Fast Facts
- Population
- ~59,038 (2020)
- Typical visiting season
- April–May or Sept–Oct
- One Unusual Stat
- 1922 refinery here: largest-volume gasoline plant on Earth
- Elevation
- 5,120 ft
What to Know Before You Arrive
Fort Caspar started in 1859 as a trading post and toll bridge on the Oregon Trail, and it got its lasting name in 1865, after 2nd Lieutenant Caspar Collins was killed near the post during the Battle of Platte Bridge Station and the Army renamed the fort in his honor. The Army specifically used his given name, Caspar, so the post wouldn’t be confused with an existing fort in Colorado named for his father, Colonel William O. Collins — that one became Fort Collins, and still carries the name today. The city that arrived two decades later was named for the nearby fort, by then a ruin, and ended up spelled Casper instead. The City of Casper’s Fort Caspar Museum history page says the spelling traces to the Army: a November 21, 1865 order from Major General John Pope renamed Platte Bridge Station “Fort Casper,” misspelling the lieutenant’s name. Wikipedia’s article on the city gives a different account, a typo during the town’s official registration. Either way, the fort and the city carrying its name have never quite matched spellings.
Oil is the reason any of this grew into a real city. Prospectors struck the Salt Creek Oil Field forty miles north in 1889, and Casper got its first refinery in 1895 — a 100-barrel-a-day operation built by Mark Shannon and a group of Pennsylvania investors. The boom that followed was fast: the town held 2,639 people in 1910 and 16,619 by 1930, more than 600 percent growth in two decades. By 1922, the Standard Oil–controlled refinery here was turning 1.35 million barrels of crude a month into 615,000 barrels of gasoline, the largest-volume gasoline refinery on Earth at the time — which is how a railroad stop in central Wyoming earned the nickname the Oil City. Most of that industry is gone now: Texaco closed its refinery in 1982 and the old Standard Oil plant, by then called Amoco, shut down in 1991, though Sinclair still runs a refinery east of town that started up as the White Eagle refinery in 1923.
Casper sits on the North Platte River at 5,120 feet, Wyoming’s second-largest city with just under 60,000 people, and it’s also the spot where the Oregon, California and Mormon Pioneer trails and the Pony Express route all converged along the same river crossing. Casper Mountain rises about 3,000 feet directly south of downtown, which means the city gets both ends of Wyoming weather in the same year: hot, dry summers below and a working ski area above in winter. It’s also, unusually, one of the windier cities in the country — a 12.7 mph average, with regular spring gusts of 40 to 50 mph.
The Road Trip Stop
The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center is the anchor, and it’s free. Perched on a bluff northwest of downtown, the 11,000-square-foot center opened August 9, 2002, run as a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management, the City of Casper and the National Historic Trails Center Foundation, and it’s built entirely around the four trails that converged near here: the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Pioneer Trail and the Pony Express route. The exhibits don’t just describe the trails, they put you inside them.
Budget the time
- 60–90 minutes covers the main exhibits, including a virtual river crossing in a covered wagon, a hand-cart pull modeled on the Mormon Trail, and the chance to hoist the roughly 65-pound pack a California gold-rush miner actually carried.
- Check the hours before you go. The center is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Sunday, Monday and major federal holidays.
- Pair it with Fort Caspar Museum, about ten minutes away, where the actual 1860s trading post and toll bridge this whole story starts from has been reconstructed on its original site.
- RVs and tour buses have their own parking at the center, which matters on a highway corridor where finding a spot for a rig downtown isn’t always simple.
Neighborhoods
Downtown Historic District
The civic and commercial core, listed on the National Register in 2016: brick storefronts built between the 1890s and 1970s, most of them still in use rather than preserved behind glass.
Old Yellowstone District
A former industrial and rail corridor next to downtown that spent decades as neon motels and a working oil refinery, then went quiet when the refinery closed in 1991 and the trains stopped in 1995. Today the old refinery site is a golf course and the old rail line is the paved Casper Rail Trail, and the district itself has become the city’s densest strip of breweries, restaurants and David Street Station’s outdoor plaza.
South Wolcott Street Historic District
Twenty-two blocks of early-1900s houses south of downtown — Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, a red-brick estate with its own port cochere — listed on the National Register since 1988 as one of the city’s best-preserved residential pockets.
Casper Mountain
The 8,130-foot mountain that rises straight out of the south side of town, with a small ski area, miles of public trail on mostly private land, and a summer bluegrass festival at Beartrap Meadow. It’s less a neighborhood than the backdrop the rest of Casper lives under.
The Food Stop
Bosco’s Italian Restaurant opened January 5, 1974, though the building has fed Casper since 1962, when it was the Tip Top Cafe. Susan Bosco, whose mother ran the original diner, built it into an Italian menu using her father’s family recipes, and fifty years later she’s still running it alongside her husband, son and grandson. The chicken noodle soup on Tuesdays is a holdover from the Tip Top days. 847 East A Street.
For something more upscale, Silver Fox Restaurant & Lounge has served chef-driven steaks and fresh seafood since 1980, out on Energy Lane — a street name that’s its own quiet joke about what built this town. Reserve ahead on weekends.
6 breweries within 10 miles of Casper, one of them a brewpub with a kitchen.
See all 6
- Stahoo's Brewery and Taproom1015 E C St, Casper
- Frontier Brewing Company and Taproom150 W 2nd St, Casperproduction site*
- Gruner Brothers Brewing1301 Wilkins Cir, Casperproduction site*
- Mountain Hops Brewhouse612 N Beverly St, Casperproduction site*
- Oil City Beer Company4155 Legion LN, Casperproduction site*
- Skull Tree Brewing1530 Burlington Ave, Casperproduction site*
*Check before you go. This list says what the source records as open and where it is — nothing more. Opening hours, whether a kitchen is serving, and whether anywhere suits your family are not in this data and change without notice. A production site may have no public room at all. Please confirm with the venue.
Brewpub locations from Open Brewery DB (MIT)
The Home Teams
Casper Spuds
Independence League BaseballA collegiate summer team playing wood-bat baseball over a roughly 50-game season, late May through mid-August, built to give top college players a look from professional scouts. Mike Lansing Field itself is a 2,500-seat grass-field park built in 2002 and named for Wyoming native Mike Lansing, a nine-year big-league infielder; USA Today singled it out in 2010 for its intimate, small-grandstand feel near the North Platte. The Spuds won the 2024 Independence League championship series over the Fremont Moo.
Casper College Thunderbirds
NJCAAJunior-college sports at the school that’s trained Wyoming students since 1945: men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, rodeo, and men’s and women’s soccer added in 2020. Tickets are cheap and the gym is a short walk from downtown.
Wikipedia’s article on Wyoming says the state lacks any major professional sports teams. Denver, about 225 miles south of Casper in a straight line, has teams in four major leagues. What Casper has instead is a real summer-collegiate season and a junior college that takes its rodeo and basketball seriously.
Day Trips
| Destination | Time | Distance | How we got it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independence Rock State Historic Site | 1 hr 15 min | 60 mi | routed |
| A 130-foot granite dome beside the Sweetwater River that pioneers on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails called the “Register of the Desert,” after Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet found so many names carved, painted and smeared in buffalo grease across its face that he coined the nickname himself in 1840. It covers 170 acres, and names carved into it date back to at least 1850. | |||
| Alcova Reservoir | 1 hr | 41 mi | routed |
| A reservoir on the North Platte with beaches, boat ramps and Fremont Canyon, a narrow, mile-plus gorge with walls hundreds of feet high. A short Dinosaur Trail near the water shows off real Triassic and Jurassic-age tracks. | |||
| Hell’s Half Acre | 58 min | 47 mi | routed |
| A 320-acre badlands scar of ravines and hoodoos that Native peoples once used as a buffalo jump. A 20th-century marketing mix-up is the reason it isn’t still called “Devil’s Kitchen” — boosters ordered postcards with that name and got “Hell’s Half Acre” back instead, and it stuck. It stood in for an alien planet in the 1997 film Starship Troopers. | |||
| Douglas & the Jackalope | 58 min | 51 mi | routed |
| Home of the jackalope, the antlered rabbit a local taxidermist stitched together in 1932 and Wyoming later made its official mythical creature, plus the Wyoming State Fair every August. The town leans into the joke all the way down to hunting licenses for a jackalope season that officially runs one day, June 31st — a date chosen because it doesn’t exist on the calendar. | |||
Routed figures are computed over map data at free-flowing speeds, between map points rather than street addresses, so a real drive runs longer.
Distances routed by OSRM and places geocoded by Nominatim, over map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
Worth a Weekend
7 more Highway Heads places lie within about 180 miles of Casper in a straight line — far enough that most are a night away rather than an afternoon.
- CheyenneWyomingabout 140 mi
- Mount Rushmore National MemorialSouth Dakotaabout 160 mi
- DeadwoodSouth Dakotaabout 170 mi
- CodyWyomingabout 180 mi
- Estes ParkColoradoabout 180 mi
- Rapid CitySouth Dakotaabout 180 mi
- Rocky Mountain National ParkColoradoabout 180 mi
Annual Events Nearby
Within 60 miles of Casper, nearest first.
What is on, and when
Central Wyoming Fair & Rodeo — some details below are unconfirmedfairCasper
- Usually
- July, over several days
- Held at
- Central Wyoming Fairgrounds
* We could not confirm: the details beyond the month it usually runs. Check their site before you go.
Wyoming State FairfairDouglas
- Usually
- August, over several days
- Held at
- Wyoming State Fairgrounds
- Since
- 1886
This is a list of what is near you, not a recommendation of any of it. Events are listed by the month they usually fall in, because that is what we hold — we do not publish dates, and a month is not a promise. Check the organiser before you plan around one. One entry is marked with an asterisk: we could not confirm part of what is listed, and the note under it says which part. Opening times, line-ups and ticketing change without notice, so check the venue’s or organiser’s own site — every name above links to it.
Practical Road Trip Info
Budget one full day for the Trails Center, Fort Caspar and a walk through the Old Yellowstone District, or two if you want Casper Mountain or a day trip without rushing. Casper sits on I-25, north of Denver, Colorado, according to Visit Casper, the area’s convention and visitors bureau.
Weather swings hard here. Summers are hot and dry, with a record high of 104°F hit three times, most recently in 2006; winters are genuinely cold, with a record low of −42°F set in December 2022. Casper is also one of the windier cities in the country — a 12.7 mph average, with regular spring gusts of 40 to 50 mph — so don’t trust a loose hat or an RV awning at any time of year.
Casper Mountain Road climbs fast out of town toward the ski area and the Beartrap Meadow festival grounds, and it can ice up well after the streets below have cleared. Casper Mountain Road is Wyoming Highway 251. Wyoming 511, the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s official road condition and traffic information reporting app (wyoroad.info), has a conditions lookup by route that includes WY251, so check it before heading up.
Downtown Casper has a self-guided historical walking map that Visit Casper offers as a download; the same page puts David Street Station at the heart of downtown, hosting events year-round. For the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, the Bureau of Land Management’s page lists RV and bus parking.
4 public campgrounds within 25 miles of Casper, all first-come rather than bookable. Public campgrounds run by federal agencies. State-park and private campgrounds are not included.
The Local Debate
Family-Friendly
National Historic Trails Interpretive Center
Built for hands-on learning: kids can pull a handcart, cross a virtual river in a covered wagon, and try hoisting a pack sized for a gold-rush miner. Free, and built to survive a short attention span.
Fort Caspar’s stockade
A real fort kids can walk into and climb around, not just look at from behind a rope.
Tate Geological Museum
Dee the mammoth is the kind of thing every kid remembers, and admission is free.
David Street Station
A splash pad in summer and an ice rink in winter, right downtown, for the child who has had enough museums for one day.
Plan Your Visit
National Historic Trails Interpretive Center
- Address
- 1501 N Poplar St, Casper, WY 82601
- Hours
- Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; closed Sunday, Monday and major federal holidays
- Price
- Free
We checked opening hours, fees and operating status on 2026-09-22. These change without notice — confirm with nhtcf.org, thenic.org, caspercollege.edu, casperwy.gov, wyoroad.info, visitcasper.com and blm.gov the week you travel.
Sources — 38 claims, 37 checked against the source on 2026-09-22
| Claim | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Casper settled 1887, incorporated 1888 as a railroad stopping point; 2020 census population 59,038; wind climate details; temperature extremes (−42°F Dec. 2022, 104°F record); “Oil City” nickname; oil discovered at Salt Creek 1889; first refinery 1895; population growth to 11,447 by 1920 | Casper, Wyoming — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Fort Caspar founded 1859 as trading post/toll bridge; named for 2nd Lt. Caspar Collins, killed 1865 at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station; Army used his given name to differentiate from a Colorado fort named for his father; reconstructed 1936 from Collins' 1863 sketches; replica Mormon ferry operated 1847–1849 | Fort Caspar — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Fort Collins, Colorado named for Colonel William O. Collins | Fort Collins, Colorado — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Alternate account: the Army itself misspelled the lieutenant's name when renaming Platte Bridge Station; Casper founded June 1888 with railroad arrival; oil development by Cy Iba and Mark Shannon; population 2,639 (1910) to 16,619 (1930), over 600% growth in 20 years | Casper, Wyoming — WyoHistory.org | Checked |
| First Casper refinery opened March 5, 1895, 100 barrels/day; Standard Oil-controlled Midwest refinery became world's largest-volume gasoline refinery by 1922 (1.35 million barrels crude/month into 615,000 barrels gasoline); Texaco refinery closed 1981–1982; Amoco (former Standard Oil) refinery closed 1991; White Eagle/Sinclair refinery started 1923 | Refining Wyoming's Oil for 120 Years — WyoHistory.org | Checked |
| Salt Creek Oil Field: first well struck by Philip M. Shannon 1889; Shannon built Casper refinery 1895 | Salt Creek Oil Field — Wikipedia | Checked |
| National Historic Trails Interpretive Center: 4 trails (Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer, Pony Express); BLM/City of Casper/Foundation partnership; opened Aug. 9, 2002; 11,000 sq ft; address 1501 N. Poplar St. | National Historic Trails Interpretive Center — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Trails Center hours: Tue–Sat 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m., closed Sun/Mon and federal holidays; exhibits include virtual river crossing, handcart pull, ~65-lb miner's pack; RV/bus parking; free admission | National Historic Trails Center Foundation | Checked monitored · 2026-09-22 |
| Trails Center address and free admission | BLM — National Historic Trails Interpretive Center | Checked |
| Fort Caspar Museum: address 4001 Fort Caspar Rd; summer hours (May 1–Sept 30) daily 8 a.m.–5 p.m.; winter hours Tue–Sat; summer admission $5 adults/$4 seniors & youth/$3 ages 6–12, free under 5; winter admission halved | Fort Caspar Museum — City of Casper | Checked monitored · 2026-09-22 |
| Casper Mountain: 8,130 ft elevation, rises ~3,000 ft above Casper; Hogadon Ski Area; Garden Creek Falls at the north base; Beartrap Meadow summer bluegrass festival; Crimson Dawn solstice gathering | Casper Mountain — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Nicolaysen Art Museum: founded 1967 as Gallery A; Gerald Nicolaysen paid off the gallery's mortgage in 1977; current building is the former Casper Lumber Company building, once the city's first electric company; renovated 330 days for $2.6 million, reopened April 6, 1990 | History of The Nicolaysen — thenic.org | Checked |
| Nicolaysen Art Museum current hours (Tue–Sat 10 a.m.–5 p.m., closed Sun/Mon) and mission | The Nicolaysen Art Museum — official site | Checked monitored · 2026-09-22 |
| Casper Downtown Historic District listed on the National Register Oct. 17, 2016, bounded by David, B/C, Beech and Midwest | Casper Downtown Historic District — Wikipedia | Checked |
| South Wolcott Street Historic District: 61 acres, ~22 residential blocks, 154 contributing buildings, listed 1988 | South Wolcott Street Historic District — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Old Yellowstone District: former refinery closed 1991 became a golf course; former rail line (service ended 1995) became the Casper Rail Trail; David Street Station and new breweries/restaurants | Old Yellowstone District — Livability.com | Checked |
| Casper College founded 1945, Wyoming's first junior college; Thunderbirds NJCAA athletics including soccer added 2020; Tate Geological Museum free and open to the public | Casper College — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Tate Geological Museum hours (Mon–Sat 10 a.m.–4 p.m.) and free admission; Dee the mammoth called the world's largest and most complete mounted Columbian mammoth, ~11,600 years old | Tate Geological Museum — Casper College | Checked monitored · 2026-09-22 |
| College National Finals Rodeo held at the Ford Wyoming Center in Casper every June since 1999 | College National Finals Rodeo — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Mike Lansing Field: built 2002, 2,500-seat grass field, home to the Casper Spuds (Independence League Baseball) and Casper Oilers (American Legion); named for MLB infielder Mike Lansing; USA Today 2010 feature | Mike Lansing Field — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Independence Rock: ~60 mi southwest of Casper on WY-220; ~130 ft tall, 170 acres; Oregon/California/Mormon trail landmark; Father De Smet's 1840 “Register of the Desert” name; earliest carved names from the 1850s; National Historic Landmark 1961 | Independence Rock — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Hell's Half Acre: ~40 mi west of Casper on US 20/26; 320 acres of badlands; used historically as a buffalo jump; “Devil's Kitchen” postcard-naming mix-up story; filming location for Starship Troopers (1997) | Hell's Half Acre (Wyoming) — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Douglas, Wyoming: jackalope origin (Douglas Herrick, 1932), official state mythical creature, Wyoming State Fair every August, distance from Casper roughly an hour | Douglas, Wyoming — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Bosco's Italian Restaurant opened Jan. 5, 1974; building was the Tip Top Cafe from 1962; Susan Bosco's family history; address 847 E. A St. | A family affair: 50 years of Bosco's Italian Restaurant — Oil City News | Checked |
| Silver Fox Restaurant & Lounge founded 1980; address 3422 Energy Lane; chef Bernard Ambrosino since 2016 | Silver Fox Restaurant & Lounge — official site | Checked |
| Casper ranks 7th among U.S. windiest cities, 12.7 mph average annual wind speed | The 10 Windiest Cities in the United States — WorldAtlas | Checked |
| Alcova Reservoir distance/drive time from Casper, Fremont Canyon and Dinosaur Trail details; Casper Mountain Road icing claim (practical[2], not marked) | No source accepted yet | Not confirmed |
| The museum's history page says Major General John Pope's Special Order 49 of November 21, 1865 changed the name of Platte Bridge Station to Fort Casper, misspelling the lieutenant's name (checked 2026-10-14) | Fort Caspar Museum — History (City of Casper) | Checked |
| The article says the city is officially named Casper due to a typo during the official registration (checked 2026-10-14) | Casper, Wyoming — Wikipedia (name spelling) | Checked |
| Oil City News (Aug. 4, 2024) reports the Spuds won the Independence League championship series over the Fremont Moo (checked 2026-10-14) | Casper Spuds win Independence League title with 8–3 victory — Oil City News | Checked |
| The Sports section says Wyoming lacks any major professional sports teams (checked 2026-10-14) | Wyoming — Wikipedia (Sports) | Checked |
| Denver has teams from four major league sports; the page's published coordinates, with those of Casper, give about 225 miles south in a straight line (checked 2026-10-14) | Denver — Wikipedia (Sports and coordinates) | Checked |
| Visit Casper (Casper Area Convention & Visitors Bureau) places Casper north of Denver, Colorado, on Interstate 25 (checked 2026-10-14) | Getting Here — Visit Casper | Checked |
| WYDOT describes Wyoming 511 as its official road condition and traffic information reporting app; the site has a conditions lookup by route and by town (checked 2026-10-14) | Wyoming 511 — WYDOT | Checked monitored · 2026-10-14 |
| Wyoming Highway 251 is also named Casper Mountain Road (checked 2026-10-14) | Wyoming Highway 251 — Wikipedia | Checked |
| Visit Casper offers a free self-guided historical downtown walking map and says David Street Station hosts events year-round at the heart of downtown (checked 2026-10-14) | Things to Do in Downtown Casper — Visit Casper | Checked monitored · 2026-10-14 |
| The BLM page lists RV and bus parking at the center (checked 2026-10-14) | BLM — National Historic Trails Interpretive Center (directions and parking) | Checked monitored · 2026-10-14 |
| WyoHistory.org says the town began when the railroad arrived in June 1888 and was named for nearby Fort Casper, by then a ruin, and that the Army misspelled the lieutenant's first name when it renamed Platte Bridge Station (checked 2026-10-15) | Casper, Wyoming — WyoHistory.org (name origin) | Checked |
Road Trippin’ with the Harts
The Highway Heads books turn the miles between stops into a game the whole car can play.
See the booksLive Conditions
Wildlife Spotted Nearby
Nearest Airports
Straight-line distance from Casper, not drive time.
- Casper-Natrona County International (CPR) — 8 miles
- Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL) — 86 miles
- Central Wyoming Regional (RIW) — 109 miles
Also in
A stop on this page turns up in other Highway Heads collections.
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Return to the Highway Heads map and discover the next family-ready stop.
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