Laramie Midwest Refinery   Historically Insignificant

I’ve been doing some additional research recently, both at the site and away from. I recently “discovered” that there was, in fact two different production lines; and that the yttrium building had incorporated the north production line into its construction. I also found images of the machinery that would have been used in the buildings of what I’m calling the production lines. In addition, I’ve confirmed that there are at least three buildings that are off-site that were built as a part of the Midwest Refinery Company’s initial construction and operations. More to come on this. I’ve posted more images from the tunnels, and made some other changes to this web site. Changes of this type are inevitable as new things come to light, more research is undertaken, and new contacts are made. I’ve also received permission to use images from the American Heritage Center, including the following from the Ludwig-Svenson Collection, (digital archive):

One of two views of the refinery from the east looking west. (circa 1928)

Another view from the east along one of the UPRR spurs. (circa 1928)

Undated, (c.1920) panoramic from atop one of the storage tanks near the Big Laramie River.

I’ve already cropped and zoomed in using this image on two of the pages on this web site. All of these images, and many others can be found at the American Heritage Center web site: http://www.uwyo.edu/ahc/index.html

Over the past twelve months, I’ve had the privilege to photograph and research the site, and it has been fun, exciting, and enlightening to learn about this little portion of Laramie’s history. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some technical information about the image that are found on the site. Throughout this past year, (2012), I’ve photographed using nothing but natural sunlight to capture all of my images. This has worked well for all of the exterior areas such as the stills, the production line, and all of the other structures. I’ve faced numerous challenges with the interior areas of the buildings, and going forward, will be utilizing more and more artificial lighting, including high-powered strobe lights and incandescent work lights. This will require some evening and night time work to accomplish this. I will be using generators, and battery-powered power inverters in these productions.

I will continue to publish and post images that have date stamps of “2012” on them, along with new images that will have “2013” as well. Images that bear the date stamp of “2013” may or may not utilize artificial lighting, but all that bear “2012” upon them are strictly sunlit.

Welcome to this web site that is devoted to the documentary project that is the Laramie Midwest Refinery and United States Yttrium Building. Click on the titles at the top of the page for more information. Be sure to subscribe to follow as this project progresses, there will be considerably more to come! You can subscribe here or follow me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DocsPix