During my morning radio show, I got a text off the show app from a gentleman in Iowa Flats Wyoming. Have you ever heard of such a place?

There is nothing there now but farmers' fields and a few farmhouses and barns. But there was once a little community in the most unusual area.

Turns out I have driven by it a few times but I just did not know it.

To find it drive to one of my favorite places in the state, the tiny town of Chugwater.

Then head up 313, which takes you to the plateau above the town. American Indians used to chase buffalo off those high bluffs. The animals would fall to the river below making a loud CHUG sound when they hit. That is why the Indians named the area Chugwater.

Photo By Tim Mandese
Photo By Tim Mandese
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Once on 313, on the top, you are in Goshen County. It's a beautiful drive up there.

Go until you find road 213 and make a right. The corner of 213 and road 24 is where the little town used to be.

Most of the houses on the Flats were modest as was that of promotor Robert Kletzing. As suggested earlier, promotion was subject to exageration. Pomotors, as observed by Charles A. Dalich in this "Dry Farming Promotion in Eastern Montana (1907-1916),"  (Dry Farming Wyoming Tails & Trails).

Corbis via Getty Images
Corbis via Getty Images
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A possible origin for the name of the little community was when the Meeker Brothers came in 1910 from Iowa and each proved their claim on the same day in 1913, each witnessing for the other.

Visit Dry Farming Wyoming Tails & Trails website for photos of the little community.

You won't find the town today. But you will find a beautiful drive up and over then down the other side of that plateau.

It's amazing up there when the fields of sunflowers are in bloom.

THE HISTORY & REBIRTH OF CHUGWATER WYOMING

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