GREEN RIVER - For years, the tiny community of Wamsutter nestled at the southern end of the Red Desert has struggled with the natural gas boom enveloping southwest Wyoming.

Perhaps no other community in the area has been hit as hard by energy development as this small town, located about 35 miles west of Rawlins on the easternmost border of Sweetwater County.

The town's population has quadrupled in the past five years, rising to an estimated 1,000 from about 265 people in 2000. With the rapid growth have come strains on city services, infrastructure, schools and law enforcement, among others.

But somehow through it all, Wamsutter officials say, the town has been able to build the community it wants.

Today, Gov. Dave Freudenthal and a host of oil and gas industry, state and county officials will join Wamsutter's citizenry in a celebration of the town's success in coping with the energy boom.

The event will be hosted by Mayor Ken Waldner and the town's newly established nonprofit development organization, Wamsutter Community, Inc.

Wamsutter community development coordinator Lisa Colson said the event aims to celebrate recent milestones in Wamsutter's transition to a more "sustainable" community.

She said the celebration documents the community's all-encompassing approach to its development - including the establishment of key partnerships with industry, state and local governments; the development of a socioeconomic study on local needs and the surveying of local children for input on parks and recreation needs.

"This is an opportunity for us to not only build a lot of community pride with this type of event … but it's an event where we can showcase some of the accomplishments that's happened in Wamsutter" over the past few years, Colson said in a phone interview.

"We want to maybe be a template for other small communities on how they can build successful partnerships like we have … and to share our growing pains and talk about what's worked for us and what hasn't," she said. "What we've been able to accomplish through partnerships has just been amazing. We've had just an amazing outpouring of industry support and community support."

One of the town's strongest supporters has been BP, Inc. In 2006, the energy giant opened the company's state-of-the-art, $10 million operations center.

The BP facility operates as the hub of the company's $2 billion energy investment in the Wamsutter gas fields located mostly south of town.

BP also contributed $400,000 for a new child care center that has brought much-needed child care services to the community.

The town donated a plot of land near the proposed location of the new town hall for the day-care center, and the facility was funded by donations and infrastructure grants.

Colson said the town has been able to fund many infrastructure improvement projects over the past few years, including water and sewer line construction, the building of a new water tank, various street paving projects, and the construction of a new skateboard park for the community's youth.

"It's a skate park and basketball court and playground center that has lots of green space and picnic tables," she said. "It's also located right next to the day-care center, which goes right along with our plan to make that area kind of a nice, downtown core area."

Bearing the brunt

Wamsutter, like other southwest Wyoming communities, has born the brunt of much of the area's energy boom, but in a different manner, Colson said.

"While much of the work force around here is living in other communities (such as Rawlins, Rock Springs and Green River) that are gaining that tax base from them … we bear the brunt of their coming here every day and using our resources without us gaining (that tax base)," she said.

"But we're also very fortunate because every community in the state needs more money … and a lot of those towns are rehabilitating their old systems, while we're trying to build new …. We're using our funds to grow and not just try and catch up to provide services to a population that's hitting us hard," Colson said.

"We've been able to create a gamut of new resources … and we're doing it in a way that will meet the needs of not only what we have now, but what we'll need in the future," she added.

"We're being very careful and planning it out with the understanding of what our needs are on the ground, so we don't overdo."

Colson said Wamsutter - which bills itself as "The Gateway to the Red Desert" - is also poised to take advantage of its "excellent location" for growth over the next few years.

"We're right on Interstate 80 and in the middle between Rawlins and Rock Springs and Jeffrey City and Baggs … and it would be great to see us develop quite a diverse economic base and maybe become a major hub for this area in Wyoming," she said.

"We have this great opportunity now to make Wamsutter a town that is livable, to provide people with amenities they need, to do what we can to get people to move here, and to build a community that everybody can be proud of."

Organizers said the event will begin at 3 p.m. at the Wamsutter Town Hall Fire Bay with a workshop and special announcement by state officials. A dedication and ribbon cutting is scheduled for 5 p.m. at the town's new skateboard park located on Fultz Drive.

Officials said in case of inclement weather, the event will move indoors to the Desert School.

Contact southwestern Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino at 307-875-5359 or gearino@tribcsp.com.