Back in Time - Tie Hacks
Tie Hack graves and memorial Mountain View Cemetery Riverton, WY May 2016 Every headstone in a cemetery can tell a story, and the unassuming ones in a shady section of the local cemetery certainly could speak volumes about the history of the DuNoir area of the Wind River Range and the men who formed railroad ties with only a broadax. In the High Country, the area surrounding Dubois, WY and the Continental Divide was the realm of The Knights of the Broadax from the early 1900 - 1947. A majority of the young tie hacks were Scandinavian - from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and the ties they formed with the broadax were stockpiled near where the trees were felled until spring thaw and then floated down the Wind River to the tie yard in Riverton, Wyoming. The Wyoming Tie and Timber Company produced over ten million ties for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroads from the early 1900s into the mid-1940s. The company was sold in 1947, and the reign of the Knights of the Br...