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Our Genealogy Helper for Collins Heights ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Collins Heights (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Collins Heights. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Name Variations for Collins Heights ...

When searching records, keep in mind that names and their spelling can change over time. Our sources include documents like maps, railroad schedules, Travel, Express and Shipping Guides. Many of these documents date from the 1800's and it's common to find spelling differences.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

  • A typical abbreviation for Collins Heights: Collins Hts. (in Canada, 'Hgts.' is the more common abbreviation.)
  • While the name of this community is Collins Heights, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Collins Heights may originally have been Collin's Heights.

    Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Collins Heights might be written as Collin Heights.

If you have information about these names (such as the reason for the change, date of change, the origin of the name), please Contact Us.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Collins Heights is located in Campbell County.

To see how the shape of Wyoming's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Campbell County: Powder River (MT), Converse, Crook, Johnson, Sheridan & Weston.

Below are the counties that are near Collins Heights. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Collins Heights:

  • Campbell County     (The home county of Collins Heights)
    • Gillette
    • Sleepy Hollow
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sleepy Hollow
      • Sleepy Hollow lies 3 miles [4.8 km]<2> to the south of Collins Heights.
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Sleepy Hollow have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to Google Maps centered on Sleepy Hollow
    • Antelope Valley - Crestview
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Antelope Valley - Crestview
      • Antelope Valley - Crestview lies 4 miles [6.4 km]<2> to the south of Collins Heights.
      • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for Antelope Valley - Crestview. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
      • Jump to Google Maps centered on Antelope Valley - Crestview
    • Rozet
    • Adon
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Adon
      • Adon lies 17 miles [27.4 km]<2> to the northeast of Collins Heights.
      • Jump to Google Maps centered on Adon
    • Pleasantdale
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pleasantdale
      • Pleasantdale lies 20 miles [32.2 km]<2> to the southwest of Collins Heights.
      • Jump to Google Maps centered on Pleasantdale
    • Recluse
    • Wright
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Wright
      • Wright lies 37 miles [59.5 km]<2> to the south of Collins Heights.
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,758 people
      • Jump to Google Maps centered on Wright
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Wright<3>
  • Crook County

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Collins Heights, see our County-by-County Page for Collins Heights.

Newspapers Published in Collins Heights ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 14 newspapers that have been published in the area around Collins Heights.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Collins Heights, there are papers which were published within 37 miles [59.5 km]. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Collins Heights.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Collins Heights:

  • Of Special Interest ...
    • The GenDisasters website specializes in newspaper articles about tragedies and disasters. While it makes interesting reading all by itself, it should be of special interest to genealogists and family historians looking for people who were either affected by or directly involved in such tragedies.
    • At this time (Dec 2022), GenDisasters website is currently offline due to a hacker attack. Hopefully they will be back soon.
    • Stories from Wyoming

Cemeteries Near Collins Heights ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Collins Heights.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Collins Heights covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<7>

While we didn't find Collins Heights in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Collins Heights.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Collins Heights, with the one closest to Collins Heights listed first.

  • Gillette
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Gillette
    • Gillette lies 2 miles [3.2 km]<2> to the west of Collins Heights.
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 32,220 people
    • From the 1895 Rand McNally Atlas, Gillette had a post office and railroad service
    • Jump to Google Maps centered on Gillette
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Gillette<3>
  • Moorcroft
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Moorcroft
    • Moorcroft lies 23 miles [37 km]<2> to the east of Collins Heights.
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,084 people
    • From the 1895 Rand McNally Atlas, Moorcroft had a post office and railroad service
    • Jump to Google Maps centered on Moorcroft
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Moorcroft<3>

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Collins Heights. See our List of 1890's Communities around Collins Heights.

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Collins Heights. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Campbell County: www.ccg.co.campbell.wy.us/

The official website for State of Wyoming: www.wyo.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<2>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Collins Heights) to Point B.If you need the driving distance, we recommend that you use one of the Mapping Services listed on our Map Page for Collins Heights. Since we usually use Google Maps for our own planning, we've provided the following link for your convenience: Google Map and Driving Directions starting from Collins HeightsOur distance measurements begin at a specific point in Collins Heights. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 44.2908, Longitude: -105.4344    
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<5>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<6>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<7>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Collins Heights, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

 

 

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This page was last modified/updated: 03 Sep 2023