxidermists Ralph and Douglas Herrick. After a rabbit hunt, a dead jackrabbit landed on the shop floor beside a pair of deer antlers, and the brothers mounted it that way. Ralph Herrick put the date at 1934 in a New York Times interview the city reprints; other accounts say 1932. The mounts sold, they made more, and the jackalope is now found on souvenir shop shelves across the West. Douglas owns the origin story and leans into it. Its jackalope hunting licenses, the city says, are valid only between midnight and 2 a.m. on June 31, for hunters with an IQ under 72.

The visit: Free. The statue stands in Jackalope Square downtown; another is at the Visitors Center, and a thirteen-foot cutout watches from a hillside near the north entrance from I-25. Hunting licenses come from the Visitors Center.

8. The Fossil Cabin, Medicine Bow

Where: The Medicine Bow Museum in Medicine Bow, on US-30/287 between Laramie and Rawlins. The cabin stood beside the highway near Como Bluff for 94 years before it was moved about seven miles to the museum in May 2026.

What you’re looking at: A small cabin built from fossilized dinosaur bones gathered at Como Bluff, 5,796 of them by the traditional count.

The story: Como Bluff set off Wyoming’s first dinosaur rush. In 1877 railroad men wrote to Yale paleontologist Othniel Marsh about huge bones eroding out of the bluff; Marsh sent crews west, and his rival Edward Drinker Cope soon followed, one front of what became known as the Bone Wars. Thomas Boylan, who homesteaded nearby in 1908, collected bones from the bluff for years and built the cabin in 1932 as a roadside attraction for his gas station on the Lincoln Highway. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! billed it as the “World’s Oldest Cabin.”

The visit: The cabin now sits at the Medicine Bow Museum; check the museum’s hours before you go.

9. Sinks Canyon, Lander

Where: Sinks Canyon State Park, on Wyoming Highway 131 just south of Lander.

What you’re looking at: A river that disappears into a cave (the Sinks) and reemerges from a spring (the Rise) several hundred yards downstream. The Middle Fork of the Popo Agie runs into fractures in the Madison Limestone at the Sinks, then reemerges at the Rise as a calm trout pool.

The story: A geological curiosity created by limestone karst dissolution. A U.S. Geological Survey dye test confirmed that the water entering the Sinks is the water that emerges at the Rise, and a later study timed the dye at about 2.8 hours for a straight-line distance of only about 400 meters. Both found more water coming out at the Rise than going in, and about 3 degrees Celsius warmer; the reason is still not settled. The park runs a visitor center, open May through September.

The visit: No day-use fee; camping costs extra. Visitor center, interpretive panels, easy walk between the Sinks viewpoint and the Rise viewpoint. You can watch and feed the big trout in the Rise pool, but fishing there is not allowed.

10. Vedauwoo, east of Laramie

Where: Off I-80 at Exit 329 (Vedauwoo Road), east of Laramie, in the Medicine Bow National Forest.

What you’re looking at: An expanse of rounded granite domes, hoodoos, and bizarre eroded boulders in the Sherman Mountains, with weathered cracks and overhangs that make it a celebrated crack-climbing area.

The story: Vedauwoo (pronounced “VEE-da-voo”) is from the Arapaho word bito’o’wu, meaning “earth-born.” The Sherman Granite is roughly 1.4 billion years old, exposed by long erosion of overlying sedimentary rock. The strange weathered shapes (fungus-like overhangs, balanced boulders, narrow slot canyons between the formations) are a textbook example of granite weathering in a high, dry climate.

The visit: $5 day-use fee. Multiple parking areas with short trails into the rocks. Family-friendly scrambling on the lower formations; serious technical climbing on the higher faces. Respect any closures and signed boundaries.

A Wyoming oddities road trip

The 10 stops above can be combined into a 3-day cross-state oddities run:

Day 1 (I-80 corridor): Cheyenne to Laramie. Hit Tree in the Rock, the Lincoln Memorial Head at Sherman Summit, the Ames Monument at Buford, and Vedauwoo. Overnight in Laramie. About 60 miles of driving with stops; full day with photo time.

Day 2 (cross-state): Laramie north through Casper to Cody. Stop at the Fossil Cabin in Medicine Bow and Hell’s Half Acre west of Casper; add Jackalope Square in Douglas if you’re committed (a round trip of about 100 miles east from Casper). Overnight in Cody. About 360 miles of driving without Douglas.

Day 3 (Cody to Devils Tower): Cody to Wapiti for the Smith Mansion (about 24 miles west of town and back); then a long drive across the north of the state to Devils Tower. Overnight at Devils Tower KOA or back in a Black Hills town. About 360 miles.

That covers nine of the ten in three days. Sinks Canyon outside Lander needs a fourth day, which also lets you slow down the I-80 corridor stops.

Gear for a Wyoming oddities road trip

A self-drive loop like the 3-day route above covers more than 700 miles across remote high-plains country. What earns its weight in the truck:

• Klean Kanteen insulated 20 oz, services can be far apart on some stretches
• Leatherman Wave Plus, for the unexpected roadside problem
• DeLorme Wyoming Atlas & Gazetteer , a large-format paper atlas of the state’s back roads and public land. The paper backup for when the phone loses signal on a gravel road.

Related reading on this site

• Cody, Wyoming: Buffalo Bill’s town and the gateway to Yellowstone
• Cheyenne, Wyoming: state capital and Frontier Days host
• Laramie, Wyoming: railroad town and university capital
• Lander, Wyoming: Wind River gateway and outdoor recreation hub
• Pinedale, Wyoming: Wind River gateway and Mountain Man Museum
• Wyoming hot springs you can actually soak in: fees, seasons, access
• 9 classic Wyoming dive bars still worth the stop
• Wyoming’s 9 best scenic byways
• Wyoming ghost towns: South Pass City and the others

Further reading

• National Park Service Devils Tower visitor information and climbing regulations.
• Stephanie Lowe, “The World’s Oldest Building: The Fossil Cabin at Como Bluff,” WyoHistory.org (2014).