Volunteers remove 1,250 pounds of trash from Rogers Canyon near Laramie

Crews pulled 1,250 pounds of trash from Rogers Canyon this spring, the lowest amount recorded since the biannual cleanup began and a sign that the small public parcel northeast of Laramie still needs constant attention.

The cleanup on April 11 brought together 22 volunteers and partners at the BLM-managed site, which sits about nine miles northeast of Laramie and is surrounded by private property. The canyon is heavily used for motorized and non-motorized trail travel, hiking, running, dog-walking and recreational shooting, and it has long been burdened by illegal dumping and abandoned target trash.

That trash load was far smaller than some past hauls. Volunteers removed as much as 6,000 pounds of garbage in a single three-hour cleanup in 2024, and a Common Outdoor Ground event listing said the previous year’s effort cleared about 5,000 pounds. Over the years, cleanups have turned up mattresses, couches, dead animals, household electronics, glass bottles, plastic and batteries.

Partners in this year’s effort included Common Outdoor Ground, the Southeast Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Collaborative, the City of Laramie and staff from the BLM Wyoming Rawlins Field Office. Common Outdoor Ground helped coordinate outreach and provided volunteers, tools, trash bags and lunch. The City of Laramie supplied dumping waivers, while the BLM provided recreation staff, a law enforcement ranger and a dump trailer and truck to move the garbage out.

Andy Williams, an outdoor recreation planner with the BLM Rawlins Field Office, said the cleanup creates immediate awareness and strengthens professional networking and communication for future projects. He said the Rawlins team is small and depends heavily on partners to complete events like this one, and he described the five-year cleanup effort as part of a broader push to stop illegal dumping in Rogers Canyon and shift more attention toward trail building and maintenance.

The Rawlins Field Office manages public lands across Carbon, Albany, Laramie and Sweetwater counties, covering about 3.5 million acres of public land surface and 4.5 million acres of federal mineral estate. In Rogers Canyon, the cleanup protects a rare and heavily used piece of public ground, and the message from this year’s haul was clear: keeping it open and usable will require steady pressure from the people who use it and the partners willing to keep carrying trash out.