In Wheatland, a weathered dome squats beside the road like a stranded UFO or a forgotten Cold War lab abandoned somewhere between Douglas, Wyoming and Area 51.
Its peeling stucco and circular window and entrance on a gravel lot triggers flashes of Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine scene at the beginning of the “Star Wars” saga.
Its concrete shell is split with long, black cracks that spiderweb across the curved surface. Chunks of outer coating have fallen away onto the dirt below.
The single window — black and empty like an unblinking eye — stares toward the highway from the southern end of town.
Juniper trees press against one side of the structure as if trying to keep the dome from rolling away into the prairie.
“It looks like an alien bunker, honestly,” said Todd Shanahan, the building’s current owner. “A lot of people tell me, ‘Please tell me you’re just going to knock that thing over.’”
Shanahan refuses.
“It’s all got a purpose,” he said. “It just needs a little attention paid back to it.”
The truth behind the mysterious dome, however, is much less dramatic than its appearance. It's not a government lab or a fallout shelter.
The odd, stubby little building was once the local Department of Motor Vehicles, he said — the place where Platte County teenagers used to nervously take written tests and posed for awkward driver's license photos.
Shanahan isn't sure just when the dome was built, but it gives off vibes of America’s mid-20th century obsession with space and exploration.
‘That’s Where You Got Your First Driver’s License’
Shanahan said he recently began digging into the history of the dome after people started asking what the building was.
“The reason I haven’t responded is I actually found the gentleman that built that building,” Shanahan told Cowboy State Daily.
He said the builder’s grandson now helps run a jiujitsu program connected to Shanahan’s gym business in Wheatland, and he hopes to eventually learn more about why the structure was designed the way it was.
“The bleak story behind it is that’s all it really ever was,” Shanahan said. “It was the DMV driver’s license place for Wheatland.”
For older Wheatland residents, "That's where you got your first driver's license," said the owner. "If you're in your 50s or so."
He said longtime locals have told him stories about accompanying their parents there decades ago.
“They remember going there with their mom and dad while their mom and dad got their driver’s licensing and all that kind of jazz,” he said.
“The inside is not indicative of what the outside is, thankfully,” Shanahan added. “It’s a little commercial building. There’re men’s and women’s restrooms in there.”
Still, the disconnect between appearance and reality only deepens the building’s mystique.
The could-be-a-moon-base building is a reminder of Wyoming bureaucracy and teenagers sweating through learner permit tests while ranch trucks idled outside.
A Wyoming Version Of The Future
In the middle decades of the 20th century, architects and designers across the country became fascinated with curved concrete structures, domes and futuristic forms.
Space-age optimism seeped into diners, gas stations, motels and civic buildings. Circular windows, swooping roofs and pod-like architecture began appearing even in rural communities.
Some of it was practical. Dome structures are energy efficient and structurally strong.
Some of it was cultural. America had become obsessed with rockets, atomic science and the idea that the future would look radically different from the past.
Even tiny towns weren’t immune.
In Wheatland, population roughly 3,500, somebody apparently decided a driver’s license office should resemble a lunar habitat.
That strange ambition now sits weathered and half-forgotten beneath the Wyoming sky.
The dome’s surface has cracked into enormous, jagged plates. The pale coating flakes off like sunburned skin. The circular black window looks almost cartoonishly futuristic against the otherwise plain prairie surroundings.
Yet the structure still stands, and Shanahan said sees potential where others see an eyesore.
‘We Buy Old Buildings And Relive Them’
“Part of what we do is buy old buildings and houses and rehab them and relive them and give them a new purpose,” Shanahan said.
“At some point here, next couple of years, we’ll actually be rehabbing that building and turning it into some sort of new commercial space,” he said.
For now, though, the structure mostly sits quietly as part of a landscaping yard, collecting stories and speculation.
“Storage right now,” Shanahan said.
That hasn’t stopped locals from offering opinions.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh my God, please tell me you’re just gonna knock that thing over,’” Shanahan said.
He won’t.
“No. Nothing gonna knock,” he said, adding that it's a "cool little building."
“I don’t know what it would end up being in the long run, but yeah, there’s plenty of uses for it.”
That tension — between preservation and practicality — plays out constantly across Wyoming.
Old schools become community centers, barns turn into wedding venues, and faded motels find second lives under new ownership. Some buildings have disappeared.
Others hang on long enough for somebody to see possibility.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
