People have been tossing rocks into the rusted-out car below Casper Mountain’s Bridle Trail for so long that the pile now spills over the back end.
The windows are gone, the roof is crushed, and much of the front end has disappeared. Trees and grass grow around the mangled remains, which sit among rocks well below the trail.
For generations of Casper kids, the wreck is simply part of the mountain.
Lifelong Casper resident Kelly Taubert remembers it from years ago, when her 4-H group rode horses along the Bridle Trail.
“We always commented on the abandoned car,” Taubert said. “We used to hike down to the car, peek in the windows.”
Even then, nobody seemed to know exactly what they were looking at.
“I’ve always wondered, how did it get there?” Taubert said.
There is, however, a story that has followed the car for decades.
The battered remains of an old car sit below the Bridle Trail on Casper Mountain, where the wreck has been a familiar landmark to generations of hikers and horseback riders. Exactly when and how it got there remains a mystery. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily) 
The battered remains of an old car sit below the Bridle Trail on Casper Mountain, where the wreck has been a familiar landmark to generations of hikers and horseback riders. Exactly when and how it got there remains a mystery. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily)
‘Grim Monument’
On the night of July 25, 1937, four young Casper people were riding in a car on Casper Mountain when it went off the road at Lookout Point and plunged hundreds of feet down the mountainside.
The next day’s Tribune-Herald devoted prominent coverage to the wreck.
The car had “bounded and bounced” down the steep slope, according to the newspaper, overturning as it tore through trees and rocks before coming to rest about 350 feet below the road.
Inside were 18-year-old Martha Shelby Park, 21-year-old Paul F. Haas, 16-year-old Orceta Lester and Russell Schryer.
Park was killed.
The newspaper reported that she suffered a fractured vertebra and other severe injuries and died at or near the scene.
Haas suffered cuts and bruises and an injured vertebra, while Lester suffered a fractured vertebra and other injuries. Schryer was the fourth member of the group.
Photographs published after the crash show a demolished automobile lying among rocks and timber on the mountainside.
One newspaper caption described the wreckage as a “grim monument” to what it called the first traffic fatality in the history of the Casper Mountain road.
The following day, investigators were still trying to determine exactly what happened. A coroner’s jury returned to the scene as the investigation continued.
It was a horrific crash, well documented in the newspapers of the day.
And at some point over the decades, the battered car below the Bridle Trail became associated with it.
The July 26, 1937, edition of the Casper Tribune-Herald reported on the mangled car after it went off Casper Mountain near Lookout Point. Four young Casper people were inside, including 18-year-old Martha Shelby Park, who was killed. (Newspapers.com) 
The July 26, 1937, edition of the Casper Tribune-Herald reported on the mangled car after it went off Casper Mountain near Lookout Point. Four young Casper people were inside, including 18-year-old Martha Shelby Park, who was killed. (Newspapers.com)
Is That The Car?
Hanz Olson, librarian and archivist for the Western History Center at Casper College, started digging after Cowboy State Daily asked about the wreck.
He found not only the original 1937 coverage and photographs, but evidence that Casper residents have been asking essentially the same question for years.
The Casper Star-Tribune wrote about the mystery in 2008. Its “Answer Girl” feature revisited it in 2010 and again in 2014.
Then, in 2021, another article raised a more fundamental question.
That story discussed a theory from Casper resident and hiker Paul Ferguson that the wreck hikers see below the Bridle Trail and the automobile photographed after the 1937 fatal crash may not be the same car, Olson said.
Ferguson believed they were different vehicles.
That leaves a rather large hole in one of Casper Mountain’s better-known bits of lore.
If the wreck isn’t the car that carried Park and the other three young people down the mountain in 1937, then whose car is it?
And when did it get there?
A casting number still visible on the wreck’s engine corresponds to a Dodge 218-cubic-inch flathead-six cylinder head used beginning in the 1940s. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily) 
A casting number still visible on the wreck’s engine corresponds to a Dodge 218-cubic-inch flathead-six cylinder head used beginning in the 1940s. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily)
Rusting Into The Mountain
Nearly nine decades of weather hasn’t left many easy answers on the vehicle itself.
The wreck has survived Wyoming winters, summer thunderstorms and generations of curious visitors.
Doors remain. Pieces of the suspension and brake assemblies are still visible, and enough of the battered body survives to recognize that it was a four-door passenger car.
But the roof has been smashed down; the glass is long gone, and visitors have tossed so many rocks into the hollowed-out rear of the car that they have piled up inside and now spill over.
From higher on the Bridle Trail, the wreck looks tiny against Casper Mountain.
For the people who grew up with it, though, it’s hard to imagine that stretch of trail without the car.
Natrona County says the trail was built around 1939-40 by the Works Progress Administration and possibly the Civilian Conservation Corps, though workers apparently incorporated much older routes that already wound up Casper Mountain.
County Surveyor H.H. Patterson surveyed the trail in September and October 1940, which the county says is the earliest mapping it has found.
So if the wreck below the trail really is the automobile from Park’s July 1937 crash, it would have already been lying on the mountainside when crews built the Bridle Trail.
Workers could, in theory, have passed an already-crumpled automobile as they carved out the route Casper hikers still use today.
A casting number still visible on the wreck’s engine corresponds to a Dodge 218-cubic-inch flathead-six cylinder head used beginning in the 1940s. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily) 
The battered remains of an old car sit below the Bridle Trail on Casper Mountain, where the wreck has been a familiar landmark to generations of hikers and horseback riders. Exactly when and how it got there remains a mystery. (Kolby Fedore, Cowboy State Daily)
Casting Number Clue
Cowboy State Daily photographed the car Friday, including one potentially important clue that has survived decades on the mountainside: a casting number still visible on the engine.
The number, 1326306, corresponds in Chrysler/Mopar drivetrain records to a Dodge 218-cubic-inch flathead six cylinder head used beginning in the 1940s. If that engine is original to the car, it would make the wreck too new to have been involved in the 1937 crash.
It is not clear from the 1937 newspaper coverage what make or model of car Park and the others were riding in, but that doesn't end the search.
Olson pointed to archival collections that could hold the answer, including material from longtime Casper photographer Charles “Chuck” Morrison and the Casper Star-Tribune.
Morrison’s collection contains photographs he took and gathered of Wyoming communities, historic places, outdoor scenes and Casper-area history from the 1920s through the 1980s, along with boxes of negatives.
The Western History Center also has photograph collections spanning decades, including Casper-area images that have not been digitized.
Somewhere among those old prints and negatives could be a photograph of that stretch of mountain before the car appeared, an early image of the wreck or even an overlooked caption identifying it.
Whatever investigators ultimately find, the car isn't going anywhere.
Natrona County Parks and Recreation said Friday there has been no intention of removing it.
“It’s a part of history,” the department told Cowboy State Daily.
Even if the county wanted to haul it out, officials said, the wreck sits on private property.
The car remains where generations of Casper residents have known it — rusting into the mountainside below the Bridle Trail — while the search for exactly whose car it was continues.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
