Drive through Wamsutter on Interstate 80 and you'll notice something about the houses. A lot of them came on wheels.
The latest census counts 49% of Wamsutter's 153 homes as mobile homes, Cowboy State Daily's Kolby Fedore reported on Oct. 10. Locals think it's higher. "I'd say probably 80% to 90% of the town is trailers," said longtime resident John Marich. Jace Waldner, a third-generation owner of Wamsutter Trailer Court, said he counts six stick-built houses in town.
It's no accident. In a town that rises and falls with oil and gas, trailers have been the fastest way to house a crew.
Feast or famine
"It's pretty much a feast-or-famine economy here in Wamsutter," said Waldner, 31. "We are either just barely scraping by, or we are rolling in it. There is no in-between."
He remembers booms around 2005, 2009 and 2015, when the family trailer court had waiting lists. Then came years like 2025. "We were at like 72% vacancy or something ridiculous like that," he said.
The swings go back a long way. Wamsutter's population went from 139 in 1970 to 681 in 1980, after the energy rush that followed the 1973 oil embargo. In the early 2000s, natural gas brought another wave. High Country News reported that the population tripled in four years to around 750 by 2004, and estimated that 98% of homes were trailers. About 20 drilling rigs were running near town, and some workers bunked two to a bedroom in company man-camp trailers.
A federal study a few years later put numbers to it. A July 2007 count found just 20 single-family houses in Wamsutter, compared with 39 modular homes, 117 mobile homes, 49 RVs and 19 four-person dormitory units. There wasn't a single rental unit available that summer.
Why factory-built wins in a boom
Kim Klingenberg, owner of Cabin Creek Homes in Riverton, sells manufactured and modular homes around Wyoming. She said factory-built housing tends to cluster in places that grow suddenly. When a company needs to house a lot of workers in a hurry, speed beats everything.
"Wham, bam," Klingenberg said. "There you go. There's a house."
Christopher Volzke of the Wyoming Community Development Authority said manufactured housing plays a bigger role in Wyoming than nationally, especially in small towns. Rural distances, a small population and the cost of conventional building in remote places all play a part. It matters most in energy towns, he said, because the homes can be delivered and lived in faster than site-built houses. He pointed to Wamsutter and parts of Sweetwater, Campbell and Sublette counties as places with above-average concentrations.
The terms get mixed up a lot. Klingenberg said the dividing line is 1976, when federal HUD construction standards took effect. Older factory-built units are usually called mobile homes. Newer HUD-code units are manufactured homes. Modular homes are built in factory sections to residential building codes and usually set on permanent foundations.
Marich's trailer was built in 1967 or 1968, before the HUD standards. "It's seen some better days by far," he said. But it's comfortable, and it's his.
The booms didn't last, and neither did many of the trailers. Sweetwater County Assessor records show 181 mobile homes on Wamsutter's rolls in 2010, 159 in 2015, 141 in 2021 and 115 in 2026.
Some were abandoned. Waldner has a couple that an oil field company left behind when it cut down to a skeleton crew. "They've been taking the older ones out and just leaving the lots empty," Marich said.
Why it matters for Contractors
Wamsutter is an extreme case, but the lesson travels. When an energy or industrial project lands in a small Wyoming town, housing has to show up faster than a conventional subdivision can be built. In Wamsutter, the answer was trailers, man camps and RVs.
For manufactured and modular dealers, installers and set crews, boom towns have long been steady work. Foundations, tie-downs and utility hookups come with every set.
For general contractors and site-built homebuilders, the story is a warning about timing. By the time a subdivision is ready, the boom may already be fading. Builders weighing work in energy towns should think about what happens to their product in the bust years, not just the boom.
There's also work in the cleanup. Aging pre-1976 units and abandoned trailers still sit in towns like Wamsutter. Demolition, haul-off and lot prep for replacement homes could matter more as the old stock thins out.