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Print used courtesy

of James Bama.
Cody Enterprise
Orilla
Hollister
Wiley
Sherwin
Arland
SPECIAL PUBLICATION
May 21, 2016
NEWS EDITOR: Amber Peabody
NEWS STAFF: Vin Cappiello, Lew Freedman,
Rhonda Schulte, Buzzy Hassrick, Scott Kolb
Horace
Albright
On the Cover:
Kirwin
Flight of the
Nez Perce
Bob Edgar in At the Burial of Gallagher and Blind Bill.

(Print used courtesy of James Bama.)
LAYOUT/DESIGN: Cassie Capellen

PRODUCTION: Quincy Sondeno, John Sides
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PHOTOGRAPHY: Raymond Hillegas

3101 Big Horn Ave., Cody, WY (307) 587-2231
codyenterprise.com
John Peake (from left), William F. Cody and Agnes Chamberlin inside the Cody Enterprise office, ca. 1905. On the tables are moveable type
in letter cases. (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, USA. MS6 William F. Cody Collection. P.6.0481)
Buffalo Bill establishes newspaper

By AMBER PEABODY
News editor
ounded in 1899 by William Buffalo Bill Cody and Col. John
Peake, the Cody Enterprise has a long and colorful history extending over nearly the entire lifetime of the Cody community.
Deciding the town bearing his name needed a newspaper
to promote it, Col. Cody began working to start a paper in town. In
1896, he and his associate Major John Burke, contracted with E.H.
Rathbone for a small printing outfit and freighted it from Sundance.
The Shoshone Valley News ran for about four months, but when
Rathbone came to collect payment for the use of the press, Col. Cody
was away with the Buffalo Bill Wild
West show and nobody
else had authority to pay
bills. So he took the press and
ran the paper himself for awhile, later
moving it to Meeteetse and starting
the Meeteetse News. This paper ran
until 1932 when Ernest Shaw bought
it and merged it into the Enterprise,
according to Wyoming Newspapers: A Centennial
History.
A few years later, Col.
Cody decided to try again. He
had a Babcock drum cylinder
printing press stored in Duluth,
Minn., which he had purchased for his
sisters publishing company. The press
was a standard model, one revolution,
hand-fed, drum cylinder built about
1895, according to an article published
in Points West magazine in 2012.
He had the press shipped to town and contacted
his old friend John Peake of Washington, D.C., to help him start the
paper. Both Peake and his wife Anna were in poor health and it was
thought the change of climate would be good for them.
Col. Cody had two log cabins in the lots south of the Buffalo Bill
Barn. The newspaper plant was located in one and a home for the
Peakes in the other.
The first issue of the newspaper appeared on Aug. 31, 1899. At
the time the paper came out weekly as a four-page, seven-column
paper.
The Peakes drove around the Big Horn Basin collecting news.
Type was all hand set and one of the most efficient type setters was
Agnes Chamberlin, who owned and operated the popular
Chamberlin Hotel.
Peake served as the editor of the paper until he died
in 1905. Through the efforts of Col. Cody and Peake the
town continued to grow.
The original printing press was sold by the
newspaper in the 1930s to a paper in Lodi, Calif. It subsequently returned to Cody in 1983
when it was donated to the Buffalo Bill Center
of the West.
The press arrived in pieces in crates and was
reassembled by then-owner/publisher of the Cody Enterprise, Bruce Kennedy of
Sage Publishing Co., and
some of his staff. The press is on
exhibit in the Centers Buffalo Bill
Museum.
This Babcock printing press was

built in about 1895 and was used to
print the Cody Enterprise when it was
established in 1899.
John
Peake
Editor realized
potential of
young town
efore he moved West to
become the first editor of
the Cody Enterprise, John
Peake fought in the Civil
War and was a prominent
businessman.
He was born in Portsmouth,
Va., on Dec. 18, 1848. He later
went to Washington, D.C., and was
among the youngest volunteers in
the Civil War, having enlisted at age
14 and serving as an aide to Gen.
George Armstrong Custer. He was
in the Battle of the Wilderness and
afterward served in Company G
of the 40th United States Veteran
Volunteers.
At the close of the war he went
to North Platte, Neb., then a town
of only 200 inhabitants, where he
founded his first paper. He later
sold the paper and started one in
Lincoln, Neb.
He returned to Washington,
D.C., shortly after his Lincoln
adventure in the journalistic field,
and accepted a position as division
chief in the interior department,
but his health began to fail and he
resigned.
He then established a newspaper
in Deadwood, S.D., and later began
the Cheyenne Leader. However,
his health failed to improve and he
again returned East.
In 1898 he was contacted by
old friend William Cody about helping him start a newspaper in the
town bearing Codys name, so he
returned to the West. Peake loved
Cody and believed a brilliant future
lay ahead for the town.
He served as editor of the Cody
Enterprise until 1905 and Cody
owes much of its early growth, from
a small village to a bustling town,
to his untiring work on a newspaper, which boomed the town from
the beginning, according to his
obituary.
Suffering from heart trouble,
Peake went back to Washington,
D.C. that October. He hoped the
lower altitude and change of climate might aid his efforts to bring a
renewal of good health.
It wasnt to be though and he
died Nov. 29, 1905, at the age of
56.
John Peake (above) was just 14

years old when he became an
aide to Gen. George Armstrong
Custer during the Civil War. Later
he would become the first editor of
the Cody Enterprise after he was
recruited by Willam F. Cody.
Summer 2016 LEGENDS 7
This, the first number of the

Enterprise, is handed out sans
excuses, other than an expression that
each succeeding number shall be a
trifle superior to its predecessor.
From Page 1, Vol. 1, Number 1, Thursday, Aug. 31, 1899
One of the Enterprises earliest staffs gathered in front on their building for this 1904 photo by noted area photographer F.J. Hiscock. Pictured are (from left) Bob McMullin, Glen Newton, Anna Peake, founding editor John Peake, George Nelson and Fred Chase.
Granny Peake shares early hardships

(Excerpts from The Woman Called
Mater by Blaine Walters as told by Anna
Granny Peake, wife of John Peake.)
Interesting invitation
n summer 1899, Buffalo Bills Wild

West show was playing in Washington, D.C., which was our home. My
husband, the late Col. J.H. Peake, being an old and intimate friend of Col. Codys
always received complimentary tickets to this
wonderful western show, and of course we
were always glad to go, for we were usually
invited to visit Col. Cody in his private tent
which we deemed a privilege and pleasure.
The result of the acceptance of this private
visit at this time, in August 1899, was our
departure from the Capital City for our first
and only long journey. Col. Cody, realizing
one of the first and most important things in
the building of a new town was a newspaper,
and knowing my husbands profession was
journalism, asked him to go out to the new
frontier town of Cody and establish a newspaper, which he of course did, and that same
paper is the Cody Enterprise today.
The long journey
We were so nervous, as we expected to

see Indians most anywhere now, as the country looked so wild and desolate and there
wasnt any ranches or people or even an
animal of any kind to be seen for miles, and
to us Tenderfeet it was certainly a forsaken
looking country.
When our coach stopped in front of the
only hotel, which was then the Cody Hotel,
I asked our driver when we would reach the
town of Cody, thinking we were just stopping at this place to change horses, but he
answered with a big oath that This here is
Cody.
Then that great big lump that you just
cant explain came in our throats and we
were almost in tears. My husband had gone
to Duluth, Minn., to arrange the shipping of
printing presses out here, so just my daughter
Mrs. Blaine, Mr. Blaine and myself arrived
with Codys party.
we were startled by several shots and the

splintering of glass coming from a room close
to the one we were occupying.
We jumped from our beds and called for
help, terribly frightened, but as the proprietor
was engaged in a card game and there were
no women guests, we stayed in our room.
First thing the next morning when we
asked what could have happened, Cold Water Bill said, Oh that was the cowboys putting out the lights in their room. They always
shoot them out with their six shooters.
Starting a newspaper
My husband Col. Peakes impression

of the country was that this was surely the
jumping off place. And while he was not a
profane man, he said to me Anna how in
Gods name will I ever publish a newspaper
in this wilderness.
And it certainly was a big undertaking as I
recall the happening in those days. To get the
news we had to go after it, not as a reporter
today does with a telephone at his elbow, but
we would drive all over the Big Horn Basin
and to far off cattle and sheep ranches, for
interviews with these men of the range.
They would freely tell how this big industry was handled and all the details of their
ranch work, the round ups, the branding etc.
In Cody whenever a person arrived on the
stage, Mr. Peake would approach them in
his genial Southern manner and soon was in
conversation with him or her as to their destination and usually persuaded them to remain
in Cody, as it was soon to be the metropolis
of the West.
So with the hopes he had for the future
and the developments that he seemed to
know would come, he boosted Cody and the
Big Horn Basin in every issue of the newly
established paper the Cody Enterprise, which
we are happy and proud to say is still being
published, although not under the difficulties
it was then.
The type was all set by hand and one of
our most efficient type setters in those days
was Mrs. Agnes Chamberlin who owned

and operated the popular Chamberlin Hotel,
which was a later addition to Cody.
The printing machinery used then was
all old hand style, run by men who were
tramp printers who were here today and gone
tomorrow, except one who lived here, Bob
McMullen, a very nice, dependable young
man who was always on the job.
Many of these inconveniences and hardships made the printing of a newspaper an
uphill pull, however, the Cody Enterprise was
published every week and the subscribers
said it was a good, newsy paper.
Mr. Peake had to call on his family often
to help in the office on publication day, as
the head printer usually took that day to
celebrate, so I had to learn to feed the press
under my husbands instructions and our
daughter addressed and mailed the papers
on these occasions. Her husband Mr. Blaine
turned the big old press by hand, and usually
some part of it would break or as would now
be said go on the blink.
Mr. Peake had great hopes for this country
and soon realized the big developments that
would come in a few years, but he didnt live
to see them materialize.
Cody becomes home
After our first homesickness was over, we

liked the little town and enjoyed living in it,
and the laughs and tears of our early days
are sweet memories. A number of old timers
have passed away, new people have come
and the town has kept up with the march of
progress. Best of all the Cody Enterprise is
still being published.
The mountains in this country that looked
so far away and barren, the cactus and
sagebrush that were so dry and homely are
now all most beautiful and a large part of our
loves in this grand Cody country. I wish my
dear husband could have lived to realize his
fondest dreams and hopes.
Anna Peake died Dec. 11, 1953 in
Casper and was buried in Cody.
Rowdy hotel
The Cody Hotel was run at that time by a

gambler named Cold Water Bill and during
our brief stay at the hotel the meat served at
every meal was bacon. For breakfast, we ate
it fried, at noon it was usually served cooked
with beans and at night it was sort of hashed
with potatoes and onions.
One night after my daughter Mrs. Blaine
and I had retired at this one and only hotel,
The Cody Enterprise letterhead from 1911. (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming,
USA. MS6 William F. Cody Collection. MS6.0101)
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Visit the very center

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Larry Pirnie (b. 1940). Evening Run, 1994. Mixed media on

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Orilla
Hollister
Gail and Orilla Downing on horseback on the Wild

West show backlot with Vicente Oropeza, ca. 1908.
(Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, USA.
MS6 William F. Cody Collection. Gift of Orilla Downing
Hollister. P.69.1912.2)
Cowgirl becomes district court clerk

By AMBER PEABODY
News editor
rom being a featured rider in Buffalo Bills Wild West
show to serving as district court clerk for more than 40
years, early Cody resident Orilla Downing Hollister was
never one to shy away from a challenge.
She was born in Denver on Feb. 6, 1884, to George
and Delia Russell. The family moved to Lander in 1885 where
her grandmother ran a variety store. Orillas father did contracting
work for several years in the Lander area before deciding to move
the family to the Cody area in 1897.

It took 18 days to make the trip over land. Two lumber wagons and a buggy were used in the move. Later that fall, Orilla
went back to Lander with her grandmother to finish her schooling, returning to Cody in 1900.
In March 1908, Orilla was married to Gail Downing, a local
cowboy who had spent the previous season with Buffalo Bills
Wild West. Her first train ride occurred later that year when she
and her husband traveled east to join the show at Bridgeport,
Conn. Orilla was a cowgirl with the troupe that year, traveling
Remembering Season
with Buffalo Bills Show
(As told by Orilla Downing to Ina Moore in January 1939)
We left Cody sometime the first of April 1908 to join the Indians at a
small town in Nebraska near the Sioux Reservation where Mr. McCune,
who had charge of the Indians, had made arrangements for transportation.
The horses and equipment were at Bridgeport, Conn., where Henry
Goodman met us and took us to our rooms. We were in Bridgeport one
week then went on to New York. The show opened at Madison Square
Garden on April 9, 1908. We made the trip across New York City at
night on horseback, a distance of 12 miles.
This was about the longest season the show ever had and covered
every state in the Union but four. We missed the Carolinas, Georgia and
strange as it may seem, my own Wyoming.
Starting at Madison Square Garden we traveled west to Indianapolis,
Ind., back to Portland, Maine, then through the northern states, crossing
over into Canada at Niagara Falls. From Canada we came back to Milwaukee, then down through Nebraska, Colorado and Utah, up through
Idaho and Montana then on to Seattle and Portland, Ore. From Portland
we went down the coast and to El Paso, Texas, and from there to New
Orleans with the last performance at Memphis, Tenn. There the show
closed and we came home.
Wild West cowgirls
There were eight girls with the show that year besides Annie Shafer,
the bucking horse rider. Following are their names: Florence Robinson,
whose husband was an announcer; Maude Rollins, whose husband
was in the artillery; Minnie Thompson, who was a high school rider and
whose husband was in charge of the high school horses and himself a
rider; Marie, who was also a high school rider; Ella Jeanette, who was
a sister of Mrs. Johnie Baker; May Shafer, sister of Annie; Adele Von Ohl
and myself. My husband Gail Downing was a bucking horse rider and a
good one.
Annie Shafer was the first lady bronco rider ever to enter the show
business. She made her first bucking horse rides at the St. Louis Worlds
Fair in 1904. She then traveled with Col. Cummings Wild West Show
and when that failed she joined Buffalo Bill, who had bought the Cummings Indian ponies for his show. Annie was badly injured by having a
horse fall on her and was forced to leave the show soon afterwards.
Vicente Oropeza, the great Mexican roper who was the originator of
the fancy roping of today, was with Buffalo Bill again that year as he
had been for years in the past.
Time for exploring
across the U.S. and into Canada for the next six months.
Orilla and Gail had three children. The couple later divorced,
and Orilla returned to Cody.
Her father was Clerk of District Court in Big Horn County prior
to Park County being established. He would become the first
Clerk of the Court for Park County in January 1913.
Orilla became her fathers deputy in June 1921, and after her
fathers death in August 1922, she was appointed to the office of
Clerk of the District Court. She served for the next 42 years until
failing eyesight caused her to retire in 1964.
She married Dwight Hollister in 1947 and he preceded her
in death. She died at the State Sanitarium of pneumonia in the
spring of 1972 at the age of 88.
While in New York we took a trip up the Hudson and back by Grants
Tomb in an automobile, one of the first Stanley Steamers. At Auburn
we went through the prison and as two people were being prepared for
execution we were not allowed to see the electric chair. It seemed that
the doors of their cell opened only into the execution chamber.
While at Portland, Maine, some of us were fortunate enough to
get to go out to Old Orchard Beach. At Johnstown, Pa., we visited the
cemetery of the unknown dead from the Johnstown flood. This was a
very beautiful spot.
In Philadelphia, the John Wanamaker Store gave a picture show
for the Buffalo Bill show troupe. This picture was Paul Reveres Ride.
None of the girls would go so I went with the Indians and cowboys. Our
pictures were taken in front of the Wanamaker Building and it used to
hang in the Irma Hotel at Cody. We stopped over in Omaha on our way
home and this same picture of us was hanging in the lobby of the hotel
where we stayed.
Orilla Downing Hollister

and last husband, Dwight
Hollister, ca. 1950. (Buffalo Bill Center of the West,
Cody, Wyoming, USA. MS6
William F. Cody Collection.
Gift of Orilla Downing Hollister. P.69.1367)
While en route Harry Brennan, one of the best bucking riders in

the show, was sent to Denver to compete with others at a rodeo there.
Harry won first prize and we certainly were proud of him.
Special visitors
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Garlow were on their honeymoon and visited the
show and took part in the hold-up scene. In this act we were all lined
up by bandits and robbed of our valuables when suddenly the cowboys
rode wildly in and rescued all of us. Visitors were permitted to take part
in the hold-up. Mrs. Garlow was Colonel Codys daughter, Irma.
The show was not putting on a parade that year, and at Springfield,
Mass., a permit would not be issued to the Colonel until he promised
to give the people a parade, which he did. This was the Fourth of July.
After the parade we had a wonderful dinner in a dining room decorated
beautifully in bunting and flags.
In a town in Minnesota it had been raining for days and the mud
was so deep we could not get to the show ground. We were dripping
wet with no place to go so we wandered about the streets in our riding
clothes, carrying umbrellas. Our plight was causing no little amusement
and Col. Cody came along in his beautiful carriage. Upon seeing us he
became very much upset so he stopped and said Youre a fine looking
bunch, why dont you get in somewhere out of sight?
At last the boys located a room in the back end of a saloon where
we spent the remainder of the day. We finally dried out there.
Cody Boals, a grandson of Col. Cody, visited the show for about two
weeks before we reached North Platte, Neb. He left the show there
with much regret. We all had grown very fond of the boy and when he
left the colonel gave him the pony that he had been riding. As the train
pulled out he rode along beside it as far as he could saying goodbye, the
tears streaming down his face.
At Colorado Springs we visited the Garden of the Gods and rode to
the top of Pikes Peak on the Cog Road. At Leadville, Colo., the best
horses were kept out of the performance, owing to the high altitude.
While galloping around the arena slowly they would heave terribly and it
would have been dangerous to run them.
At Salt Lake City we heard a wonderful organ recital in the Mormon
Tabernacle. Most of the troupe attended this recital.
A misunderstanding
One of our cowboys had a small son that we called Mascot. He liked
to play in front of the dressing tents and could usually be found there.
One day two policemen appeared and asked me what became of the
little boy who had been playing there just a few minutes before. I was
quite surprised and assured them that I did not know where he was but
suggested he might be in a certain other tent as his father was at that
time in there.
One of the girls had a curtain across the corner of our tent and was
behind it taking a bath. One of the police said, Are you sure you havent
hidden him behind that curtain?
The bathing girl screamed, Dont you come in here. They knew
then I was telling the truth and left to look elsewhere. At last they
located him with the father.
It appeared that a boy in this town had been kidnapped and his
description was exactly like the description of our little boy and no doubt
someone had seen Mascot and reported to the police.
He was taken before the parents of the kidnapped boy who wanted
to adopt him as they had given up hope of ever finding their son again
and there was such a resemblance between the two, but Mascots
daddy tabooed that.
Steep streets and other problems
The girls had the privilege of having the groom take their horses to
the show grounds. Often we stayed in town until lunch time if there was
something special we wanted to see. The morning we arrived in Seattle
we decided to take the horses ourselves then dress up as it was Sunday
Eva Larson (left) and Orilla Hollister give a pen set to Sheriff Frank
Blackburn in the 1950s. (Park County Archives photo)
with no show.
We planned to do great things that morning in Seattle. We went to
the grounds with the horses early and as there was no place to tie them
we sat on the ground and held the reins waiting for the groom and the
range wagon or cook wagon as we had no breakfast.
To those of you who have never been in Seattle let me state that it is
built on an incline and when I say the streets are steep I mean just that.
Even today the cable car is in use on the Seattle streets because it takes
some power to pull those hills.
The range wagon was heavy and something went wrong on one of
those steep streets. The horses ran away, the wagon hit a telephone pole
and scattered quite an important part of the Buffalo Bill show on the
street. One of the horses broke its back in the mix-up. By the time the
wreck was straightened out it was 2 p.m. and still we had no breakfast.
There was a small bakery nearby but it had been cleared out in short
order. We really did not have a very good time in Seattle but the newspaper gave us a nice write-up applauding the patience of show girls.
In San Francisco, Henry Goodman, nephew of Colonel Cody, and the
rider Ella Jeanette were married. It was a very pretty wedding and my
husband and I stood up with them. The four of us went to a big hotel
and had a grand dinner after the wedding.
While in Texas we crossed over into Mexico and bought some souvenirs and we also attended the State Fair at Houston.
New Orleans was the only place where we had any trouble. A gang
of roughnecks down there decided they didnt want Buffalo Bill and his
show in their town and proceeded to prevent it. One of our men got a
badly cut hand during the fracas but we went on with the show with
policemen stationed on the grounds.
After the show we were rushed to the train under heavy guard while
a mob of people roared around the bars. A great experience was that.
End of the road
The girls always went to the train with the bucking horse string after
the show was over at night. Most of the traveling was done at night
with now and then a Sunday run when we would ride all day Sunday
with hot coffee and sandwiches at noon. There were tiresome rides and
how glad we were to get some place where we could get off and stretch
ourselves.
Many flags were carried and displayed in the show. Each country
represented carried their own flag. It was a custom that the one carrying
a flag at the last performance could keep it if he wished to as it would
be replaced the next season by a new one. My husband carried the
cowboy flag at our last performance at Memphis and I now have that
flag in my possession.
Although we had hardships during that season in 1908, there are
still many happy memories of incidents and really good times, and I am
proud that I was one of the nine girls who traveled that year with Buffalo
Bills Wild West show.
WESTERN WEAR
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whole family
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Downtown Cody
307.578.8725
OPEN: Mon.-Sat 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
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Claud & Katie
Colorful couple owned

Buffalo Bill Fur Salon
for almost 50 years
By AMBER PEABODY
News editor
practical joker who was always
on the lookout for the next surething in business.
A feisty furrier who was always willing to share a laugh or
give back to the community.
Anyone who lived in Cody prior to the
late 1990s likely remembers the stately
white house on Platinum Avenue as well
as its owners Claud and Katie Brown.
He was a true entrepreneur and
dabbled in a little bit of everything,
said Richard Brown of his granddad
Claud. He always told a lot of stories,
but you didnt know if they were true or
not half the time.
Grandma Katie was always laughing. She always had a positive attitude,
but if something disturbed her shed let
you know.
The Browns owned the Buffalo Bill
Fur Salon for nearly 50 years. At one
time they owned land on Yellowstone
Avenue from where the Best Western
Premier Ivy Inn and Suites stands to the
location of the old Bronze Boot.
Growing up it was an open 180
acres between the river and the cemetery, Brown said. All the old buildings
for the fur farm and the turkeys were
there. As a kid it was fun to go ramble
through the buildings and look at all the
old stuff and figure out what it was used
for.
Beginnings
Katie Meyers owned the Chuckwagon Caf in Powell when she met Claud Brown, who owned
the Pioneer Bar.
Claud was born Feb. 15, 1902, in

Syracuse, Kan., the son of Nathan and
Irma Brown. He left home at age 12,
moving to Nebraska to work for his two
uncles who owned a ranch there.
According to friends of Claud who
heard the story told, one of his uncles
Claud Brown (front) is pictured with some buddies

during World War I in 1918.
Brown was a mechanic
with the French Air Force
Lafayette Escadrille before
the U.S. entered the war.
Celebrating the opening of Spirit Mountain Caverns in September 1957 are (from left) Bill Bragg, Jeanette Miller, Jerri Adams, Dick Frost,
Katie and Claud Brown, Hugh Smith, Tom Cargill, Ned Frost, Robert Murphy, and Lorna and Gov. Milward Simpson.
forgot his birthday so he ran away from home, hopped a
freight train and ended up in Texas where he lied about his
age and went to fight in World War I in 1916. He was 14.
He was part of the French Air Force Lafayette Escadrille,
Brown said. He worked as a mechanic on the planes. The
mechanic was the first person to fly the plane, that way they
made sure it was assembled correctly. Thats how he learned
how to fly.
When the U.S. entered the war he delivered messages by
motorcycle on the frontline in France.
After the war he married Gertrude Strow and they had two
children James and Bonnie. The couple later divorced.
He went to work for the oilfields in Wyoming in 1922.
Katie was born Feb. 4, 1913, in Garland to Hank and Laura Meyers, the eldest of eight children. She attended school in
Garland through the eighth grade and graduated from Powell
High School in 1931.
After working as a nanny for eight years, she purchased
The Chuckwagon Caf in Powell. The restaurant was located
next to the Pioneer Bar, which was owned by Claud.
He had his own still and I think half of the whiskey he
sold out of the bar he made, Brown said.
The couple married on Dec. 13, 1943, in Billings.
Buffalo Bill Fur Farm
Claud became involved in the fur trade in 1928.

He started the Cody Fox Farm with nine partners who
each invested $1,000 in nine pairs of silver foxes, Katie said
during an interview with the Cody Enterprise.

Eventually Claud bought out the investors.
The first buildings on the original 30-acre site included a
shack, followed by a cottage for the manager to live in and fox
pens. Other buildings followed including a sergeants quarters
salvaged from the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp.
In 1933 the first platinum fox in the U.S. was born at the
fur farm. They named him Smokey, the Cody Platinum.
From Smokey and his progeny were developed the whitefaced platinum and the golden platinum fox.
They were recognized nationally as the ones who could
consistently breed the platinum fox, Brown said. Their
breeding got up to 60 percent and later over 80 percent.
Other animals bred at the farm included mink and chinchilla.
Not long after they were married Katie entered the fur business as well. The couple moved to Cody in 1945 and opened
the Buffalo Bill Fur Salon in 1947.
She sewed the coats herself when they first started the
business, Brown said. Later she started buying blanks (coat
shell) from various fur trading companies.
The two-room salon eventually included an upstairs addition of two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, living room,
dining room and sun room added on at various times. Downstairs additions included two vaults, three garages, a patio
and walkway. Grazing on the front lawn since 1950 were
buffalo and elk sculptures made by Claud.
Claud built me a shop right on the property, Katie said of
her fur coat business. I guess it was so he wouldnt have to
Claud sold Ercoupe Airplanes and Kelvinator refrigerators

at various times, and also repackaged STP oil additive and
sold it as hand cleaner.
He sold Kar-Bars which were units mounted under the
dash with five little buttons, Brown said. In the trunk there
was a Styrofoam cooler. Youd take a 3 ounce cup, put it
under the unit and push a button for whiskey, rum or vodka.
Back in those days that was a big thing.
He owned mineral rights around Cody, but lost those when
he didnt pay taxes.
Truth be known grandma kept the money coming in,
Brown said. She had more business smarts. If he came
up with a wild scheme grandma would find a way to get it
financed. But she was the first to tell him he was nuts too.
Philanthropy
The Fur Salon, pictured in September 1949, stood for almost 50
years on Platinum Avenue. (Park County Archives photos)
worry about me chasing the good-looking men or drinking too
much whiskey.
They eventually sold the animals on the farm but continued to produce fur coats, wraps and other products.
The white stucco building was razed to make room for
First National Bank, now First Bank of Wyoming, in the late
1990s.
Spirit Mountain Caverns
In the 1950s Claud decided Frost Cave, as it was then

known, would make a good tourist attraction so he leased the
cave from the city and began work on the cave.
Work proved difficult and expensive, but he made improvements, paving the parking lot and stringing electric lights in
the cave.
I can remember dad and he had a little Caterpillar that
was cable operated they used to build the road up from
scratch, Brown said. He spent a lot of time exploring to find
out where to take people.
The grand opening was held in September 1957. Gov.
Milward Simpson and his wife attended. People who wanted
to see the caves bought tickets at the bottom of the mountain
and then drove up and were given a tour.
They had old crank telephones set up to call up to the
caverns, Brown said. The road was so narrow only one
vehicle at a time could go up there.
Claud later announced plans for a $190,000 cable car to
the site but was unable to raise the money. He operated the
site until the late 1960s, when he returned it to the city.
While working at the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce,

Katie was asked to campaign for a tax-supported hospital.
I had never campaigned for anything in my life, she said.
When youre in business, you dont take one side or the other
because somebody will get mad at you.
She agreed to campaign though and was instrumental in
establishing the W.R. Coe Memorial Hospital in Cody.
Also during her tenure at the chamber, she worked with
her colleagues to create more housing for retirees.
We pushed for [Highland Manor], she said. People
needed a place to live.
During the Vietnam War, Katie organized a shipment of
3,210 pounds of cookies, baked in local homes, to be sent
to the U.S.S. Park County, a ship of 115 men stationed in
Vietnam. She served as the self-appointed ship mother for 5
1/2 years, sending cards, presents and even Christmas trees
one year.
She also was chairman of the Cody Stampede parade for
12 years and had a parade in the float for more than 40
years.
Other ventures
Claud was always on the lookout for a new business idea.

He was always a dreamer and would come up with a getrich-quick scheme, Brown said.
The Browns began raising turkeys and chickens for wholesale in the 1940s. Baby turkeys arrived by plane until there
were 10,000. With the arrival of Thanksgiving and Christmas
the birds were processed and shipped to bigger markets.
During that time the Browns also ran the Trout Farm, raising rainbow trout.
Katie and Claud Brown pictured with Smokey, the first platinum
fox.
Katie Brown (top left) helped start the Buffalo Bill Dollies, a can-can dance troupe, in the 1960s. The troupe danced in front of the Irma
Hotel each night to entertain the tourists.
Practical jokes and other pursuits
Claud was well known for his practical jokes and bolo ties.
He used to wear bolo ties with a clasp featuring flecks of gold
and try to sell them to anyone who took interest. The catch? The
gold wasnt real.
He used to take lead and another metal to make it look natural
and then hed paint the gold on, Brown said.
Brown also recalls staying a safe distance away from his granddad at Christmas.
He was missing one of his index fingers at the joint, he said.
At Christmas wed go to his house and he had the black olives with
the pits. If you got within 20 feet hed squish one with his thumb
and stub finger and hit you with the pit. Those things would sting.
At age 55, Katie started and danced with the Buffalo Bill Dollies,
a group of can-can girls who entertained tourists on the porch of the
Irma Hotel during the summer months. She was one of 19 original
can-can girls who got the tourists all stirred up two nights a week
in the 1960s.
She did like to dance and to have fun, Brown said.
As they aged the couple continued to have fun and rarely slowed
down.
Claude died in September 1995 at the age of 93. Katie passed
away 14 years later at the age of 96.
Claud and Katie Brown continued to enjoy life in their later years.
Claud lived to be 93 and Katie 96.
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Horace
Albright
Horace Albright, seated at his desk in 1929, was the first superintendent of Yellowstone. (National Park Service photos)
Albright shapes National Park Service

By LEW FREEDMAN
Staff writer
he wildness, from the animals to the scenery, always touched
Horace Albrights soul.
He understood the relevance of the nations wealth in lands
to the psyche of being American and to Americans future.
The boy who caught his first trout at 11 and rode horses into
Yosemite as a youth, repeatedly tried to flee a Washington, D.C., desk
for the Wests wide-open spaces as a young adult.
Instead, appeals to his sense of duty, and a deft talent for political maneuvering, diverted Albright from his desire to practice law to
his calling. Between 1913 and 1933 Albright was in the right place
for the birth of the National Park Service and to guide Yellowstone
National Park into a fresh chapter, at one point gaining the appellation
The Duke of Yellowstone.
Never as famous as John Muir, George Bird Grinnell or Aldo Leopold, Albright helped make some of their dreams reality, assisting in
arranging the structure for their implementation.
In the long run and it was a very long run for Albright he was
recognized with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and as one of the
influential conservation voices of the 20th century.
He never ran out of energy and for a time it seemed he would never
run out of breath. Albright routinely tapped out conservation comments
on his portable typewriter well into his 90s.
Road to becoming a conservationist
Horace Marden Albright was born in 1890 in Bishop, Calif. The

middle name came from a grandfather, an ardent outdoorsman who
took the boy into the wilderness.
He was making a conservationist out of me, Albright said decades later.
Albright earned an undergraduate degree from the University of
California at Berkeley in 1912 and a law degree from Georgetown
University.
After Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president follow-
ing the 1912 election, Frederic Lane became Secretary of the

Interior, which oversaw the national parks, and he sought out an
old friend, Adoph Miller, for assistant secretary. Miller brought
Albright into government service.
I had reservations, Albright wrote in the book National Park
Service: The Story Behind The Scenery. He was a year shy of
his law degree.
In the end I agreed when I heard the magnificent salary of
$1,200 a year and an opportunity to complete law school in
Washington and by going to Georgetown University at night.
Lane ended up shifting to the Federal Reserve Board and
Stephen Mather replaced him. Albright itched to return to California to work as a lawyer and marry his fiance Grace Noble, but
Mather cajoled him into staying on as his legal assistant.
Yellowstone was established as the worlds first national park
in 1872, but by 1916 there were 35 national parks and monuments.
Albright pledged just one year of service to the Secretary of
the Interior, but Mather, an energetic visionary, became his mentor and lobbied him into extending.
In 1910, before Wilsons presidency, then-President William
Howard Taft, who had accepted the advice of J. Horace McFarland of the American Civic Association, requested Congress
authorize a national park bureau within the Department of the
Interior. Bills were introduced in the Senate and House, but were
not voted on. Wilson pushed anew.
During the critical months leading up to Congressional consid-
eration of a bill to establish the Park Service, Mather suffered a

nervous breakdown and took a leave of absence.
Establishing the Park Service
It fell to the 25-year-old Albright to shepherd the bill through

Congress. On Aug. 25, 1916, Wilson signed the Park Service
into law. The measure authorized the hiring of departmental
leaders who shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal
areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations ...
which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural historic
objects and the wildlife therein and provide for the enjoyment of
the same...(and) will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations.
Mather became the first director. Albright was hired as his assistant at $2,500 a year.
Mathers health was iffy and he missed considerable time at the
office. Twice Albright served as acting director. He remained loyal to
his boss vision and played a critical role structuring the Park Service.
In 1917, Albright commented, I think I have been the busiest
man in Washington since January 1st.
A manpower shortage was one problem the National Park Service faced at inception.
Young, physically able men were sought as prime candidates for
rangers, but initially chose World War I fighting in Europe.
The man credited as the first national park ranger was Harry
Yount, long before there was legal park service authorization. Yount
Horace Albright gives a speech to commemorate Yellowstone National Parks 50th anniversary in 1922.
over-wintered in Yellowstone in 1880 to drive away poachers.

In a book Albright coauthored, Oh, Ranger! he called Yount
the father of the ranger service.
Albright wrote in the late 1920s that later rangers had to multitask, a somewhat accurate observation nearly 100 years later.
In old Harry Younts day it was enough if a ranger could
maintain order in the park and protect the wildlife, Albright
wrote. Today that is but the beginning of the job. The ranger must
be a guide and an interpreter of the mountains and their moods
and mysteries. He must be a practical naturalist and a friend and
counselor to visitors. He may be entertaining a reigning prince one
day and fighting a forest fire the next. He must be tactful, courteous and ever patient, even when ridiculous and foolish situations
are provoked by visitors.
Albright and Mather recognized the front-line ranger as the
backbone of the Park Service.
I like to picture the thousands of people gathered about the
camp fires, asking questions of the rangers, Mather wrote as
an introduction to Oh, Ranger! These men have become keen
students of human nature. They are a fine, earnest, intelligent and
public-spirited body of men, the rangers.
Practical and tireless
Neither Albright nor Mather were political ideologues, but

Albright became a student of behind-the-scenes political machinations, a genius at eliminating political obstacles.
It is a lofty, but erroneous belief that Stephen Mather and I
were great idealists, Albright said. There wasnt any magnificent
master plan, only a series of problems that had to be solved as
they arose. We improvised as we went along.
We never had the manpower, time, or money to be anything
but practical, pragmatic and tireless.
One Mather skill was public relations. He traveled 37,000
miles around the U.S. promoting the idea of a National Park Service. Meanwhile, Albright remained in Washington working those
legislators.
Horace Albright views the Buffalo Ranch. (NPS photos)
Albright and two

men on horseback,
circa 1920.
Albright, Yellowstone superintendent 1919-29 and NPS director 1929-33, picnics with bears.
Albright was ready to go back to California, but Mather again
talked him out of it. Albright married, brought his bride to Washington and laid the Park Services foundation.
When Mather became ill, Albright became acting director.
When Mather got well he dangled a new temptation in front of
Albright to keep him in government.
I just couldnt let him down, Albright said.
Becoming superintendent
In 1919 Albright became Superintendent of Yellowstone,

complete with official house, car and $3,600 salary. For
someone who grew up in the Sierra Nevadas, it was a great fit.
In that role over the next decade he shaped policies, including
eradicating military supervision of the park.
Albright dealt with striking waitresses at the Old Faithful Inn
and guide drivers recklessly exceeding the speed limit.
He sought to solidify relations with surrounding communities, West Yellowstone, Gardiner and Livingston in Montana and
Jackson Hole and Cody in Wyoming.
Albright threw his weight behind a tourism advertising campaign with the theme See America First.
Then, as now, despite much more limited accommodations
and transportation limitations, tourists flocked to Yellowstone.
Early in his tenure, Albright said, There was scarcely a state
in the union that did not send one or more private automobiles
filled with happy sight-seers.
In 1929, probably surprising even himself, Albright returned
to Washingon to become the second director of the National
Park Service, a job he held for four years.
Five years earlier Albright helped arrange a Yellowstone trip
for the wealthy Rockefeller family. John D. Rockefeller Jr., the oil
magnate, was smitten by the Park.
Albright and Rockefeller became close, maintaining a longterm correspondence. The relationship led to Rockefeller quietly
buying land for donation though Jackson residents were infuriated. Grand Teton became a National Park in 1929 and ultimately
the Rockefeller holdings were included in 1943.
Later, the road connecting Grand Teton and Yellowstone was
named John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway.
One Albright accomplishment was establishment of Great
Smoky Mountains National Park which encompassed the
500,000-acre Appalachian forest. Rockefeller paid half of the
$10 million cost. Also, Albright arranged that renowned Civil
War battlefields be turned over to the Park Service.
Leaving the Park Service
In 1933, Albright, who came from a family of miners, left the

government and joined the United States Potash Company.
Albright delivered a written farewell pep talk to Park Service
employees, in part saying, Do not let the service become just
another government bureau; keep it youthful, vigorous, clean
and strong. We are not here to simply protect what we have
been given so far; we are here to try to be the future guardians
...
Albright may have departed to become a businessman, but
his heart and those energetic typing fingers remained invigorated by the conservation spirit.
His contributions were many, but when Albright passed away
in 1987 one was singled out in the headline on his New York
Times obituary: Horace Albright; Founded Park Service.
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Bob
Bob Edgar founded Old Trail Town
in 1967. Today it consists of 27
buildings, which date 1879-1901,
100 horse-drawn vehicles, an extensive collection of memorabilia
from the Wyoming frontier and
authentic Indian artifacts. (Park
County Archives photo)
Bob Edgar was the winner of numerous fast draw competitions, including the Wyoming State Cup. He is pictured with his trophies in the
late 1950s. (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, USA. M89 Jack Richard Photograph Collection. PN.89.28.4595.34)
Edgars historical legacy lives on

By AMBER PEABODY
News editor
istorian, archeologist, artist, sharpshooter, trapper, author.
Throughout his life Bob Edgar had many titles, but the
one that may have fit him best epitome of the West.
If you want someone that personified the West, that
was Bob, artist and close friend James Bama said. He was more
knowledgable about the West than anyone Ive ever known.
We were friends for 47 1/2 years. He was tall, good looking
and reserved. He never bragged and wasnt anything but a terrific
guy.
Brother Larry Edgar remembers Bob as laid back with a dry
sense of humor.
He had no problem laughing at himself, he said. He was so
quiet you really had to listen to hear him talk.
Anyone who did listen in was often fascinated by what the
founder of Old Trail Town had to say. For most of his life Bob was
dedicated to preserving local history first through archaeology
and later through saving historical old buildings.
Theres so many things were not aware of and never will be
aware of in our heritage, he said in a 1980s interview. So many
things have been lost already; its good to keep as many as we
can.
Early exploration
He was born July 27, 1939, at his grandparents farm northeast of Powell near Polecat Bench, the son of Paul and Marjorie
Edgar.
His love of history and the outdoors started at an early age
when his family lived in an oil camp in Oregon Basin. He and
Larry would spend hours exploring the sandstone ridges and hills
looking for fossils, Indian arrowheads and buffalo skulls.
There wasnt much to do except wander around the hills,
Bob told an Associated Press reporter in 1984 about his interest
in area history. And thats when I first started collecting artifacts.
Often they would walk to Cedar Ridge on the east rim of Oregon Basin and explore the old abandoned coal mines. The mines
began in the 1890s and were closed in the 1940s. At the time
the old stone cabins, mines and coal slides were fairly intact.
When we were little kids wed hunt for arrowheads and that
started the whole mess, Larry said. We did a lot of traveling
through the mountains and hills looking for Indian sites.
The Cedar Ridge mine was east of where we lived about
four miles, Larry said. We found fossils and things in the old
shafts.
Archeological discoveries
In the early 1960s Bob and George Dabich began to explore for
Paleo-Indian archeological sites for the Buffalo Bill Historical Centers
first director Harold McCracken. Bob served as the BBHCs director of
archaeological survey and excavations from 1960-67. He was instrumental is preserving the petroglyphs from the Basin-Greybull area.
Easily his most important archeological find was the Mummy Cave
Excavation from 1963-67. The cave was located 35 miles west of
Cody near the mouth of Blackwater Creek. Bob was in charge of the
project, working with the Smithsonian Institute and National Geographic magazine. The extensive findings including the remains of
Mummy Joe served to re-write much of the archeological history of
the northern Rockies known to that point.
There was Indian occupation at Mummy Cave for almost 10,000
years, that represents 75 percent of mans span in North America. The
excavation went down 38 levels and was 40 feet deep, Bob said.
Larry assisted in the excavation of the cave.
It was the most complete layers of culture from prehistoric to
Paleolithic without any gaps, he said. Its the only one in Wyoming
with that much strata.
Preserving history
Eventually Bobs focus began to shift from archeology to preserving

historical buildings.
He became interested in an old log cabin near the DeMaris Spring
west of Cody. The old cabin had originally been built at the Arland
and Corbett Trading Post on Cottonwood Creek in 1883. Bill DeMaris
moved it to its current location in 1935 and leased the cabin to Bob
for $1 a year. The site would eventually become Old Trail Town.
I was developing an awareness of history being lost, Bob said in
an interview. Old buildings, trading posts and parts of the past. It was
disappearing. I just decided to dedicate my time to collecting these
buildings.
The first building he brought to the site was the Rivers Saloon,
built in 1888 west of Meeteetse. More buildings would follow in-
Bob Edgar (front, center) was in charge of the Mummy Cave Excavation in the 1960s. (Photos by Dewey Vanderhoff)
Edgar
demonstrates
his trick
shooting skills
for a crowd at
the Pitchfork
Ranch.
cluding the Hole in the Wall Cabin, which was built in

1883 and was a rendezvous spot for Butch Cassidy,
the Sundance Kid and other outlaws. Others include
the Bonanaza Post Office, Meeteetse Blacksmith Shop
and the Burlington Store. Many of the buildings were
taken completely apart, moved to the new site and
reassembled.
He wanted to save and preserve them for the
future so they didnt get destroyed, Larry said. That
was his main motivation. He did it on a shoe-string
budget.
Bob opened Old Trail Town in 1967 with five
buildings. The Old Trail Town collection now consists
of 27 buildings, which date 1879-1901, 100 horsedrawn vehicles, an extensive collection of memorabilia
from the Wyoming frontier and authentic Indian
artifacts.
If you want someone

that personified the
West, that was Bob. He was
more knowledgable about the
West than anyone Ive ever
known.
James Bama
Adding a graveyard
In 1974 he received a letter from a class of seventh

grade students in California who wanted to have the
grave of Jeremiah Liver Eatin Johnston relocated.
He was buried in a veterans cemetery that was set to
be moved to make room for the widening of a highway
in Lancaster, Calif.
They decided it was no place for the man to
be and started writing letters, Larry said. No one
took the kids seriously. Bob was the only one who
responded.
When they sent the body they sent it to Casper.
Bob went to pick it up in a station wagon. He could
hardly move the casket and it weighted the back of the
car almost to the ground. When they got it back [to
Cody] and opened the casket they found the military
headstone was in there too.
The grave of Johnston was relocated to Old Trail
Town on June 8, 1974. Over 2,000 people attended
the reburial service at Old Trail Town, including actor
Robert Redford. He portrayed Johnston in the 1974
film Jeremiah Johnson, and served as a pallbearer.
The cemetery also includes Jim White, Jack
Stilwell, Phillip Vetter, W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill and
Belle Drewry.
Different ranches had bodies buried there and
they all asked if hed move them, Larry said. Gallagher and Blind Bill were discovered on accident. They
dug into them while digging a road [near Meeteetse].
Bob didnt find out who they were until after he saved
the graves.
He determined their identities through careful
research, something he did for anything he brought to
Old Trail Town.
He spent hours in dusty courthouse basements
going through documents, Larry said. This was
before the digital age.
Master marksman
Bob was a master trick shooter and marksman.

One of his most popular tricks included using a
hand-held mirror to shoot backward over his shoulder.
With his back to the person holding out a playing
card or hat, or with a cigar in their mouth, hed use
the mirror to line up his pistol and then would fire the
shot through the item, with the slug slamming into a
special wooden backstop.
Hed shoot the cigarette ashes from a cigarette in
Bob Edgar on Cedar Mountain on Jan. 24, 1961.

(Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming,
USA. M89 Jack Richard Photograph Collection.
PN.89.28.4595.1)
Robert Redford (right) served as a pallbearer for the funeral of Jeremiah Liver Eatin Johnston in 1974 at Old Trail Town. Redford had
starred in the movie based on the life of the mountain man. (Photo by Dewey Vanderhoff)
someones mouth, Larry said. One time he blew out the flame on the
candle of his birthday cake.
Shooting was his fun thing. He started when he was 11 years old
and up until a few years before he died hed go out and shoot almost
every day.
Other endeavors
In his youth he made friends with the Cody and Meeteetse government trappers, learning their methods of trapping. For several years it
was how he made most of his winter income.
He trapped through high school and a couple years after, mainly
bobcats and coyotes, Larry said.
The Edgar family moved to Cody in 1950 and Bob graduated from
Cody High School in 1957. In 1959 he attended Northwest Community
College to study art and archeology, earning his associates degree in
1961.
I started drawing and painting when I was 10, he said in an interview with the Cody Enterprise. My dad was an artist and a poet. He
wrote over 250 poems and had a book of poetry published.
Added Larry: For a number of years Bob did it professionally to
supplement his income. He did a lot of pen and ink, and some oils and
water colors.
He became the Pitchfork Ranch hunting manager in 1968 and guided hunters there for nearly 30 years. His long association with the ranch
prompted him to join ranch manager Jack Turnell in writing Brand of
a Legend, about the history of the Pitchfork for the ranchs centennial
celebration in 1978.
Bob married Janice Birchfield in 1959 and had daughters Cathy and
Susan. He later married Terry Deutch and had daughter Sherri Lynn.
In the early 2000s he began to suffer from Alzheimers disease. Bob
died April 20, 2012, at the age of 72.
Legacy lives on
Bob operated Old Trail Town through donations and in 1972 set up
the nonprofit foundation Museum of the Old West to help make sure all
the historical buildings and artifacts would be preserved.
Since it began, Old Trail Town almost went under four times due to
legal issues. In 2009, it was purchased by the Museum of the Old West
after seven years of litigation.
We were able to save it, said Larry, who along with his wife Jan
have been involved in the foundation since it was founded. When it
happened I told him, Well Bob, Old Trail Town is now all in the foundation, and he just said, Well good.
The foundation continues to do the work Bob started. In late February, the cabin of William McNally was dismantled and will be relocated
and restored at its new home at Old Trail Town. Built in 1886, it was the
first residence in Meeteetse.
The world lost something when it lost Bob, Larry said. He was so
dedicated to preserving history of this country. It was real inspiring and a
lot people are trying to carry it on.
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Anson
Eddy Jr.
Anson Eddy leads packhorses near the Majo Ranch southwest of Cody in 1960. (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, USA. MS 89
Jack Richard Photograph Collection. PN.89.27.4382.17)
Mountain man loved tall tales

hen Anson Eddy Jr. died at age 88, Cody Country lost
one of its most colorful characters. He had lived in
the Cody area since about 1919.
For most of his life, Eddy lived the obscure life of a
hermit 36 miles from the nearest town. When someone did stop at
his isolated cabin in the Absaroka Mountains high above the South
Fork, he loved to visit and was known for his tall tales, according to
stories about him published in the Cody Enterprise.
Early life
Born in 1899 in an Indian wigwam in Vermont, he said, My

mother was an Indian squaw. My father was a renegade white man.
My whole background is Indian.
His obituary said he was the son of Anson and Caroline Douglass
Eddy. When he was age 8 or 9, he was sent to live with relatives
in Montana. When WWI started, he went to Canada and joined the
Canadian Army.
I got myself all cut to pieces in Belgium, he is reported saying.
Then I got shipped to Croyden, England, for special training. They
trained me for the Royal Intelligence Service.
General Marshall told us we had two tasks, he told a reporter

in 1977. Get Yamamoto (Japanese admiral) and find Amelia
Earhart.
When in the service Eddy met Cody rancher William Rusher, and
after the war came out west with him.
Eddy homesteaded the Horse Head Ranch on the South Fork in
about 1926.
Telling tall tales
Eddy was known for his tall tales.

As one Enterprise reporter wrote in an August 1982 issue,
Whats lacking in historical accuracy is made up for in entertainment.
He told stories of drug raids and claimed he shot the tires out in
a car he saw near a Cody service station that had been sought by
narcotic agents. The car was captured near Sheridan, and over a
million dollars in drugs were allegedly recovered.
Eddy worked for the Forest Service for many years. One coworker said they both read a lot of detective magazines. Later he
said Eddy would repeat some of the stories they both had read
as if they were his personal experiences.

Those who knew him also said he
claimed to have been a prisoner of war,
studied extrasensory perception with some
monks and served with the Royal Canadian
Mounties. He also claimed to be an investigator for the British Intelligence, the FBI or
Interpol, and said he helped interrogate prisoners of war while he was with the Office of
Strategic Services in World War I.
Jack Brown of Cody who knew Eddy
since the early 1920s said he had often
heard Eddys big windys but he thought a
man who guides dudes who cant tell tall
tales is no good as a guide.
Phyllis Claudson said she could tell when
Eddy was kidding after she got to know him
well.
Hed get this little twinkle in his eye, just
a flash in his look and if I caught it I knew
he was telling a story for fun, she said.
The Pond family brought Eddy into
their home in 1974 for almost a year after
he was injured in a fire that burned down
his cabin home, a wood pile and a trailer
nearby. Some thought the fire started by an
old wood stove he cooked on. He claimed
the fire had been deliberately set. Later Earl
Claudson and several other friends built him
a block cabin.
Meyers murdered
Anson Eddy was a hunting guide, 1957. (Buffalo

Bill Center of the West,
Cody, Wyoming, USA.
MS 89 Jack Richard
Photograph Collection.
PN.89.17.2965.2)
In October 1970, Eddy was accused of

shooting western artist Bob Meyers.
Meyers, 51, was a New Jersey native
who bought a dude ranch adjoining Eddys
property around 1961. Although Eddy never
owned nor drove a vehicle, he had friends
who did, and the men argued over use of a
road through Meyers property.
Meyers was fixing fence with his wife
Helen near the South Fork road on Oct. 28,
1970, when Meyers heard a gunshot about
noon. Telling his wife to take cover behind
the pickup truck, he evidently attempted
to do the same but was shot in the head
almost immediately. Two or three shots were
fired, one piercing two logs in the pickup
bed.
Members of the sheriffs department,
Cody police and county attorneys office
worked on the case. Using the logs as clue
to direction, officials determined the shots
came from a ridge above the scene. Physical evidence collected at the scene was sent
to the FBI laboratories in Washington, and a
lie-detector expert from Golden, Colo., was
in Cody for two days testing six people.
The investigation was hampered by failure to recover the bullet that killed Meyers
and the inability to determine even the caliber of the rifle used. But the county attorney
was certain the shots were intentionally fired
toward the area where Meyers was working.
Eddy was arrested Feb. 23, on first
degree murder charges for the slaying of
Meyers. The March 10, 1971, Enterprise
reported Eddys bond was set at

$20,000.
At a May 5 preliminary hearing, Judge Richard Day ruled
probable cause was found that
a crime was committed and
that the defendant committed
the crime. Eddy was bound over
to district court where he was
arraigned.
Eddy told the Enterprise

he never was worried while in
jail because when you are not
guilty, you dont have to worry.
Death of a
mountain man
Eddy was found dead in

1982 by two friends from Basin.
They said he had been to the
creek for water and on his way
back had evidently sat down
Jury selection was on a Tuesto rest. He was leaning against
day. The trial began with opena bank with one hand resting
ing statements by the defense
under his head. Officials said he
and prosecution on Wednesday.
probably died of a heart attack.
During the trial, Robert FrazAt his request, Eddy was
er, a special agent from the FBI,
buried on a hillside a few
flew out from Washington to
minutes walk from his cabin
testify a bullet submitted to him
on the Horse Head Ranch. His
by the prosecution had not been
gravesite overlooks the Ishafired from Eddys rifle. Another
wooa Valley. More than 100
agent from an FBI lab, John
people were at the final service
Kilty, testified the lead particles
for Eddy.
taken from Meyers head had
After Eddys death, Byron
similar composition to lead in
resident Don Bell wrote a letter
bullets taken from Eddys cabin.
to the editor, sharing this tall
Under cross-examination, 1 said
tale:
many thousands of bullets could
Anson was a mountain
have similar composition.
man. Anson had never seen a
Norman Smith of Hopewell
small grizzly bear in his life. All
Junction, N.Y., who had bought
A modern day mountain man and trapper, Anson Eddy lived in a
were monsters. To get the good
some property from Eddy above
cabin
west
of
Cody,
1969.
(Buffalo
Bill
Center
of
the
West,
Cody,
stories out of Anson, you had to
the Meyers property, said he
Wyoming, USA. MS 243 James Bama Collection. P.243.02827)
prime him with a few shots of
saw Eddy shortly before the
booze.
shooting with a rifle in his
He said he was riding his old
hands, although Eddy was
fence the day of the shooting and he did not
mare down the trial one day and this big
3,000 yards away from him at the time.
fire his rifle that day.
grizzly reared up right in front of him, standThe prosecution rested its case after callThe prosecution did not cross-examine
ing on its hind feet. She let out a loud roar.
ing special agents from the State Attorney
Eddy.
Anson said it chilled him to the bone, but he
Generals office Judy Leesburg and Neil
The jury asked to be taken to the scene
looked for a way out and spotted this high
Compton.
of the shooting and they were bused out
limb on a tree.
The two took Eddy to a Cody motel room to the South Fork. The following day, the
The limb was 50 feet above his head.
on Feb. 23, where he signed a statement
defense and prosecution gave final summaAnson made the jump then we asked
admitting the crime. At his trial Eddy testitions.
if he got hold of the limb? He laughed and
fied hed signed it to get the thing out in the
The jury then began deliberations at
said. I missed it going up, but caught it
open. He later denied he shot Meyers and
1:45 p.m. Nine women and three men on
coming down.
pleaded not guilty in court.
the jury met on the top floor of the Park
The confession was the only solid piece
Kay Althoff of Cody grew up loving and
County Courthouse.
of evidence County Attorney Jim Castberg
respecting Eddy. When she was 4, he sent
All the jury voted not guilty on the first
of Powell had, according to defense lawyers
her a bracelet hed made from Australian
ballot and at 6:30 p.m. reported its verdict
Ernie Goppert Jr., Joe Fitstephens and their
coins while he was in a hospital in New Zeaof not guilty to the court.
assistant Marge Williams Meacham.
land after being wounded in World War I.
Eddy was back in the courtroom to hear
For the defense, character witnesses inI spent many wonderful years hearing
the jurys verdict wearing a new pair of
cluded former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, who Levis, a dark-blue shirt and a pair of wide
tall tales and enjoying him in general, she
described his talks with Eddy over the years. suspenders. The judge later admitted he
wrote in a letter to the Enterprise editor
The defense also called John Bereman,
upon his death He liked people but liked
was stunned when he saw Eddy was carwho testified the holes through the logs in
his solitude. Some people put him down for
rying his hat. He took it as a sign Eddy had
the back of Meyers pickup would make it
the way he was but I really think they were
confidence the jury would set him free.
appear the angle of the shots were from the
envious of him.
The Cody Enterprise reported the verdict
ridge top.
I know he didnt kill that man, she
on June 23, 1971, with a headline that
Eddy also took the stand in his own dewrote. He was not that type of man. He
read, Anson Eddy found not guilty.
fense. Under oath he said he did not shoot
told me he didnt and I know he was telling
A week after jury selection, Eddy was
Meyers and the reason he signed the two
the truth. If you really knew him you would
walking the streets of Cody greeting his
statements saying he had killed Meyers was
friends and asking the women why they had really know the truth. He was really a great
because he wanted to help break the case
and wonderful man that deserved all our
not come up to kiss him through the jail
open. Eddy said he was working along a
respect.
bars.
Trial and verdict
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I wouldnt be here today

without my seat belt.
Joel Johnson
Joel and Michelle

Johnson
A crash on June 8, 2015, forever changed the life of Powell

resident Joel Johnson and his family. He was driving to
work that morning on Wyoming State Highway 295 when
a distracted driver drove through a stop sign striking
Joels work pickup.
Joel sustained life threatening injuries and was in a
coma for eight days after the crash.
After months of recovery and
rehabilitation, Joel is here today
and credits his seat belt for
saving his life that morning.
AsPark
of April
1, 2016,
died in
onPark
Wyoming
highways
in 2016,
downlack
fromofa
County:
Of 11
thepeople
8 fatalhad
crashes
County
last year,
3 involved
total
21 use.
people
who died
in highway
crashes
through
the first three
months
of 2015.
seatofbelt
However,
several
crashes
involved
motorcycles
or ATVs,
where
seat belts are not
The
2016 total
includes 1 pedestrian. Of the 11 people who had died on Wyoming highways
normally
available.
asBig
of April
1, 2016, 8 were not wearing their seat belts, and four of the people who died were involved in
Horn County: 4 of the 5 fatal crashes in 2015 were attributed to lack of seat belts and/or
alcohol/drug-related
crashes.
Summer 2016 LEGENDS
drunk driving.
47
Wylie
Sherwin
Wylie Sherwin shows a

bighorn sheep head and
hide on a car in Cody,
Wyoming, 1950s. (Buffalo Bill Center of the
West, Cody, Wyoming,
USA. M89 Jack Richard
Photograph Collection.
PN.89.112.21256.35)
Trail Shop popular on road to Park

By AMBER PEABODY
News editor
hen Yellowstone National Park opened to motor vehicle traffic in
1917, the road from Cody to the Park was little more than a trail.
Recognizing a great business opportunity, Wylie Sherwin, 26,
moved from Lovell to the North Fork in 1921 with his wife and four
children to open a tourist camp to serve the motoring public. The idea was to have
cabins, a gas station and store selling novelties and leather goods. He named it The
Trail Shop, according to the memoirs of son Ted Sherwin.
Sherwin wanted to build as close to the forest boundary as he could without actually being in the forest. So, using Forest Service survey maps, he staked out about
10 acres of land and began building.
The road to Yellowstone was originally called The Yellowstone Trail, hence the
name, Trail Shop. When it opened in 1922 it offered cold drinks, candy, souvenirs,
camping for 25 cents and gasoline.
The following year the Forest Service re-surveyed and decided the cabins Sherwin had built actually were inside the forest and would have be moved 100 yards
east. So in spring 1924, Sherwin started construction of the new lodge, son Russell
Sherwin wrote in his memories of the Trail Shop.
The new building had a large front room for the store and lunchroom. Behind
that was a large kitchen and family dining area, and in back of the kitchen was
a living room and two bedrooms. There was a large enclosed porch next to the
kitchen, serving as a utility room, laundry and space for a large icebox.
The new Trail Shop was completed and ready for business by the spring of
1925, along with three double cabins which had been built during the winter.
The Trail Shop thrived, although the season was only four months long. One
day in 1926 some of the yellow tour buses which carried tourists through the Park
stopped to let passengers use the restrooms. Other passengers also took advantage
of the opportunity to buy refreshments and souvenirs.
Realizing the economic advantage of having more buses stop at the Trail Shop,
Sherwin talked to the bus company officials, who told him they would make it a
regular stop if he would install more restroom facilities. Sherwin went right to work,
and the busses continued to stop at the Trail Shop until the 1950s, Ted Sherwin
wrote.
By the 1930s there were 13 cabins, a gas station and store. The specialty goods
sold in the store were leather purses and wallets, made by inmates of the Wyoming
State Penitentiary, deerskin leather jackets and gloves, silver and turquoise jewelry
made by the Navajo Indians, Navajo rugs, and dolls and blankets made by the Hopi
Indians. For a time, they even offered homemade ice cream and waffles.
The Trail Shop continued to prosper, although there were lean years when
Sherwin supplemented his income by guiding hunters, building guardrails in Yellowstone, building cabinets and furniture for local people and helping some of the local
farmers with temporary work as needed, Russell Sherwin wrote.
The Sherwins continued to operate the Trail Shop until 1962 when the State
Highway Department needed the property for realignment of the new highway to
Yellowstone.
For more recollections from both Ted and Russell Sherwin go to wyomingstories.
com.
The Trail Shop was a popular stop on the road to Yellowstone 1922-62. (Park
County Archives photo)
Sherwins pet bear cub a

favorite with the tourists
When it was legal and popular to do so, the
Sherwins had a pet bear cub named Blackie.
The following is an excerpt from the Memoirs of
Ted Sherwin about that time.
One spring some bear hunters stopped at the
Trail Shop with a little black bear cub in the back
of their truck. They said another hunting party
had killed a mama bear and they found the cub
wandering around in the area. He was too small
to fend for himself, so they brought him down, but
did not want to try to keep him themselves.
The upshot of it was that Dad agreed to take
him, until he could figure out what to do with
him. As time passed he grew rapidly, and by a
process of trial and error, we found things for him
to eat. He was fond of raw eggs, and when one
was cracked into a saucer for him, hed slick it up
in a hurry and then lift the saucer in both paws
to look underneath to see if anything had been
missed.
Blackie, as we called him, was a great favorite with the tourists, especially the people on the
yellow buses. We had to be careful what they fed
him, as a diet of candy bars and ice cream was
obviously not the best for a growing cub bear. We
did let him have a bottle of Coke once a day, and
that was one of his favorite treats. He would hold
the bottle in both paws and sit up to drink it, not
lowering the bottle until it was empty. He usually
got a round of applause from the spectators for
that.
He learned the secrets of coping with his environment very quickly. If a dog showed up, hed
shimmy up the wooden clothes line pole to the
cross bar and wait there until the coast was clear.
The two clothes line posts at one end of the lines
were connected by a cross-bar, and Blackie could
go up one pole, walk across to the other side and
climb down, but his chain was not long enough
for him to reach the ground on that side. Instead
of jumping down and hanging himself, as most
dogs would, he would go to the end of the chain,
reach up with one paw and give it an extra tug,
and then, muttering to himself, hed climb back
up and return to home base on the other side.
One day in September, when the first snow fell,
we went out to feed him in the morning and found
the chain broken and the bear gone. We could
tell from the tracks in the fresh snow that he had
gone down to the river and crossed the bridge, but
we could not track him very far.
Dad was worried, because even with the new
collar, he would grow rapidly and might choke
to death in a few months. There was nothing we
could do, however, so we just hoped hed find a
good place to spend the winter hibernating.
ms
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LEGENDS
Kirwin
A celebration during the early years of Kirwin. (Meeteetse Museums photos)
Mining town faced many hardships

By BUZZY HASSRICK
Special to the Enterprise
hen John and Mary Hagbery decided to relocate their ranch
from northern Colorado to Bozeman, Mont., around 1893,
they packed up and headed north with their cattle and
horses.
My great-grandfather was fed up with the winters in Colorado, Jay
Moody said. But when the rancher got to the upper Wood River outside
present-day Meeteetse, he decided he didnt want to go any further.
Their home, now known as the Larsen Ranch, became a wayside stop
for wayfarers on the route to Kirwin, a mining camp located about 35 miles
southwest of present-day Meeteetse at an elevation above 9,000 feet.
Great-grandmother served meals to freight haulers and travelers,
Moody said.
To acquire provisions for that service and other needs of the ranch, the
Hagberys made the long journey to Red Lodge, Mont., which they did twice
a year.
Thats how far away basic food supplies were, Moody said.
His grandmother, Helen Hagbery Larsen, shared recollections about
those days with Moody. He used family stories as well as information from
historic newspapers to write Kirwin An Unfulfilled Dream in the September 1977 issue of Wyoming Wildlife magazine.
Along with the meal service, the Hagberys had other connections to
Kirwin. The couple hosted two annual corporate meetings of the Wood
River Mining District, and were friends of C.L. Tewksbury, an early Kirwin
promoter, and his family. Helen learned about the mining camp from that
exposure and personal visits.
It was part of her daily life, Moody said. As a young girl, she attended
several dances at Kirwin, probably chaperoned.
Founding of a town
Social occasions provided diversions for the population that numbered

200 during Kirwins peak years, 1905-06, when people lived and worked
in 38 buildings. That was 20 years after two Colorado men started exploring
the area in 1885 and made a find in 1891.
Harry Adams and Bill Kirwin, while hunting near the recent site of
Kirwin, caught sight of a deer and while crawling along the mountain to
get within range, Kirwin saw something that made him give up the idea of
pursuing the game further. It was a specimen of ore containing considerable copper, gold and silver, according to a history published in a Sept. 29,
1903, article in The Wyoming Stockgrower and Farmer.
On the way to Arland to mail ore samples, Adams disclosed the discovery, launching a rush. The two prospectors, joined by 16 partners, formed
the Wood River Mining District in 1891 and began staking and filing claims.
The first ore was shipped by pack mules in 1897. By then three companies dominated the commerce: Wyoming Mining Co., founded by Tewksbury of Elmira, N.Y.; Shoshone Mountain Mining, founded by Henry John
Schnitzel of Lead, S.D.; and Galena Ridge Co., established by men from
Lead and Chicago.
Yet even with sound investors, Kirwin faced two initial hurdles: the financial panic of 1893 and its distance from a rail head. Its future brightened
with the new century as investment money began flowing and rumors of a
railroad started circulating.
The Burlington will begin work on an extension next March from Cody
to Thermopolis, according to a December 1902 article in The Wyoming
Stockgrower and Farmer. This line will also tap the rich gold fields at Kirwin
as well as the coal fields south of Meeteetse.
Model mining camp
A stagecoach driver and the mail carrier, Grasshopper

Bill stops in front of the home of Bethel Broadbent in an
image from the early 1900s.
Three years later, no progress had occurred, but there were reported
sightings of surveyors on the Greybull and Wood rivers and of top railroad
officials touring the area. That summer, Schnitzel pronounced that miners
would unearth enough ore to justify a railroad. The site also offered another,
more unusual boast.
Kirwin is a model mining camp in many respects, The Wyoming
Miners at Kirwin. This early image (prior to 1907) is missing one persons face. The story is
that the miner needed a picture to send to his girlfriend, so he cut out his face and sent it
to her. (Meeteetse Museums photos)
Hope and more hard times
Stockgrower and Farmer reported in 1903.

The nearest saloon is 40 miles from the
In 1906, spirits rebounded with the news
place and miners are consequently all sober
about a vein discovered in Galena Ridge.
and industrious.
In the Bryan lode last Saturday evening the
Several attempts have been made to start
miners made the richest strike ever pure nasaloons, but as all the companies are united
tive copper in chunks and wads and worlds
in their opposition to liquors in the camp the
of it, Moody wrote, citing the Feb. 1 issue of
attempts have proven futile.
An entrepreneur named Dad Stone had ap- the Wyoming Standard in Meeteetse.
That news was accompanied by prospects
parently tried to open a saloon, unsuccessfully,
of more investments compressed air drills,
Moody wrote. My grandmother remembers
new electric plant and possibly a smelter.
that most entertainment came in the form of
The ecstatic mood of Kirwins men was
dances which the whole camp attended at the
enhanced that [1906] summer by Luciel the
boarding house run by Amy Chubb.
Palmist, who moved into a room on the third
Outside, in the surrounding hills, miners
floor of McKittricks Hotel, Moody wrote. She
had punched numerous shafts by the sumevidently, however, extended her services bemer of 1905. The Galena Ridge tunnel ran
600 feet into the mountain, producing ore of
galena, copper and silver. The Wyoming Mining Co. had gone down 250 feet, the deepest
in Kirwin, revealing gold and copper. Amid all
that activity came word of a possible telephone line. Prospects look promising.
Kirwin, one of the most picturesque mining camps in the West, is destined to be one
of the largest and richest, wrote W.B. Sleeper
in the Burlington Post, Aug. 31, 1905,
after visiting the site. I saw tunnels, shafts,
hoists, boilers and machinery costing nearly
$500,000.
Access roads were being improved, and
a young doctor from Nebraska was thinking
about opening a practice in Kirwin.
The mood in the town during those glorious days was jubilant, Moody wrote, though
two incidents dimmed the glow.
An explosion in the Bryan mine in midsummer killed a Mr. Chubb, father of four with
another on the way, and injured two others. In
Wolf Mine was built by Charlie Wolf in the
November, exploding dynamite caps riddled
1940s.
the body of R.L. McGirr, but he survived.
yond that of fortune telling and was eventually

asked to leave.
With her departure descended a dark cloud.
Rather than gearing up, work was slowing
down. Power and supplies dwindled. A fire
destroyed the surface works of the Bryan Mine.
Then the skies let loose in the winter of 1907.
After nine days of snow, an avalanche slid
down a northern slope, submerging a home
and store and killing three occupants. Hitting
the valley floor, it destroyed another store. The
two occupants survived but decided to abandon the town. And the pattern persisted.
Throughout the rest of that winter heavy
snow and smaller slides continued to plague
the camp, Moody wrote. Spring came to
Kirwin in 1907 only to find that most of the
miners and their families had left ...
Some left fully furnished homes behind to
stand as symbols of their disillusionment.
Tewksbury persevered and returned in summers to run a store, which sold and subsequently closed.
The end of the road
In 1917, R.J. Chapman submitted an inventory of 13 mines to the Wood River Mining,
starting with nine intact ones: Little Johnnie,
Oregon, Galena Ridge, Pickwick, Tumalum,
Smuggler, Maid of the Mist, Bay Horse and
Illinois. He labeled four as caved-in: Manilla,
Mendota, Bryan and Rose Hannibal. Chapmans report also mentioned ores of gold, silver,
molydenite, copper and lead.
Eight years later, Schnitzel returned to
renew mining interests, but his efforts were in
vain.
Another lure, the mountain scenery, attracted Carl Dunrud who bought Schnitzels
holdings and started the Double D Dude Ranch
five miles downriver from Kirwin. His prior,
fortuitous encounter with George Putnam in
Greenland led to a visit to the ranch by Putnam
and his wife, aviatrix Amelia Earhart. They
went on a two week pack trip during their stay.
Before they left she filed on a 20-acre
mining claim about one mile up from Kirwin,
according to Carl M. Dunrud in his Lets Go!
85 Years of Adventure, published in 1998.
The couple asked Dunrud to build a cabin
for them. Hed placed three or four logs above
ground when word came of Earharts disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
In the early 1960s, the American Metals
Co., later known as AMAX, bought Kirwin and
the ranch, with plans to extract copper from
an open-pit mine. Local residents protested.
The land was purchased with money from the
Richard King Mellon Foundation and The Conservation Fund and donated to the U.S. Forest
Service in 1992.
The Forest Service has made a good effort
to try to stabilize some of the buildings at
Kirwin, said Moody, who last visited the site
about two years ago. It was once a very busy
place. It was tough only the hale and hearty
made it through.
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Arland
Town short-lived after untimely deaths

By BUZZY HASSRICK
Special to the Enterprise
ome of the interesting characters who inhabited the frontier
town of Arland sported colorful names, such as Broken
Nose, Woman in Blue and Blind Bill.
Many of those characters and others met untimely
deaths, including Victor Arland, who established the trading
post and related businesses along Meeteetse Creek. Although his namesake lasted only 13 years, 1884-1897,
the memorable incidents that occurred there persevere
in local lore.
Several women, of the type commonly found
in the frontier mining or cow towns caused
more bloodshed than even the booze of the poker
games, wrote the author of an Oct. 26, 1938,
story in the Cody Enterprise.
Arland welcomed ladies and liquor to his
town, which he founded at the age of 36 despite
only a modest background in business. Born in
France, hed lived near Paris and shipped country produce into the city. He emigrated in 1870
at age 22 to the United States, subsequently
wandering from Illinois to New Orleans, then
on to St. Louis and finally the Black Hills
where he prospected for gold in 1875.
Three years later he started working for the
U.S. Army at Fort Custer along the Big Horn
River near present-day Hardin, Mont. It was
built the year after the Battle of the Little Big
Horn as an outpost for the military to subdue
local tribes. There, along with his new acquaintance John Corbett, Arland hunted buffalo
to feed the soldiers. He also befriended Crow
Indians.
LEGENDS
Establishing the trading post
In 1880, the two men joined forces to establish

a trading post along Trail Creek north of present-day
Cody. They traded for furs and buffalo robes with the
Shoshone and Crow Indians and sold supplies to them
as well as trappers and hunters.
With the creation of a wagon road through the Big Horn
Basin in 1882, the partners relocated their business to Cottonwood Creek along the Stinking Water (now Shoshone) River
to serve travelers going between Lander and Billings. The post was
downstream from a new bridge over the river.
After another two years, Arland determined that a site in the
middle of cattle ranches would generate more business, thus was
born Arland, the first town to be established in the Big Horn Basin.
A store, saloon, dance hall, restaurant, rooming house, blacksmith
shop, livery stable and corrals comprised the early structures.
Vic ran the saloon at Arland, and became wealthy at it, according to the 1938 Enterprise story. No one knows what he did with his
money, but after his death credulous people dug up the whole country
Belle
Drewry,
known as
The Woman
in Blue, is buried at Old Trail Town.
round trying to find the treasure he was reported to have buried.
By reputation, Arland was no saint and interested primarily in
making money in any way, wrote historian Bob Edgar (1939-2012).
His customers included professional gamblers, trappers, hunters,
Native Americans, freighters, miners, outlaws, travelers and cow-
Settlement attracted
bawdy women and
lawless cowboys
A Park County Historical Society trek to the Arland townsite in 1956. (Park County Archives photo)
boys from nearby ranches.
All of these ingredients, mixed with gunpowder, alcohol and the lack of formal law,
were a deadly mixture, Edgar wrote.
Arland flourishes
The towns amenities soon included a

house of ill repute, managed by Arlands
friend Rose Williams of Lander. In 1886, the
town gained a U.S. Post Office as well as
regular stagecoach commerce. The increasing activity spurred the construction of a
two-story log hotel, a bunkhouse and several
residential cabins.
Two years later, the proprietor killed a
patron.
As the story goes, Arland got into a quarrel with Broken Nose Jackson, reportedly
because Arland was jealous of Jacksons
attentions to one of the ladies of the night.
The occasion was a birthday party honoring
George Washington.
At Jacksons burial, one of his friends, Bill
Landon, vowed revenge. At the subsequent
trial, Arland was acquitted on the grounds of
self-defense, based on testimony that a witness had heard Jackson threaten him.
Two years later, Arland went to Red
Lodge. He was playing poker at Fat Jack
Dunnavens Saloon when Landon shot
through a window and killed him.
Woman in Blue
Without its founder, the town of Arland

lost any veneer of law and attracted more
outlaws, especially horse thieves and bandits.
Although Corbett assumed the running
of Arland, he couldnt prevent a series
of killings that ensued as the result of a
love triangle. Belle Drewry, known as the
Woman in Blue, and Bill Gallagher had
arrived in town about the same time, she
to work as a lady of the night. When she
dropped Gallagher for Will Wheaton, the
spurned lover kicked his former love during
a confrontation near old Meeteetse.

Drewry, determined to get rid of Gallagher, asked Blind Bill Hoolihan to procure a
gun and ammunition for her. She then gave
the weapon to Wheaton.
Meanwhile, Gallagher went to Drewrys
house where he encountered Drewry, Williams, Hoolihan and Wheaton. After he
threatened Wheaton, the two rivals went
outside where Wheaton shot Gallagher in
the face. Although Wheaton apologized to
Hoolihan, apparently a friend of Gallaghers,
Wheaton suspected that Hoolihan would
want revenge, so he later shot him in the
back.
Foul play, rather than gun shots, led to
Drewrys demise. A cowboy found her dying
along the road to Arland and claiming shed
been doped and robbed by Tahonus, a woman whod moved from Lander to Arland. The
cowboy got her on his horse and transported
her to Arland, where she died, according to
the Enterprise story.
Her grave, once protected by barbed wire,
had a marker with the inscription, Here lies
old Blue, With a heart so true. The nickname came from her partiality for blue attire,
down to her blue slippers that the cowboys
who buried her kept as a souvenir.
Drewry, Gallagher and Hoolihan now
reside in the cemetery at Old Trail Town in
Cody. Arland was buried in Red Lodge.
Corbett ran Arland until 1896, the year
he removed everything portable. The log
hotel went to Meeteetse, which had been
surveyed that same year and became the
eventual business hub for the area.
The remaining Arland structures were
burned in the 1940s, clearing the way for a
hay field. Historian Edgar, the founder of Old
Trail Town, wrote this epilogue.
All that is left to remind us of this wild
old town of the west are the bullet marks on
the sandstone outcroppings, a few weathered names and dates, the sage and grassfilled ruts of the stage trail, the unmarked
graves of the unfortunate and the moaning of
the prairie wind.
The historic sign outside of

Meeteetse that commemorates
the frontier town of Arland reads:
Most died entangled in a web of
lawlessness, romance, intrigue and
murder.
The settlement attracted not just
bawdy women and lawless types
but also men who worked on the
surrounding ranches, recounted
author Tacetta B. Walker in Stories
of Early Days in Wyoming: Big Horn
Basin, published in 1936.
The cowboy was usually harmless in spite of the fact that he
carried a gun always at his belt, but
after filling up on Arland whiskey
he became a dangerous individual,
she wrote.
While most killings occurred in
the dance hall and saloon, others
happened on the range. Walker
related the story of a drunken horseman riding into the Pitchfork Ranch
and demanding a meal. Although
the cook began preparing a steak,
the rider shot and killed him.
He then turned upon another
member of the outfit, but missed
him, whereupon the man pulled
his own gun and killed the drunken
puncher outright, she wrote.
Another victim of the cowboys
carousing was four-legged. Liquored
up, the punchers would engage
in horse races, sometimes ruining
their mounts from overexertion.
The related gambling could prove
problematic too.
They usually bet their last dollar
on the outcome of the race and in
some instances bet their clothes,
Walker wrote. A cowboy fully
equipped with chaps, wide brimmed
hat, boots and belt might go limping
back to the saloon barefooted and
hatless or even worse as the result
of being the loser.
Horse racing became one of
the big problems among the ranch
owners.
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Flight of the Nez Perce remembered

idden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions
of Lewis and Clark lies another journey every bit as poignant
and dramatic the nearly 1,800-mile journey made by 800
Nez Perce men, women and children attempting to fight
their way to freedom in Canada.
During the journey the Nez Perce made a legendary escape
through the Clarks Fork Canyon, located 42 miles from Cody, eluding
the U.S. Armys 7th Calvary.
Broken treaties
LEGENDS
In 1855 the U.S. Government and the Cayuse, Umatilla and

Walla Walla Tribes signed a treaty. In the treaty, the tribes ceded to
the United States more than 6.4 million acres in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington.
The Nez Perce actually fared rather well in the council of 1855;
they ceded very little of the land they considered theirs. All the Nez
Perce chieftains signed the treaty which reserved seven million acres
to their people, Cheryl Wilfong wrote in Following the Nez Perce
Trail.
When gold was discovered on the Nez Perce land in 1860,
18,000 white people descended on the area. To maintain order, another treaty council convened in 1863. The Treaty of 1863 reduced
the land reserved to the Nez Perce by 90 percent, leaving the tribe
7000,000 acres contained within the borders of the present-day
reservation, Wilfong wrote.
The five bands whose chiefs did not sign the 1863 treaty became
known as nontreaty Nez Perce. Feelings ran high as whites began to
settle on the nontreaty Nez Perces land.
In 1876 it was decided the nontreaty Nez Perce must be forced
onto a reservation. With no realistic alternative, the chiefs agreed to
move onto the reservation, Wilfong wrote.
Final gathering
In June of 1877, the bands decided to meet one final time in the
broad Camas Prairie far across the Snake and Salmon rivers close to
where the new reservation began. There they could have one final
gathering the old way, with dancing, feasting, and the harvesting and
drying of camas roots, Kent Nerburn wrote in Chief Joseph and the
Flight of the Nez Perce.
So Chief Josephs band convened with Chief Toohoolhoolzotes
band, Chief White Birds band, Chief Looking Glass band and a small
Palouse band headed by Hahtalekin and Husishusis Kute.
It was a peaceful gathering, but the sense of calm would not last.
Chief Joseph led one of five bands of Nez Perce Indians who traveled
almost 1,800 miles trying to escape to Canada. (Library of Congress photo)
Trouble started with Wahlitits, whose father Eagle Robe had been
killed by a squatter on his property. The old man had exacted a promise there would be no acts of retribution, however during an evening
parade through the camp, Wahlitits horse stepped on the blanket of
Yellow Grizzly Bears wife. Yellow Grizzly Bear taunted him, saying
if he was so brave why didnt he avenge his fathers death. Later
Wahlitits broke his promise to his father and rode off in the direction
of the cabin where the man who had killed his father lived.
The Nez Perce reached

Dead Indian Pass in
September 1877.
Now the whole valley was choking in blood and the war few had
wanted raced like cloud shadows across the landscape, Nerburn
writes.
The young warriors continued attacking the white settlers and
massacred 18, forcing the Army to come intervene. Several clashes
between the Nez Perce and the Army followed and thus began the
flight of the Nez Perce.
After the battle at Clearwater in Idaho, the Nez Perce followed

well-worn trails across the rugged Bitterroot Mountains, entering
Montana near Lolo Pass. They moved without conflict south to the
Big Hole, where the Army caught them by surprise and killed Nez
Perce of all ages.
After that, the Nez Perce moved as quickly as they could through
more mountains and across Yellowstone.
Flight begins
Clarks Fork escape
Marked by skirmishes and battles with General Oliver Otis Howards command, the journey took them 1,800 miles away from their
homeland and less than 40 miles from safety in Canada.
At the peak of the final range in the Absaroka Mountains, the

land ahead dropped off to great, open plains. But first the Nez Perce
had to face one of three long canyons.
The Nez Perce escaped the pursuing Army by descending the nearly impassable Clarks Fork Canyon route.
Arriving days before the Nez Perce was

Colonel Samuel Sturgis and the 7th Calvary.
Sturgis was camped at the base of Heart
Mountain, about halfway between the
Clarks Fork and the Stinking Water. He had
a sweeping panoramic view of the open
ridges and foothills leading some 10 miles
up to the summit of Dead Indian Hill. It was
the perfect location to send out scouts and
watch for Indians, Bruce Hampton wrote
in Children of Grace The Nez Perce War of
1877.
Because the Nez Perce had killed all
scouts who had tried to bring communications down from Howard, Sturgis lacked any
meaningful intelligences.
But Sturgis determined the Nez Perce
would take either the Clarks Fork or Stinking
Water Canyon route. So leaving no observers
behind on Heart Mountain, he stationed his
troops somewhere in the middle of the two
canyons and sent scouts out in both directions, Nerburn wrote.
Knowing Howard had set up another
trap ahead of them, a plan was formulated.
The Nez Perce needed to trick the soldiers
and convince them to block the base of
the wrong canyon. So they arranged for all
the people to move toward the trail down
into the canyon that opened farthest to the
south. When they were safely ahead of the
soldiers and their scouts, the warriors would
take all the mules and horse and ride in
circles to make a great confusion of hoofprints, Hampton wrote.
Then they would drag branches behind
so dust would rise up, making it seem to
anyone observing from a distance that the
whole group was moving in that direction.
Sturgis soon received word from some
scouts that the route from the mountains
into Clarks Fork Canyon was impassable
Lovells appreciate
journey of Nez Perce
after riding on trail
Col. Samuel Sturgis waited for the Nez Perce

at the bottom of the wrong canyon.
and that great clouds of dust had been see
on the route to the Stinking Water. So he
quickly moved all his troops south toward
that canyon escape route.
Howard also continued his distant
pursuit from behind, heading toward the
dust and commotion made by the circling
warriors.
If there had been anyone on Heart Mountain scanning the distant ridges, they would
have seen the Nez Perce emerging from the
pass just below Dead Indian Hill on Sept.
8, making their way slowly and deliberately
down the ridge and into the Clarks Fork Valley below, Hampton wrote.
When Howard finally arrived at the pass
he could hardly believe his bad luck. The
command desended down the ridge the
band had taken. Some of the men were
so impressed the Nez Perce had traveled
through the nearly impassable passage they
named it the devils doorway.
When Sturgis discovered his error in
judgment had allowed the Nez Perce to
escape, he tried doggedly to catch up but
eventually abandoned the pursuit, Nerburn
wrote.
End of the trail
Gen. Oliver Otis Howard was tasked with

stopping the Nez Perce. (National Archives
photos)
The Nez Perce continued to travel north

with Howard in pursuit. The last battle
occurred in October in the foothills of the
Bears Paw Mountains, less than 40 miles
from the Canadian border. After fierce
fighting, the Army laid siege to the Nez
Perce camp. Some Nez Perce escaped into
Canada, but the rest surrendered on October
5.
It was here that Chief Joseph said. Hear
me my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick
and sad. From where the sun now stands, I
will fight no more forever.
By SCOTT KOLB
Staff writer
Rita Lovell, who lives in Clark
and works in Cody, has ridden a
horse along many parts of the Nez
Perce Trail. She has a deep appreciation for those who rode the same
trail in the past.
In the journals of Lewis and
Clark, they write about the beautiful
spotted horses of the Nez Perce,
said Lovell, who belongs to the
National Appaloosa Horse Club.
This is the legendary breed which
carried the Nez Perce on their flight
for freedom.
For years, Rita and her husband
Art Lovell, have ridden many miles
on the overall trail. Rita has ridden
a total of 1,000 miles and Art has
been over the entire course of the
historic trail.
They love to ride along the part
of the trail which begins at the
bottom of Dead Indian Pass on the
Chief Joseph Highway. The trail
goes through Clarks Fork Canyon.
Their most recent trip came in
2014 and each time some of the
Nez Perce descendants have ridden
along with them. The tribe brings
their young people to ride the trail,
so they can appreciate what their
ancestors went through in the past.
Sturgis was waiting at the
mouth of the canyon to intercept
the Nez Perce, his scouts told him
nobody could make it through the
canyon, Lovell said. When riding along the trail its very silent
and you can sense their presence.
Theres a lot of history right in our
backyard.
Looking back 139 years into
the past, what became known as
the Nez Perce War was waged in
part across the lands of Northwest
Wyoming.
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