At the turn of the century, the Wind River Canyon in Wyoming was a place of wild and desolate beauty. Stark and lonely mountains, 900 feet tall, peered down at the river below.
Millionaire businessman and politician Asmus Boysen arrived at this canyon in the Owl Creek Mountains with dreams of expanding his wealth.
According to Ed Bille of the Pacific Power and Light, Boysen was intrigued by this remote land even before the 1906 gold rush that would soon bring 2,000 miners to the area.
Bille said that Boysen remarked to a companion, “Never saw land yet that didn't have some kind of potential. Don't know what it would be in this forsaken spot, though.”
“Copper, maybe,” his companion replied, “And gold ore. Rumor has it that Copper Mountain over yonder has plenty of both. No practical way to mine it, of course.”
Boysen was instantly interested.
He thought for a moment, and then said, “It could be done. Anything can be done. First, you have to have a supply of electric power and that could come from a dam. Why certainly, a dam… that's the answer.”
What Boysen did not know was that this dam would be his downfall.
An Ambitious Dreamer And Doer
Born in Denmark, Asmus Boysen was a brilliant student and a fine athlete. While still a teenager, he worked his passage to America to seek his fortune. Settling in Iowa, he made a fortune in real estate.
He was elected to Congress but financial and political success was not enough for the aspiring Boysen who set his eyes on Wyoming and the rumor of rich minerals.
“Boysen longed to build, to create, to pit his strength and intelligence against elemental forces,” Bille said. “And, while on a mining exploration trip to Wyoming, he found an opportunity to do just that.”
The land was on the Wind River Indian reservation in the middle of Wyoming, where Boysen used his newly-acquired political influence to lease a huge tract of land to look for coal.
Boysen’s Town, Dam & Mine
Author Lawrence Woods wrote in his book Asmus Boysen and His Dam Problems that when the search for coal proved unrewarding, Boysen parlayed his tenuous claim to the lease into a square mile of mineral land across a rugged canyon, where he hoped to find precious metals.
He then committed his fortune and the money of others to a dam and power plant, hoping to recover the money he lost in his own failed coal mining ventures in the region.
While he built the dam, he also had men working his copper and gold mining claims, had a public ferry, and built a town in the Wind River Canyon which he named Boysen.
He believed that his investment would increase his fortune through the sale of power to the budding mining industry in Copper Mountain and the crowd of settlers he expected on the reservation land that had just been opened to public settlement.
Bille said Boysen imported $10,000 worth of Missouri mules to haul materials to the site. He hired foreign workers from all over the world, including Japan, Greece, and Bulgaria. One thousand men lived in the town of Boysen in tents and tar paper shacks, some even bringing their families to the frontier town.
A stagecoach ran from Shoshoni six days a week, bringing supplies and men to Boysen. A newspaper, The Copper Mountain Miner, carried the news of the camp to the outside world and everything looked like it was set for success.
The Fight Against Nature And Man
The flow of the river was so high that it was necessary to do all preliminary work during one of Wyoming’s most bitter winters in 1907.
All materials for concreting had to be heated – an enormous and costly job. Frequent blizzards turned the canyon into white, frozen chaos. Men worked with numbed fingers to achieve the impossible – and finally, in 1908, the dam was completed.
Boysen's entire fortune and that of his wife, more than two million dollars, had gone into its construction.
But nature had the final word. Soon after the dam was finished, a flash flood washed quantities of silt into the reservoir. More silt accumulated and Boysen was forced to raise the structure's height.
Meanwhile, a railroad had been built through the canyon and the water behind the higher dam menaced the railway bed.
The railroad sued and Boysen's resources were spent.
He was a broken man with his hopes, efforts, and dreams destroyed. His son even tried to save his father’s dream but that, too, failed and the Boysen family never regained the fortune that was finally swept away for good.
In 1923, a flood destroyed the original Boysen Dam.
A Small Victory
Yet, some could say that Boysen won his battle against Wind River Canyon.
A dam was built at the mouth of the Wind River Canyon and named in his honor. This time it was the railroad who lost and was forced to move its tracks to higher ground.
In 1953, the United States Bureau of Reclamation finished construction on the Boysen Dam that stands today upstream from the original site.
This new dam and the Boysen State Park can be seen as a testimonial to one man’s vision and dreams.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
