This sight points to the Guernsey Pipeline Station, jointly owned by the Platte Pipeline Company, the American Oil Company and the Continental Oil Company. Most of the structures under view were built in 1952 although, owing to the river's favorable grade and south-easterly course, the first pipeline through this vicinity was delivering Platte Valley petroleum wealth to mid-western urban centers as early as 1918. Technologically, this station is capable of interchanging crude oil among several carrier lines and moving it south to Cheyenne and Denver or east to mid-continent refineries.Aborigines, from the early foraging societies through the heyday of the Plains Tribes, exploited the North Platte Valley both as a route of travel and commerce and for its own natural wealth. But fur traders, conducting most of their operations further west in the mountains, were chiefly interested in the North Platte as a route of commerce; for covered wagon immigrants the Platte was only a necessarily traveled route lying between their past and their future; for pony express, stage and telegraph enterprises it was a pathway between inhabited regions wherein they provided the connecting links; livestockmen did exploit the valley's riches but preferred that someone else provide transportational services; railroaders found some local business but that was incidental to their basic operation - the transcontinental haul.Petroleum concerns, however, like the aborigines before them, have existed on both the valley's natural wealth and its transportational potentials. They have exploited its availability as a route for commerce to increase the value of its products through delivery to areas of maximum demand.
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