Bath Stone Ranch

By Luke Anderson

March 9, 2016

The Bath Stone Ranch outside Laramie is richly embedded in the history of America and the West. Henry Bath immigrated with his family to the United States from Germany in 1848. After twenty years in New York,  Henry’s parents decided to follow the brand new Union Pacific railroad out west, although they did not actually travel west by train. Traveling by oxcart instead, they journeyed from the fall of 1867 to the summer of 1868 before they permanently settled in Laramie. Henry Bath was a prolific cabinet maker and built the town’s first frame building, the New York House, located on Front Street right by the railroad tracks. This hotel and saloon was infamously known for hosting the hanging of three men outside its entrance in October of 1868.

Bath located his homestead by the Little Laramie River in 1869, with the original buildings being constructed entirely out of timber. Six years later, Henry quarried local stone and built the stone house that still exists at the site today. The large stone barn and simple frame house on the property were added in 1912 by Henry’s son Fred Bath.

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