Hello Everyone!
It’s been another hot week out here on the road in central Wyoming. July is historically the hottest month in both Wyoming and Montana, but this summer has brought record temperatures to both. Daytime temperatures are once again nearing 100° out here, but thankfully it’s been cooling off enough in the evenings to sleep in my van. I’ve been up and out early most days to get my driving done before it gets ridiculous out and have definitely been trying to scout out some shade whenever possible. Despite the heat, I’ve had an interesting week out here exploring some of central Wyoming’s small towns and what they have to offer. I also spent some time on the Wind River Reservation this week, home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapahoe Indians. Wyoming is the least populated state in the country and it’s definitely not hard to imagine that out here. Big lettered towns on the map are relative and mean that these are big towns for Wyoming, but not necessarily big towns. With only around 588,000 people in the entire state, Wyoming’s whole population is slightly more than that of Baltimore, Maryland and slightly less than Memphis, Tennessee. I definitely enjoy the small towns and the wide open spaces of the Cowboy State, and I’ve been happy to see so many new-to-me places this week.
After leaving you last week I headed out into the night there in Jackson. I’ve certainly seen a lot of changes in Jackson over the last 25 years since I first visited, and every year it gets a little more L.A. and a little less Wyoming. The place that continues to roll with all of the changes is the infamous Million Dollar Cowboy Bar right there on the town square. The Cowboy Bar opened its batwing doors back in 1937 and has always been a central gathering place for the town. It’s decorated with burled wood beams, taxidermied animals and cowboy relics and even has saddles in place of barstools. With live music every night, I’ve never been there when it wasn’t busy. On any given night, you’re likely to find locals and tourists, cowboys, rafting guides, drifters and beauty queens shooting pool, shooting whisky and tapping along to the band. This night was no different and I enjoyed a few cold ones and a few tunes while I chatted to some folks from Charlotte, N.C. who were in town for a wedding. Long live the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar – may it continue to evolve with the town and somehow still remain exactly the same as the first time I walked into it.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick around on Thursday or not, but when I found out that the Teton County Fair was going on I decided to hang out for the day and check it out. Having the day to relax, I headed out midmorning to Schwabacher's Landing in Grand Teton National Park for a while. This is one of the more popular viewpoints of the Tetons as there are some nice water features around to try and get some reflection photos of the mountains. The Tetons were a little bit clouded in while I was out there, but I pulled up a seat in the shade and read my book and enjoyed the view nonetheless. The clouds never really cleared, but it was still beautiful and I enjoyed taking a few photos before heading back into town. I had a nice late lunch at Hand Fire Pizza in the old Teton movie theatre. The last time I was there was to see a movie, Little Miss Sunshine, for the second time (I had seen it a few weeks before in Anchorage, Alaska), and I laughed and laughed. Anyways, they’ve done a good job with the place and the pizza was pretty good too. I walked out to the edge of town for an ice cream from Dairy Queen and then stopped for a beer at the StillWest Brewery before wandering down to the fair. The fair turned out to be great and I really enjoyed my time there. Entrance was free and food and drinks were quite reasonable. I had a funnel cake, wandered through the livestock barn and carnival rides and had a blast watching the acrobatics, antics and magic of Circus Zirkus. The bands were great, too and I sat there until they were done for the night before heading out for the night.
I hit the road fairly early on Friday and enjoyed a pretty ride south and east to the little town of Pinedale. My big interest in Pinedale was the Mountain Man Museum which tells the story of the fur trade era of the west, starting with the adventures of Lewis and Clark and ending when stylish Europeans decided that beaver felt hats were out and silk hats were in. It was good timing, too, because the once plentiful beaver were on the verge of extinction. Many of the trappers moved on to lucrative careers as guides as the end of the fur trapping heyday coincided with the beginning of the mass migrations over the Oregon, Mormon and California trails. This was a great museum with plenty to see, including one of legendary mountain man Jim Bridger’s rifles, and I was there for almost three hours. I think the biggest myth the museum dispelled was that in that era the vast majority of mountain men were clean shaven, as was the custom of the time. Of course in every photo I’ve ever seen of Jim Bridger or Kit Carson or pretty much any of those guys they are clean shaven, but every book and movie tells a different story. It was an era of relative peace and cooperation between the mountain men and the Indians in the region, but that would end when the masses started heading west, fouling the water and decimating both the grazing lands and the wild game of the region. These inevitably caused tensions which would eventually boil over into the Indian Wars of the next generation. The museum was in Pinedale because that was the site of quite a few of the infamous Mountain Man Rendezvous gatherings which brought supply wagons from the east to trade with the trappers and Indians for their fur caches. These were tremendously festive events fueled by plenty of booze that often lasted for several weeks and Pinedale still holds an annual Rendezvous to commemorate that history.
After my time at the museum, I wandered around town for a bit and took some photos. Pinedale is an attractive little town with some nice features to it. I especially liked the old signs marking the Corral Bar and the Cowboy Bar which are clearly from a bygone era. For dinner I decided to try something totally different and drove out to the rodeo grounds to visit the Pitchfork Fondue Cowboy Cookout. When I arrived, I was greeted by the owner, Matt, who was a real down-home Wyoming cowboy. We chatted for a while about where I was from and he told me they were expecting to feed a congressional delegation who would be in the area in a couple of weeks. Then he told me to have a seat, grab some homemade potato chips and a salad from the buffet and someone would come by and take my order. I chose the trout over the steak or chicken options and it came with a lovely whole potato – all of which were fried in tremendous vats of hot oil (hence the “fondue” part of it although I can see my Swiss friends rolling their eyes at that being called fondue). While my trout came out with tongs, the chicken and steak options were brought out and presented on a full sized pitchfork which was pretty fun. The whole affair ended with a nice chocolate brownie and some fresh fruit. It was a fun and unique atmosphere and the food was pretty good too. They allow you to bring your own alcohol if you like and they have cornhole boards if you want to hang around for a while. Matt and I chatted a bit more before I left about some of the history of the area and about where I was headed from there. I topped off my night with a beer at each of the bars with the cool old signs and then called it a night. Pinedale was the last cool night I had this week, so I’m glad I made the most of it.
On Saturday morning I got up and rolling up the hill towards South Pass, which I’ve been looking forward to for months now. South Pass is really nothing much to look at, but without it the entire history of the west would have been different. The Shoshoni told the mountain men about South Pass and that it had been used for many centuries because it was a low pass with a gradual incline. It was the fact that fully loaded wagons could easily get over the pass and therefore through the mountains that turned it into such an important landmark. The Mormons used South Pass on their way west to Utah, overland California bound prospectors took the pass as they headed to the Sierra goldfields during the gold rush and the Oregon Trail crosses South Pass on its way to the fertile Willamette Valley. Later, the stagecoach routes, Pony Express and the telegraph all crossed over South Pass. By the 1860s when the railroad was coming west, traffic had shifted south to the Overland Trail, and South Pass would begin to fade into obscurity. There is a pullout and a few historical signs there today, but I was the only one who stopped to marvel at it. I did make a short video about South Pass when I was there which has somehow garnered over 100,000 views over the last few days which is as famous as I’ve been on this whole journey. Don’t worry, I won’t let it get to my head.
Dropping down the eastern side of South Pass, I headed out to the old gold mining town of South Pass City. Gold was discovered in the area in 1867, and a small rush would bring in maybe 2000 people to the growing town. As usual, the placer (surface) gold would play out quickly and the shift to hard rock mining would require a substantial investment. That investment came with the building of the Carissa Mine and Mill where the ore was crushed and separated and eventually the gold would be removed and molded into 80 troy ounce bars (just over 5 lbs/2kg). If everything went well and the ore was good it would take the mine two whole weeks, running 24/7, to produce just one of those bars (5 troy ounces is worth about $20,000 today). The mine was never really profitable, but it always seemed to be on the verge of profitability. It finally closed for good in the 1960s and was purchased by the state of Wyoming. They’ve done a remarkable job of restoring the town and the mill as a state park and I thought it was so interesting that I was there for most of the day. The town was beautifully cared for and all of the buildings, shops and saloons were set up to look as if they had been occupied just yesterday, with beers on the table, store shelves stocked and sheets on the beds. While there I learned that back in 1869 a group of local Democrats came up with what they thought was a brilliant idea. They drafted a bill giving Wyoming women the right to vote, believing the Republican governor would veto it, making him look bad. He didn’t and signed it and Wyoming women got the vote later that year, the first territory or state to make this provision (although New Jersey had allowed women who owned property to vote from 1776 until 1807). Soon thereafter, South Pass City resident Esther Hobart Morris became the local Justice of the Peace, the first woman in the country to hold a judicial office. She is memorialized for this milestone by the state with one of Wyoming’s two statues in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Finishing up my tour of the town, the docent told me that there was still space to go and tour the old Carissa Mine and Mill up the road, which I jumped at. The mill tour was incredible as not only had they restored and stabilized the building, but they had actually gotten many of the machines back in working order which was just really cool to see. I learned a lot throughout my visit to South Pass City and was so glad I made the detour.
At the recommendation of my guide at the mill, I headed down the road to the next mining town over, Atlantic City, for dinner. Today Atlantic City has a population of about 57 people, a tiny remnant of its historic population. I enjoyed a wander around town to take some photos and then found myself in the old, historic saloon at the Atlantic City Mercantile for a beer. This place has been around forever and was really quite cool and well preserved. It’s also for sale if you’re in the market for an historic saloon in the absolute middle of nowhere. They were also, apparently, a steakhouse which was fully booked for the night, so I went next door to the somewhat more modern Grubstake Saloon for a burger and fries. This was also a really cool spot and was quite busy on a summer Saturday evening. With my belly full, I continued down the pass to the cute little town of Lander where a beer at Lander Brewing Company and another at the Lander Bar next door topped off a really good day in Wyoming.
The next place I was hoping to visit was the Wind River Reservation, just 20 minutes north of Lander, but since their museum was closed on Sunday and because it was going to be oppressively hot out, I decided to just hang around Lander for the day and try and stay cool. I spent most of the day in their lovely city park, which also has a free campground which is both well-known and well used by people passing through the area. I took up residence under a big shade tree and spent the day reading my book (The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck about a modern crossing of the Oregon Trail). I watched few episodes of The Amazing Race on my phone and made some phone calls to catch up with a few friends back at home. The day was tolerable in the shade and it was nice to just hang around and relax for a change. In the evening I went and had a nice Thai curry at Thai Chef and an ice cream for dessert and then headed back to City Park where I sat out until it was too dark to read. By then it was just cool enough to get some sleep.
I made my way north to the reservation first thing on Monday morning. The Wind River Reservation is shared by the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Araphoe people and I started out on the Shoshone side. Their Cultural Center is located in the school, but when I arrived they told me the air conditioning wasn’t working so it was closed until they could get it fixed. It was overcast out and somewhat cooler than it had been and I said I wouldn’t mind the heat but they weren’t going to open it for me which was disappointing. From there I went out and saw the nearby Episcopal Mission which had been founded on the reservation back in 1889. Just up the road is the Sacajawea Cemetery, the final resting place of the only woman to accompany Merriweather Lewis and William Clark on their Corps of Discovery. I’ve written about Sacajawea several times in this space over the last year, so I won’t go into too much detail, but it will never cease to impress me that while the rest of the expedition was made up of soldiers, trappers, hunters and fur traders, Sacajawea was a teenage girl who was carrying an infant on her back (her baby was only 2 months old when they set off). While she was by no means their guide as some modern retellings want you to believe, she contributed as much as anyone else to the expedition’s success, especially when it came to negotiating for horses with the Shoshone so that they could cross the mountains. It was nice to spend some quiet moments at her final resting place and ponder the woman she must have been. The rest of the cemetery was also quite interesting as it was full of both modern western headstones and beautiful homemade adornments as well. It was windy out there, but it is the Wind River Reservation, so I guess that was to be expected.
Just up the road but in an entirely different cemetery is the grave of Chief Washakie, the last great chief of the Eastern Shoshone. Washakie was an interesting character who I have known about for many years but really must read up on more. He realized early on that the small groups of whites that they encountered in the mid-19th Century were just the tip of the iceberg of what was to come and that if he befriended them, they might help him in fighting off his historic enemies. For better and for worse, he was probably the model of what Washington hoped an Indian would be and he sent war parties and scouts to help the U.S. in their wars with other tribes. For this, he was one of the only chiefs who was allowed to choose where his people’s reservation would be, and he chose that area at the foot of the Wind River Range. When he died in 1900, he was buried with full military honors from the United States. While the Shoshone claim that he was the only Indian to ever receive that honor, he certainly was not. Pushmataha, the great Choctaw leader and a personal friend of Andrew Jackson was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C. with full military honors in 1824. The town where Washakie is buried was once home to a U.S. Army fort, Fort Washakie, which is the only fort ever named for an American Indian (Fort Pickett in Virginia was recently and temporarily renamed Fort Barfoot after Van Barfoot, a WWII Medal of Honor recipient who was ¼ Choctaw, but it was reverted to Fort Pickett in 2025). Washakie was well loved in his time by whites and Shoshone alike and is Wyoming’s other of their two statues placed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.
Leaving Fort Washakie (now the name of the town where the fort once stood), I traveled across the reservation to the Arapahoe side. These are the Northern Arapahoe while the Southern Arapahoe are found in the former Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. I went to the old St. Stephen’s Jesuit Mission to try and learn more about the Arapahoe, of whom I have only a passing knowledge. There is a small cultural center there with some great old photos, beadwork and art, but it told me nothing about the Arapahoe history or culture beyond the context of the mission. Next door is the associated church, though, which was remarkably beautiful in every way. The early missionaries had tried to incorporate Arapahoe art and legend into the building of the church, and it is really quite something to see. The altar is a giant drum and behind the alter Jesus hangs on a cross which is part of a tipi. The stained glass is also Arapahoe in design, as are several of the paintings and statues in the church. It was amazing and reminded me of the old mission church on the Zuni Reservation which was also a stunning place to see.
Leaving the reservation, I continued into the town of Riverton and zipped over to their little history museum for a look. It was small, but quite good and had some wonderful displays on the history of the area. I liked the story of how Butch Cassidy had been arrested nearby for stealing horses, but he had actually purchased said horses from the guy who had stolen them, so they let him go. I also read that the local mortuary had once been on the ground floor of the old Masonic Temple, and if they ever had a body that wasn’t identified, they would prop it up in the window to see if anyone passing by knew who it was. Those were different times, for sure. After the museum closed, I wandered downtown to a little pub where I had a nice conversation with Wes White Antelope, an Arapahoe Vietnam Veteran who has been a Wyoming firefighter for 40 years. He said his dad fought fires until he was 78 and he was hoping to beat that record. Wes told me that his grandfather’s uncle was the great Cheyenne Chief White Antelope who had been killed by the U.S. Cavalry in the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. The government had offered his family reparations at some point, but he turned them down saying that he hadn’t personally suffered from the affair at all. We talked about his family’s military service and the mixed feelings it brought up with his ancestry which I found quite thought provoking. He was an interesting guy and I’m glad we got a chance to talk. From there I wandered down the street to Bar 10 for dinner and had a nice but very different chat with a considerably younger Shoshone woman who split her time between Wyoming and North Dakota and told me her family was buried in the cemetery with Sacajawea. It was a pretty interesting day all around.
I took off yesterday morning and made my way north to the small town of Thermopolis. The ride was absolutely gorgeous as it wound up the Bighorn River Canyon. When I arrived in Thermopolis, I took a quick meander around the tiny downtown to take a few photos and found an interesting building built in 1919. It was topped with several inlaid brick depictions of an ancient Shoshone symbol of friendship. Just a short time later, the Nazis usurped that symbol which we would all recognize as a swastika. I thought it was interesting that the building still had them, although the bakery that currently occupies the building has quite prominent signs telling the story of why. Just outside of town is Hot Springs State Park which the government purchased from the Shoshone to create the park on the condition that the healing waters be free for all who came to visit. There are several springs which you have to pay to visit, but one central and historic one is free to enter and have a soak. It was already pushing 90° out, but I went in anyway. I was probably in the pool for around five minutes which was more than enough for me, but I’m glad I went.
Just up the road from Thermopolis, in the tiny town of Kirby, is the locally famous Wyoming Whiskey Distillery and Tasting Room. Crafted entirely from locally sourced ingredients, I thought their whiskey was pretty good and the tasting room was lovely and friendly. From there I continued up the road to Worland, a pleasant but nondescript town which smells faintly of manure throughout. I went for a visit to the Washakie County Museum which had some interesting displays on the dinosaurs and mammoths which had been found in the area. The second display told about the ranchers who had come after the Indians had been confined to the reservations. There were interesting panels about how the big ranchers fought the smaller ranchers and, later, the sheepherders who came to the area. The fact that they were all using public land wasn’t lost on the curator. Worland really came into its own as a railroad town, but because the railroad was being laid east of the river and they were on the west, they had to move the whole town over the water. They chose the winter when the river was frozen and they lifted and shifted most of the buildings to their new locations using metal rollers. I thought it was all interesting but was somewhat disappointed that the one room left off with mammoth hunters and the next one picked up with rancher and the entire history of the local Indians was omitted. It was 98° when I left the museum, so I wandered up to a spot called Stogie Joe’s which was one of the few places in town that was open for dinner and was blessedly cool inside. I had a nice dinner and a couple of beers and then strolled back to Pioneer Park which was a nice place to sit and read until it got dark. I usually say that I can sleep easily in my van if it’s below 70° and that 75° is not really comfortable but doable. It was still 86° at 10:30pm when I crawled into my van to try and get some sleep. I pulled out my emergency fan which was the only option at that point, but I knew it would probably drain my house battery if I left it on overnight, especially as I haven’t been driving enough for my batteries to be fully charged. I managed to sleep until my low battery alarm went off at 4:30am, but by then it was cool enough to do without the fan. It was a real lifesaver in the moment and tomorrow I will find an RV park to stay and make sure I set off with a full charge the following day.
And that’s about it, y’all. It was a busy week and a good one despite the heat. I pulled into the small town of Greybull this morning and headed for the library to finish up this week’s post. I was hoping to get at least one photo post done as well, but the internet here is pretty slow and I don’t think that’s going to happen. Tonight I will be taking a night off the road in the lovely and historic Greybull Hotel and I’m really looking forward to a long, cool sleep. The Big Horn County Fair is on down the road in Basin, so I may head down there tonight to have a gander, but otherwise I’ll just be hanging around town. Tomorrow I plan to head down to Cody for the night and maybe catch the rodeo while I’m there. I’ve been to Cody a few times in the past and it’s a cool old town, but a busy one in the summer since it’s one of Yellowstone’s gateway communities. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen from there. It looks like another hot week ahead and to be honest I’m getting a little tired of the heat. It’s hard to do anything outside and it’s hard to do anything in my van during the day. It’s too hot to even try and keep my fridge running and cooking anything beyond my morning coffee is just out of the question at this point. I can’t even eat a good salad because I simply can’t begin a month of explosive diarrhea in my van in this heat. Between the heat and the still-crazy gas prices, it’s not the best summer to be out here. I’m actually doing okay mentally, but it’s just hard to look at the forecast and see no relief on the way and no idea how long the heat is going to last. It is August this week, so it can’t be too much longer and if I have to struggle through a few more weeks in the shade with a good book, I guess I will manage. You’ll just have to check back in next week and see how it all comes out. Have a wonderful week out there and stay cool wherever you are. Thank you, as always, for reading.
-Mike