A 20-acre piece of private Laramie Valley ranch land with an artesian spring contains hundreds of artifacts tying the spot to an 1860s stagecoach stop and, centuries before that, a place where native tribes established annual camps.
Called Willow Springs, Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton said the Albany County site was put on his radar by the property’s late owner, who had questions about old archaeological digs on the site.
Those digs took place in the early 1960s, when distinguished University of Wyoming anthropology professor William Mulloy took his archaeology students to the location to learn how to properly conduct an excavation of an archaeological site, Pelton said.
“He didn’t collect any of the bone he encountered, he didn’t collect any of the flakes,” Pelton said. “He really just brought back all the stone and bone tools. Just in that he got over 1,000 artifacts … which we still have at the university.”
Mulloy never wrote about the site and went on to become famous for his archaeological work at Easter Island off Chile.
Pelton said he was aware the site existed, but it never rose on his agenda until owner Bobby Goeman called in 2021. Goeman has since died.
When Pelton visited the site, he found a cabin, corral and hay storage area. Goeman told him he understood the cabin to be the stage station for the Overland Trail. Pelton wanted to know more about his property.
“It gave us a good excuse to go in there and do some more work and he was very, very supportive of us doing it,” Pelton said. Now three years into his work at the site, Pelton has learned that the property covers some significant historic ground.
Big Site
The site Mulloy initially investigated contains more than the 2.5 acres he had dug, but at least 20 acres filled with potential artifacts.
Under Pelton’s direction, the dig has uncovered more than 10,000 artifacts that date back to prehistoric times, the Plains Indian Wars and an apparent mercantile in the 1870s.
Geographically, Willow Springs is an “oasis” due to the spring and forms a patch of green with aspens and willow trees in the middle of the Laramie Valley, which generally is a big brown basin, Pelton said. Today, antelope and elk seek it out.
Evidence at the site uncovered by Mulloy and others discovered Folsom points on bedrock, stone projectile points that go back thousands of years. Ancient peoples used them. Those same people traveled the land.
In his own work, Pelton said his team has uncovered dart points that would have been propelled by atlatls, a spear throwing tool that provides for greater distance that dates back 3,000 to 1,000 years, as well as similar arrowhead-like Rose Spring points from 500-1100 A.D. associated with western plains peoples and people who lived on the Colorado Front Range.
Side and tri-notched triangular points used by the Plains tribes from the 1100s through the1800s have also been found.
Pelton said his team has also discovered a lot of ceramics that are rare in Wyoming. He said they are not like the beautifully painted pottery from the Southwest tribes, but more utilitarian.
“They are thicker, and they are more crudely made. We have a lot of them, and it makes the site really exceptional,” he said. “I think this is the largest ceramic assemblage in Wyoming now. We’ve identified at least 16 vessels. I think we can increase that to 18 or 20 now after our investigations this summer.”
There are at least four ceramic styles, which also is unusual, because most dig sites only contain one. He said the styles identified so far include Woodland, Pueblo, Promontory from Athabaskan tribes such as Apache who passed through the area from Alaska, and Intermountain, which would have been used by Shoshone ancestors.
A team with metal detectors goes over the ground systematically earlier this year. A lot of metal, particularly square nails, were discovered and in one area bullets and evidence of a potential August 1865 skirmish between U.S. troops and native warriors. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton recently completed another year of digging at an Albany County location that has been an oasis for thousands of years. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
An archaeological hole is laid out as the dig at Willow Springs continues. The 2024 season yielded several more clues about the importance of the site. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton talks about the ancient evidence found at the location. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Raw Materials, Shells
The site also contains stone raw materials from at least a few hundred miles away including obsidian from Malad City, Idaho, northern New Mexico, the Yellowstone area and Colorado. There is also tiger chert, a sedimentary silicate stone, from southwest Wyoming.
Beads found at the site include olivella shell beads that had to have come from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean.
The dig has also produced a brass ring probably from a brass kettle that dates back to the 1700s or early 1800s, finely crafted bone awls and an antler object that probably was a flintknapping tool.
Pelton said the site appears to have been occupied as early as 500 A.D. by ancestors of the Pawnee, Pueblo and Kiowa peoples, and then the Athabaskan for maybe 300 years starting in 1100 A.D. They were followed by the Shoshone and possibly the Plains Apache and Arapaho.
“Once people started living at the site … somebody lived here for at least once a year for 1,500 years,” he said. “It had to have been a routine place for all these people to camp on an annual basis. That legacy of use probably persisted into the historic era.”
Site evidence shows that Native Americans likely camped there until 1862 when the Overland Trail began. There also is a likelihood the Cherokee Trail of 1849 may also have come through Willow Springs.
“We don’t have direct evidence of that yet, but reading the trails journals, it certainly seems they went directly through this area,” Pelton said.
Swing Station
During the Overland Trail period from 1862 to 1869, Willow Springs was cited as a swing station on the trail where horses could be changed or graze and rest while passengers could get a drink of water and then continue on.
Documents from Colorado Territory and Camp Collins show there was a skirmish at the site between U.S. Army soldiers and a band of Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux on Aug. 17, 1865. Two soldiers were killed.
A dig site near the cabin produced ammunition and weapon evidence from the 1870s. Clues from things such as a tobacco tag and trash pit site suggest the cabin was not a stagecoach station and was likely used in the 1870s after the Overland Trail ceased because of railroad completion in 1869.
However, the existing cabin may have doubled as a little store in the 1870s.
“There is a single ad that I tracked down from the 1870s talking about Willow Springs Ranch, come get your provisions here. That was in the Laramie newspaper from the 1870s. That might be what this is,” Pelton said. “A post-Overland Trail era mercantile way out on the plains close to the North Park Road, an early freight road that connected Laramie to Walden, Colorado.”
As for the stage station, an old wagon trail Goeman showed Pelton on the property that probably hadn’t been used since the 1800s may lead to uncovering the actual station site south of the spring and the cabin area.
A handful of people listened to Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton share about his findings at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Among beads found at the Willow Springs location were some that had to have come from the Pacific Ocean or Gulf of Mexico. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Historic artifacts found from the mid-19th century include buttons, non-solarized glass, and a tobacco tag dated from 1869. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Three Sites To Be Explored
Initial work with ground radar and digging this year have found square nails and three sites where archaeologists believe more significant artifacts and clues lie beneath the ground waiting to be unearthed.
Pelton said further observations about any stage station at the site will have to wait until digging resumes next summer.
Since the station was likely made of logs, Pelton believes those logs were possibly recycled. After the stage station was abandoned, and ranchers had left Willow Springs in the 1870s, current evidence shows the site was probably again abandoned until the 1930s when homesteaders arrived.
“So, when they came in, they augmented this little cabin that was onsite and they could use that cabin as maybe a lambing shed or something and they just built off of that cabin without having to make modifications,” he said. “That’s basically how the archaeologists found it in the 1960s as a ranch facility.
“We are waiting to see if the station is indeed on the south side of the grove. That will have to wait until next summer.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
