The Pumphouse is an historic brick structure once used as a pumping station to send water to the town of Midwest and the Salt Creek Field. The Pumphouse was gifted to the Parkway Trust by BP in 2007. The plan is to turn this historic structure into a community gathering place with indoor public restrooms, Parkway trail system office, public plaza, bike/kayak vendor, and a restaurant. This project is the culmination of more than twenty-five years of work by many people in the Casper community.

Many years ago Tom Stroock and Jim Hill, original Parkway Board members, were together at a convention in San Antonio, Texas.  After seeing that city’s trail system and the development along the river, both men mused as to how something like this could happen in Casper.

And so began the effort to create a non-profit organization, the Platte River Parkway Trust, with a mission to conserve and develop the North Platte River Corridor. With a grant from the City of Casper, the fledgling Parkway citizen-led Board commissioned a Master Plan that laid out a program for cleaning up, preserving and enhancing the corridor, creating a central thread through the heart of the community and providing recreational opportunities, riparian conservation and urban development, including a riverside restaurant and whitewater park.

The Platte River Parkway, our community’s trail system, follows the North Platte River corridor from Paradise Valley to the East Casper Soccer complex. The Parkway Trust has been working in the Casper community since 1982 with a mission to build a pedestrian trail system and properly conserve and develop the river corridor.

The Tate Pumphouse is centrally located along the Platte River Parkway trail system at the Casper Whitewater Park adjacent to the Newell B. Sargent Foundation Bridge linking the Platte River Commons to the Parkway. Renovation of the Tate Pumphouse will provide indoor public restrooms, Parkway trail system office, outdoor public plaza, bike/kayak vendor, and a restaurant.

The Pumphouse renovation will also foster economic development in the river corridor by creating jobs at the restaurant and bike/kayak vendor, as well as generally improving and enhancing our great community asset—the North Platte River.

The Parkway Trust Board views renovation of the Tate Pumphouse site as an effort to expand the green gateway to downtown Casper that begins at the intersection of Poplar and 1st Street, site of the historic derrick sculpture, traveling west through Amoco Park along the river through the Casper Whitewater Park to the Newell B. Sargent Foundation Bridge and the Tate Pumphouse.