by Judy Julian (Author), Fossil Country Museum (Author)
Established in 1897, incorporated in January of 1899, and located in southwest Wyoming, Kemmerer has been a coal-mining community for over 100 years. Kemmerer became the county seat for Lincoln County in 1911 when Uinta County, one of Wyoming's original five counties, was divided. James Cash Penney opened the first J. C. Penney store in Kemmerer on April 12, 1902. During the 1920s, the Kemmerer area became a large center for moonshining and a large supplier of liquor for Chicago and the Midwest. This ended when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The rich deposits of fossils in the area have long been a point of interest for paleontologists and geologists, amateur and professional, giving Kemmerer the title "Fossil Fish Capital of the World."