The Ames Pyramid

The Ames Monument is a large pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated to brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames Jr., Union Pacific Railroad financiers. It marked the highest point on the first transcontinental railroad, at 8,247 feet.Henry Hobson Richarson designed the monument midway into his career. He was very much inspired by the 12 centuries of France, Italy's, and Spain's architecture designs. His work was not very known to the public and he did not have a lot of work to do until the 1870, when he helped with Trinity Church and Buffalo asylum. The town of Sherman rose up around it, but then Union Pacific moved its tracks to the south, leaving Sherman to become a ghost town.

Oliver served as president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1866 to 1871, while Oakes, a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, asserted near-total control of its construction. In 1873, investigators implicated Oakes in fraud associated with financing of the railroad.