Centennial, Wyoming is not an incorporated town, but we have a Post Office and our own zip code, so we count as a town. The Homestead Act brought people to the area in the mid-1800s, but in 1875, two men discovered a nugget of gold on the ridge above town. They named their claim the Centennial mine because the following year was the centennial of the United States. A town formed below the mine, the Post Office came to town, and the name stuck. Until a piece of Denver broke off in the 1990s, this was the only place in the US named Centennial.

In the early 1900s, two men from Boston, Isaac van Horn and Charles Davis, teamed up with Laramie’s Fred Miller and made plans to build the Rocky Mountain Club, a resort that included a dance hall, polo grounds, and a railroad to bring all the tourists west from Laramie. They built the railroad, which became the Laramie Hahn’s Peak & Pacific, and they built the Mountain View Hotel, both of which were dedicated July 4th, 1907. The dance pavillion was also built, and eventually became what is today the Old Corral Hotel & Steakhouse.

By 1911, Centennial had its own newspaper, railroad depot, hotel, church, bank, Post Office, printing office, school, store, meat market, clubhouse, dance hall, livery barn, fish hatchery, and three saloons.