Greybull hotshot building gets an upgrade

The Forest Service work center on North Eighth Street in Greybull is getting a facelift to the tune of roughly $1.94 million, which will aim to increase Bighorn National Forest’s ability to house employees. 

The work center is considered a multiuse facility, used to house equipment such as horse trailers, snowmobiles and fencing supplies. It has also notably served as the home base, office and training facility for the Wyoming Hotshots since their beginning. The work center includes crew barracks, a parking lot, outdoor storage and a shop building. 

“The buildings have reached an age where they require significant improvements to meet agency requirements and standards as well as providing safe and respectable crew housing, work, and training conditions,” Bighorn National Forest Public Affairs Specialist Sara Evans Kirol wrote in a statement to the Standard. “The office and shop building was built in the late 1930s or early 1940s and has a significant list of needs including roof replacement, interior painting, flooring replacement, and repairs to the restroom and plumbing.”

Big Horn County building records show the masonry, likely for the current office building, was completed in 1950. A history of the Hotshots hosted on Greybull firefighter Kyle Miller’s webpage for the agency relays that in 1967, Region 2 of the Forest Service was allocated a second Inter-Regional crew, which then needed a home base. An inventory of potential workstations resulted in the selection of Bighorn National Forest’s then-Paintrock Ranger District in Greybull due to its airport, which ran aerial firefighting operations starting in the late 1950s. 

“Sleeping quarters were fashioned out of the carpenter shop, which consisted of a garage with a large metal building attached,” the Hotshots historical account reads. “Inside were excess metal military bunks, metal military lockers that acted as screens between some of the bunks and limited bathroom facilities.”

What is described as a “primitive” kitchen and one unisex bathroom were used through the 1970s and 80s, along with “handcrafted ‘rooms.’” Big Horn County records show dormitory residence halls on the property have a building date of 1980. Outbuilding sheds were also erected around that time. The first women joined the Hotshot crew in 1981, and in 1982, what had formerly been known as the Bighorn Inter-Regional crew became the Wyoming Hotshots. 

The last major remodel of the work center barracks was in 1996. The construction brought individual rooms and separate men’s and women’s bathrooms. 

“The crew barracks building requires heating and air conditions improvements, interior painting, window updates, flooring replacement, and a group bathroom remodel,” Kirol Evans said. “The project will also add three additional camper trailer pads with full utility hookups and new aggregate will be placed in the work center’s parking lot and outdoor storage area. This will increase the (Medicine Wheel-Paintrock Ranger District’s) and forest’s capacity to house employees.”

Construction is ongoing and expected to be completed in June 2027.