One Of Wyoming’s Most Beautiful Drives Is Also A Kidney-Rattling Washboard Ride

The Louis Lake Loop Road near Lander takes travelers to some of Wyoming’s most beautiful places — but at a price.

That’s because much of it is also a kidney-rattling washboard with whiplash-inducing potholes.

Given the road’s awful condition, it takes about two hours to travel roughly 25 miles that the Louis Lake Loop Road covers.

It starts with a climb up a magnificent set of switchbacks just a few miles past Sinks Canyon State Park south of Lander. It comes out at Wyoming Highway 28 on South Pass.

The switchback section is paved. However, it’s narrow, and in many places there aren’t any guardrails. Not recommended for those who are prone to vertigo.

After things flatten out just past the turnoff to Warthen Reservoir, the pavement ends. There, it officially becomes Forest Road 300 through the Shoshone National Forest.

And that’s where the real fun begins.

The going is rough enough to make it difficult to keep a full-sized pickup from bouncing and skipping right off the road.

Some courageous souls traverse the road in sedans or pull gigantic campers along it to access numerous prime camping spots all along the route.

Designed For Model Ts

Part of the reason the road is so rough is because it wasn’t designed to handle the sheer number of large vehicles that run along it today, retired forester Karl Brauneis of Lander told Cowboy State Daily.

The road was built mostly in the 1930s along what had been a horse-drawn wagon route.

“It was designed to handle Model Ts going 15 mph,” Brauneis said.

During his career with the U.S. Forest Service, Brauneis helped oversee maintenance of Louis Lake Loop Road.

As bad as it is now, he said that at one time it was even worse, with bridges along the route on the verge of collapsing.

Even so, Louis Lake Loop Road can’t take much more of a pounding without its current annoyances becoming serious problems, Brauneis said.

“That road is so far gone it will close itself,” he said.

Not Driving It Anymore

Micheal Wilmer moved to Lander a few years ago and loves the scenery and stops along the Louis Lake Loop Road.

He said the road “is not too bad at the beginning, but it keeps getting worse and worse. If you go around a curve at more than 10 mph and there’s washboard, the vehicle starts slipping like it’s on ice.”

His last drive along the road earlier this summer was such a white-knuckle ride, Wilmer decided he won’t drive it again until some maintenance is done.

Word is that the regional U.S. Forest Service office doesn’t have the budget to do much with Louis Lake Loop Road for the time being, he said.

“It’s not a secret that there’s no budget (for road repairs),” Wilmer said. “To me, it’s sad that government employees don’t seem to have any flexibility in what they do.”

Messages left for the Forest Service regarding the road weren’t returned.

‘An Indictment Against Centralization’

Brauneis said it’s a common perception that a lack of maintenance on Louis Lake Loop Road is because of cuts to the federal budget by the administration of President Donald Trump.

He doesn’t think that’s accurate, because Forest Service road maintenance problems go back to well before the Trump administration, he said.

Rather, he thinks it’s a matter of how the Forest Service road engineering budget is divided up.

In his experience, larger central Forest Service offices get most of the money, while satellite offices like that in Lander get leftovers, he said.

“All that stuff, to me, is not the fault of the Trump administration,” he said. “It’s the fault of such a massive, centralized bureaucracy. It’s an indictment against centralization.”

As long as Louis Lake Loop Road doesn’t fall apart so badly that it must be closed, it will continue to see more use, Brauneis said. Not only from locals who know and love the route, but from increasing numbers of visitors.

“Utah is maxing out with people,” he said. “And now were seeing more visitors from Utah coming here for the outdoors.” 

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.