Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project

South of Rawlins, crews plan to put up around a thousand wind turbines, and they intend to do most of the lifting after dark. The daytime wind is too strong to hoist a turbine safely. That same wind is the whole point. In Texas and Iowa, the wind tends to blow hardest at night, when nobody needs the power. Here it picks up during the day, right when demand climbs toward late afternoon. Engineers rate it Class Seven, the top of the scale. Ten test turbines went up in two thousand seven just to confirm the numbers were real. The turbines arrive by a new rail spur and then travel five hundred miles of newly built construction road. All of it sits on a single cattle ranch, the Overland Trail Ranch, which is so large it straddles the Continental Divide. The turbines will occupy about half of one percent of it.