- The biggest thing that I noticed about Sinclair with the older residents and the people who lived here during the company time was just that they actually all considered each other family.

- A little tight-knit community, a close community.

They look out for each other.

If somebody's sick, somebody's taking 'em food.

If somebody's garage door's been open for two days, they're checking in on 'em.

- We knew everyone in town.

You knew every child, you know, you knew all the parents, you knew the... Everyone was kind of safe, you know?

(laughs) - [Police Officer] What makes Sinclair special is we are still just a little town.

(gentle music) - I always felt like I had to be real respectful of the history of this town.

And I got pulled into it so much that I wished I could go back in time and have lived that when the Parco Inn was going full fledge and they had a four-chair barber shop that would be full.

They had a coffee shop that would be full.

They had a, what was called the fountain room, where they had dances and they had a bowling alley over there.

And I wished I would've, when I was younger, and living in Rawlins, that I would've spent more time out here and gotta be a part of that.

And, for some reason, didn't, I mean, I lived in Rawlins and never came to Sinclair a whole lot.

- We're so blessed to have been raised here.

I'm just so grateful for all of the families were so close back then.

You know, they say it takes a village and it really was like that when we were being raised.

Everyone took care of everyone.

- It was more of a, like working for a family, you know, they tried to give you that impression that you were part of their family.

That was kind of what their ownership was about.

(gentle music) (gentle orchestral music) - I can't believe how tough the people were that got this town off the ground when the refinery was being built.

And the people that lived across the tracks over here in what was called Tent Town, or Rag Town in the wintertime in tents, I cannot imagine how they survived the wind and the cold living in tents, finding what plywood, cardboarding which else they could to have a dwelling to live in, and persevered.

- About 1922, they started construction on the town.

Town was officially opened in 1924, 25.

It started out as Parco Producers and Refiners Corporation.

(mellow music) It was 100% company town.

The refinery owned everything that you see here in the town.

- [Resident] This town, basically, went up in one year.

All these buildings, like the Parco Theater, the Parco Inn, where the town hall is now, which used to be a bank and a grocery store across the street.

They had a garage.

They built the...

It would fit a hundred cars, a hundred vehicles inside.

Next to that, they had a building called the Club.

It was a thriving little town, the Lincoln Highway going right outside this door.

- Everybody that lived here worked at the plant.

So, it became a very close-knit organization.

- Well, that refinery is why this town is here.

Frank Kistler, back in the day, and he built this town and he was the mayor and it was a company town.

And everything you see here was a result of that refinery, financing, putting so much money into this community.

The refinery is synonymous with the town of Parco, the town of Sinclair, when it changed names.

- We had a lot of things in Sinclair.

We had two filling stations.

We had a truck stop, barber shop.

We had a full-time post office.

The theater here, they had movies and stuff a little bit later.

I love this place.

(mellow music) - Oh, several years, when I was about middle school-age, my folks managed the Sinclair Drug Store and we had the old-fashioned soda fountain in there.

And I remember some of my friends had come out from Rawlins and they thought that was so cool because we got to work behind the soda fountain and make the old-fashioned drinks on Sundays.

The people that came through the hotel, we met a lot of neat people.

The hotel was a class act and the town just was thriving.

And we were so fortunate to have that experience while we were growing up and be involved in that and see that.

(mellow music) (gentle music) - 1967 is when the owners of the refinery decided they wanted to be out of the town business and sold off the residences to the people living in them at the time, all the Sinclair people.

So, it stayed as mostly Sinclair employee town for a number of years until some of those people passed or moved off and sold their homes to people who didn't work at the refinery.

- And then the Interstate 80 got built and that started changing things.

And the town started losing things.

Businesses, you know, shut down.

They didn't have as much business 'cause people were just driving around, by the town.

- And when the town then sold the homes, the bypass was built around the town.

Nobody came through Lincoln Highway anymore.

It put a damper on all the businesses and most of them had to shut down.

But we were lucky to experience all of that.

Within the last 10 years or so, the Sinclair Elementary School closed down due to lack of funding through the state.

And it was a little bit of loss of sense of community.

That was very sad to me.

- But we've lost so much in Sinclair.

Just recently lost our library.

My wife was a librarian there for 28 years.

(bright music) - Currently we are about 250 actual homes or residences in town.

Population wise, we're only about 350 people currently.

At any given time, there are 500 to 1500 people inside the refinery.

I would say less than 10% of the population here actually is employed by the refinery.

But they have always been a good partner.

We just had our hundredth anniversary and they were very, very big part of everything that we were able to do with that celebration.

- A great relationship to have.

And it is a big advantage that a small town like this has over a lot of other small towns in Wyoming.

And to have the support of that refinery for the town.

- I can't believe there was the amount of time and work spent for one day celebration, (chuckles) the expense that went into it.

But they had bands and food and it was wonderful.

It was quite a deal.

And yeah, it was really a good time.

And a lot of people come that I haven't seen in years.

- The town just did such a good job with the help of the refinery and other sponsors, but they just came together and did a wonderful celebration.

It was impressive.

(bright music) - And I wanted them to have pride in that event for everybody else coming from outside of this town to come in and being proud of what we've got here.

- I'm very proud of the town of Sinclair now.

They just have beautified the town so much and the money they've put into the town buildings to keep the historic look and to maintain everything and the parks, it's a beautiful little town and I'm very proud of what they've done and kept it up.

- What probably small town America was like 30 years ago still.

We're still there.

It's still a place where people raise their kids, where kids can be kids, where everybody gets along really, really well.

Things have changed a lot in our world, in today's world, things are different, but we're still there.

We're still that type of an area.

I think that's what makes Sinclair special, is we are still that type of a place.