Those Weird Beehive Structures of Piedmont, Wyoming

Piedmont, Wyoming. A once bustling little place, now a historic ghost town with only a few buildings still standing.

It was founded around 1867 as a Union Pacific Railroad resource town and coal-wood production center.

This little site is famous for its late-1800s beehive charcoal kilns. The town was established by Mormon pioneers Moses Byrne and Charles Guild to supply railroad ties and charcoal, becoming a significant, prosperous railroad stop.

These strange dome-shaped structures are the Piedmont Charcoal Kilns.

Built around 1869, they are remnants of the early industrial era in Wyoming, located about 10 miles southwest of Evanston, off Interstate 80. The kilns were designed to convert wood into charcoal to be used in iron-ore smelters, particularly to supply the developing railroad industry and smelting operations in Utah.

They are massive, 30-foot-tall, and 30-foot-wide conical structures made of local gray limestone. Moses Byrne built the kilns when the area was a booming town. There were once over 40 similar kilns in the area, producing around 100,000 bushels of charcoal per month.

Three of the original kilns remain in good, black-scorched condition, with a fourth, more damaged one nearby, according to Utah's Adventure Family.

Originally named "Byrne," the town was renamed Piedmont because the wives of founders Moses Byrne and Charles Guild were from the Piedmont region of Italy.

Located east of Evanston, Piedmont began as a tent city during the 1868 arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was a crucial stop, featuring a railroad depot, mercantile store, and four saloons.

The town thrived until the Union Pacific built the Aspen Tunnel around 1900-1910, allowing trains to avoid the steep grades and pass by the town entirely.

By 1940, Piedmont was largely abandoned. The remaining structures include three stone charcoal kilns, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and a nearby cemetery.

This site is recognized as a Wyoming Historical Site, accessible as a ghost town attraction that highlights the region's early, highly industrial history.

Many YouTube videos, like the ones above, and history articles have been written about this site, which is now slowly vanishing.