Railroads, resilience, and the stories of Wyoming’s WWII working women.
“You never knew what to expect. You just dealt with it.”
With those words, panelist Sally Meeker recalled her mother Myrtle’s nights on Sherman Hill, a windswept, isolated post along the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming during World War II. Trains rushed through the snow and telegraph keys clicked late into the cold nights, while the women shared a housing unit, keeping the wartime railroad running.
On Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center Hosted the event “War Work and Women”, a storytelling panel that brought those and many other memories to life. In the Stock Growers room of the Centennial Complex, descendants and historians gathered to discuss how women, of many ethnic backgrounds, took on jobs once reserved for men, carving out a legacy of resilience and independence in the railroads of the American West.
The panel, moderated by UW professors Dr. Trisha Martinez and Dr. Cecily Zander, featured personal stories from Sally Meeker and Carol Matteson Pascal, both of whom recounted the experiences of their mothers, aunts, other family members, and even their friends. Their voices, heavy with memory, pride, and emotion, revealed the courage of women who stepped into dangerous, often hostile workplaces to support the war effort and their families.
Myrtle Forney, Meeker’s mother, was only 19 when she left behind the farm life for something larger. After attending free telegraphy classes during the war, she was recruited after just two months of training. “They needed people so badly,” Meeker said, explaining how her mother boarded a train the very next day, with nothing but a free pass and her belongings.
Her destination: Sherman Hill, the highest point between Laramie and Cheyanne, that today can only be described as a “ghost town”. The station had been closed down for nearly 30 years, but was reopened out of necessity during the war.
The conditions were brutal. Meeker described her mother’s first day when “the wind was so fierce that a chain hung straight out like a flag on a pole.” Myrtle shared a small housing unit with two other women, finding companionship in the solitude of the mountain. “She fondly remembered the clicking of the telegraph key, the familiar sound of a train approaching around the curve, and the shrill, mournful sound of the whistle,” Meeker said, reading from her mother’s autobiography.
Myrtle’s job was grueling but crucial. She took train orders by phone or telegraph and handed them to crews as locomotives thundered past her ever so dangerously. The work paid a man’s wage, a remarkable opportunity for a young woman from a large Nebraska farm family. Yet, even in her writings, Myrtle described it as an adventure. “I fondly remember those days,” she wrote, “and the sounds that could only come from an old steam-powered train.”
For Pascal, the story of wartime women on the railroad was also one of hardship and discrimination. Her Aunt Rosemary Arias Weible’s first job was wrapping sandwiches for troops on the trains. “Rosie was always dolled up,” Pascal said, smiling as she described the beauty, who would even slip notes inside the sandwich wrappers for the men to find.
But the time under the safety of the building faded quickly, as Rosie was reassigned to cleaning locomotive engines, scraping off snow and ice in the harsh Wyoming winters. “She didn’t like it,” Pascal admitted. Through the ice and snow, her glamour still never faded, which was truly inspiring. She still pushed on, taking pride in her union membership until her husband returned from service, which would then mark her leave from the railroad.
Another aunt, Guadalupe “Lupe” Serrano De Arias, endured even more. Caught in the repatriation pressures of the 1930s, she later worked for Union Pacific as an engine starter and upholstery repairer. Lupe stayed with the company for 20 years, retiring with the resilience that marked so many Mexican American women of her generation.
But harassment was a constant shadow for these women. Pascal shared chilling stories: women afraid to walk to dressing rooms alone, men notorious for targeting the Hispanic women. One of her aunts even slammed a man’s foot in a door to defend herself. “If it was just words, you put up with it,” Pascal quoted her uncle saying. “But if they put a hand on you, then they had to pay.”
Discrimination ran deeper still. “There was a picnic for the women workers on the railroad,… if you were white,” Pascal explained. Her Aunt Lupe had shown up anyway, photographed defiantly with her foot planted on a bench nearby after being denied a seat.
While the railroad gave women wages and a measure of independence, it also demanded sacrifices from all. Families were often separated by unpredictable schedules. Meeker recalled how Christmases were disrupted until rail companies finally put men on buses home so “the Santas could be there.” Tears filled her eyes as she remembered her mother saying, “The Santas needed to be home.”
Community support became essential. In Cheyanne’s south side, Hispanic families created rich cultural traditions such as fairs, orchestras, and even dance troupes. Only to watch these important traditions and events dissipate after programs like Operation Wetback in 1954. Pascal remembered her grandmother taking her to get her very first passport at the age of 12 during that period. She recounts the moment they had watched people from her community being pushed onto trains who had been gathered for deportation under the operation that left a deep scar of fear and sadness on the hearts of all. “It has never left my purse since,” Pascal admitted, with a deep and saddened tone in her voice as she recalled the memories. “Once you are told you’re in danger, it never goes away.”
Panelists emphasized that these stories are not just personal but historical. Dr. Martinez urged the audience to preserve family stories and write names on the backs of photographs. “Those are primary resources,” she said. “History has no color, it has no texture, without oral histories like these.”
The legacies of women like Myrtle, Rosie, and Lupe continue to echo. Their resilience carried them through brutal weather, dangerous jobs, harassment, and systematic discrimination. Yet they carved out space for themselves, and for those who came after them.
“They lived long, long lives,” Meeker said of her mother and Pascal’s aunts, attributing their longevity to toughness learned on the railroad. “Hard work and knowing you can do it carried my mother through when she lost her husband.”
Pascal added that change is rarely revolutionary, but incremental. “If it happens to them, it’s going to happen to you,” she warned. “They don’t stop if you don’t stop it. It takes action.”
In closing, archivist Leslie Waggener reminded the audience that the railroad’s history is Wyoming’s history. From the territory’s founding to today’s freight lines, the steel tracks have been more than just transportation; they have been a crucible of community, resilience, and survival.
As the audience applauded, one truth lingered: these brave women’s stories, once whispered in family kitchens or tucked away in autobiographies, are not just personal memories. They are pieces of Wyoming’s living history, stitched together by grit, courage, and the relentless rhythm of the rails.
