The Wild, Wild West!
I usually avoid tourist “traps” and when I first saw the signs for Old Town in Cody I dismissed it from my options. But then I drove by (you drive by everything eventually as Cody is really a one-street town with virtually all non-residential buildings along the highways through town), decided that it might be interesting. Wise choice!
As per chapter 1, the Big Horn Basin was one of the last areas settled in the west with most activity really picking up around 1890-1900. Outlaws, ranchers and homesteaders populated the land, including the infamous Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Old Town is an outdoor museum where actual buildings from that era have been collected from around northern Wyoming and southern Montana and brought to this site in Cody. The old buildings line both sides of what once might have been “Main Street” but now is sagebrush and old wagons as we look west to the mouth of the North Fork of the Shoshone river canyon.
Each building is identified by a plaque and is furnished with appropriate, original period accompaniments (although not necessarily belonging to the owner of that particular cabin.) The first cabin in the left picture is the little gift shop and entrance. The second one is “Curly’s Cabin”. Essentially your tour will follow my path as I walked down the south side shown in the left picture and up the right side shown in the right picture. Enjoy!
Curly’s Cabin was originally built near the Crow Agency in southeast Montana in 1885. The Crow Agency is the headquarters of the Crow Indian Reservation, established at the foot of the bluffs along the Little Big Horn River that are the site of the famous “Custer’s Last Stand” or as it is now known, The Little Big Horn Battlefield. Curly was born near Pryor Creek south of Billings and was one of the Crow Scouts who accompanied Custer and the 7th Cavalry on that last ill-fated expedition and was present at the battle, though he did not participate, watching from a nearby bluff. After the battle Curly fled north and found an army supply boat, The Far West, at the junction of the Little Big Horn and Big Horn rivers. Curly delivered the first reports of the defeat of the 7th Cavalry to the outside world. The one room cabin has walls lined with original photographs of various Native Americans from the 1880’s. Of particular interest is the stool made entirely of skinned deer legs and hooves.
The Morrison Cabin was built in 1884 by Luther Morrison, a man who brought some of the first sheep into central Wyoming in 1882. Again, while these are not the actual furnishings of Mr. Morrisons’s cabin, they are all period pieces from the 1880’s collected from various sites throughout Wyoming. This was well before the advent of the railroad so these large. heavy pieces of furniture came west on covered wagons pulled by either cows, horses or mules.
The Shell Store was the first store in Shell, Wyoming.
The “Hole in the Wall” Cabin was built by Alexander Ghent on Buffalo Creek west of Kaycee, Wyoming in 1883. It was frequented by the infamous “Hole in the Wall” gang of outlaws, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is actually a rather large, two room cabin (on the right in the picture) with a separate sleeping room.
This homestead cabin was built at the head of Dry Creek south of Cody around 1900. Remember even though it was 1900, all of these furnishings still made their way to the area via covered wagon as the railroad didn’t reach the Big Horn Basin region until the following year (1901).
The Carter Cabin was built by a crew of William Carter’s in southern Montana in 1879. Carter brought the first cattle into the region around Cody.
The Burlington Store and the Rivers Saloon are the two large buildings on the northeast end of the “street”.
The Burlington Store on the left was originally built in on the Greybull River west of Cody in 1897 and later moved to Burlington, Wyoming. The Rivers Saloon on the right was built in Meteetse, Wyoming, (south of Cody) in 1888 by Henry Rivers and was a favorite watering hole for the famous outlaws of the area (Butch Cassidy, W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill Hoolihan and others. It’s the oldest remaining saloon in northwest Wyoming and you can still see bullet holes in the door!
That wraps up Old Town as I look west down the street towards Yellowstone Park.
Next up: “A Day Which Will Live In Infamy” comes to Cody, Wyoming…
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