An Interview With Someone Still Living In Jeffery City Wy [VIDEO]
It may have been the biggest town bust in Wyoming history. Once sporting a population of thousands, Jeffery City Wyoming now has only 58 people.
In 2016 my sister, her husband, and their two daughters, came to see Wyoming for the first time. While crossing the state we passed Jeffery City and I told them about the town. They wanted to stop and see it.
While there we found that they had taken an abandoned apartment and turned it into the town library in order to save the book from the now closed school library. We stopped and spoke to the librarian, Nadine Graham, who has lived in the town since 1958.
The town wen bust back in 1982 and over 95% of the inhabitants left the town within 3 years.
Jeffrey City began back in in 1931 when a Nebraska couple named the Petersons relocated because Mr. Peterson was sick after having been gassed in World War I. Mrs. Beulah Peterson opened two gas pumps when the highway came through, and began cooking for those who stopped.
The town boomed when the mine uranium mine opened to mine for America's nuclear arsenal and power plants. Thousands of people moved to the area.
They built a large high school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But when the market when bust the town collapsed.