See historical photos of Piedmont. Photos courtesy of the Guild Family.
Byrne was renamed Piedmont, after the area of Italy where Moses Byrne's wife, Catherine Cardon Bryne, was born.
Charles Guild, an early settler in Piedmont, Wyo.
The Guild store was robbed one evening, while most people were at the school for a dance. According to Guild family stories, the thief blew the safe and grabbed the money, but lost the heel of his boot in the process. A family member hopped a train to Evanston, and made a citizen's arrest of a man found missing a boot heel.
Moses Byrne built charcoal kilns in Piedmont. A controlled fire in the kilns turned aspen into charcoal, which was shipped to Utah's mining industry for use in smelting metal.
The Byrnes were joined in Piedmont by Mrs. Byrne's sister, Marie Madaline Cardon Guild, and her husband Charles Guild.
Moses Byrne was one of the first settlers in Piedmont. Originally, the town was named Byrne, but it was changed to avoid confusion with the nearby town of Bryan.
The Piedmont Hotel was one of the last businesses to close as the town died, according to descendants of the Guild family. It's said to be where Butch Cassidy met members of his gang, before robbing a bank in Idaho.
When the railroad was finished, Piedmont became a base for locomotives that helped push trains up a steep grade.
In its prime, Piedmont had a hotel, post office, stores, several saloons and a school. The school has been moved from the townsite, and is used as a workshop by the Guild family.
Thomas C. Durrant, VP of UP Railroad.
Piedmont, Wyoming is now a ghost town, but it was a bustling community in the 1860s.
Piedmont was a logging camp, supplying ties for the Transcontinental Railroad.
Comments