A devastating fire in 1926 at the newspaper offices in Upton turned to ash much of the record of the town’s early days. As a result, most of the town’s history has been drawn from the scant remaining records and the testimony of old timers from the area. According to the authoritative work, Weston County, Wyoming: The First 100 Years, compiled by the Weston County Heritage Group in 1988, the town of Upton can trace its roots to the mid-1880s.

Upton started as a railroad depot and grew into a small town.  Before the founding of Upton, Iron Town sprung up west of Iron Creek in the late 1880s. “It sprang up beside the banks of Iron Creek and was then called Irontown,” the authors wrote. “There was no running water in the creek, only holes and reservoirs of standing water. It was said that the only good thing you could say about the water was that it was ‘wet.’ It was a brackish, metallic-tasting liquid.” The Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad laid 25 miles of new track from Newcastle, Wyo., in the summer of 1890.

Following the terrible winter storms of 1886 and 1887 that decimated the cattle industry in the area, many ranchers and homesteaders moved into the sheep business, where the Merino was the most popular breed. After a railroad line was extended to the area from Newcastle to serve the centralized sheep shearing pens, the town was renamed Merino in honor of the sheep. Although the sheep industry eventually began to decline, a new railroad depot and supply station opened in 1892, which saved the town from fading completely. The Burlington Railroad built a water pipeline to supply the needs of the citizens. Adding to the town’s challenges, Merino, Colo., caused some confusion in mail delivery. In 1901, Merino, Wyo., changed its name to Upton after A. Z. “George” Upton, a surveyor for the railroad.  Today, Upton’s industries include ranching, oil, and bentonite mining.