Moorcroft, WY

Moorcroft is a Crook County town that began as LaBelle, a store, saloon, and roadhouse by the Belle Fourche River at the mouth of Donkey Creek. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad arrived in 1891, and the settlement moved into the railroad’s orbit; the post office and first stores followed. Moorcroft incorporated in 1906, but even the name has a couple of competing stories, tied either to postmaster Stocks Millar’s family name or physician Alexander Moorcroft. The local shorthand is Belle Fourche, railroad, Donkey Creek, and a northeastern Wyoming town with a name nobody can pin to one origin.