Proudly rural, the 1,500 townspeople of Lusk often poke gentle fun at themselves, emblazoning T-shirts with phrases such as "End of the world, 12 miles. Lusk, 15 miles." You’ll see what they mean if you visit this seat of Niobrara County, whose population density averages 524 acres of prairie per person. If you find yourself traveling the main route between the Black Hills and the Colorado Rockies, a stop in this tiny burg is worth the time for a quick lesson in frontier—particularly stagecoach—history. You can also find gasoline and food, rare commodities on the open plain.
Lusk owes its existence to rancher Frank S. Lusk, who cut a deal with the Wyoming Central Railroad in 1886. The railroad originally planned to build its route through central Wyoming along the Cheyenne–Deadwood Stage Line, which ran between the territorial capital and the Black Hills gold-rush town. Officials selected Silver Cliff, where Ellis Johnson ran a store, saloon, and hotel, as the area’s station. When Johnson tried to raise the price for his land, the railroad changed its plans and bought from Lusk. The rail line bypassed Silver Cliff for the station named Lusk.
The stagecoach line that passed through Lusk played a role in the development of the Black Hills, but Lusk became a different sort of pioneering town in the 1990s. Town leaders installed fiber-optic cable lines and obtained computers for schools, public facilities, and homes, placing Lusk on the frontier of technology when other small Wyoming towns had barely even heard of the Internet. The media spotlight shone briefly on the town that led the state of Wyoming into the 21st century.
