Battles, Bandits and Mystery A three-day trip to northwest Wyoming is a living lesson in history By Dina Mishev
The Bozeman Trail
Traveling around Wyoming today isn't the quickest – after all the state is the country's 9th largest in terms of area with just over 97,000 square miles (more than Ohio, South Carolina, Maryland and New Hampshire combined!) and getting from one side to the other is a full day of driving. It is easy compared to what travelers had to endure a mere 100 years ago: Indians controlling major thoroughfares and outlaws running amuck. A short tour in northwest Wyoming will not only introduce you to some of this Indian and outlaw history, but also to a bit of history much, much older … not to mention mysterious.
Day 1: Bozeman Trail and Fort Phil Kearney: From 1864 through 1868 the Bozeman Trail – or “Bloody Bozeman” as it was known due to the numerous skirmishes between travelers and area Indians – connected southeast Wyoming with Virginia City, Montana. It passed right by the town of Big Horn. While nothing much is left of the trail itself today, plenty remains to be seen at the Fort Phil Kearney State Historic Site just outside Big Horn. Established in July 1866, Fort Phil Kearney was the biggest of three forts along Bloody Bozeman. Each was charged with protecting travelers, preventing intertribal Indian warfare, and drawing the Indians' attention away from the building of the trans-continental railroad corridor to the south.
Wyoming's Medicine Wheel
Not surprisingly, none of the three forts did a great job with any of these tasks. During its two-year existence, Fort Phil Kearney was actually the epicenter of a violent war between the U.S. Army and the Sioux, Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians.
Fort Phil Kearney was closed in 1868 when the Bozeman Trail wasn't really being used anymore and the Cheyenne Indians burned it soon afterwards. Portions of the fort withstood the fire however and these, along with two battlefields, compromise the Fort Phil Kearney State Historic Site. One of the site's battlefields, the Fetterman Battlefield, was the site of a defeat for the U.S. Army second only to that at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Plains Indians killed all 81 men under Fetterman's command in 30 minutes.
Day 2: Medicine Wheel National Historic Site: It's not really Stonehenge, but Wyoming's Medicine Wheel is surrounded by a fair share of mystery. No one really knows when or why this 74-foot diameter stone circle with 28 interior “spokes” radiating outward was built. There's no question on the “where” though. On a bluff reached from State Highway 14A, 22 miles west of Burgess Junction, the Medicine Wheel overlooks nearly the entire Big Horn Basin.
Current theories have a Native American tribe building the wheel for religious or astrological purposes sometime
Hole in the Wall photo courtesy Willow Creek Ranch
between 1200 and 1700 A.D. Modern Indians use the Medicine Wheel for religious ceremonies. You'll notice all sorts of religious olio scattered inside and out of the wheel. The Medicine Wheel was designated a National Historic Site in 1970.
Day 3: Hole in the Wall: Yup, Hole in the Wall – of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fame – really exists … and it's in Wyoming. (It might already be obvious to some of you; but it wasn't until only recently that I learned Wyoming had an outlaw past. . . and I've lived here for nearly a decade.) Anyway, Butch, the Kid, Jesse James and more than a dozen others all called this fertile, almost-hidden (hence it being a great place for outlaws to hang their spurs) valley at the Willow Creek Ranch home. Back when the outlaws hid out at the ranch, there were six cabins that comprised their hideout; ranch owners were ok with their law-breaking squatters because, well, mainly because they didn't want trouble. Today's Willow Creek Ranch owners celebrate their former visitors, but you'll have to get their permission before you cross the private land to access the site. Take a rugged dirt road from the ranch headquarters to reach what remains of the hideout cabins. While these are interesting enough in themselves, the ranch has plenty of other history: stay overnight at the ranch and explore Native American teepee rings, petroglyphs and homestead cabins on horseback or foot.
Powwow is the steady thump of beaters on a hide-covered drum, a cadence of mixed voices singing in Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow, or Lakota, and the sweep and swirl of men and boys wearing brightly colored regalia, of young girls with fringed shawls, older women dressed in buckskin, even tiny tots in beaded moccasins and creamy white buckskin outfits. Begun as a ritual gathering of spiritual leaders and medicine men, powwow is now a social event. read more
In 1877, 750 anti-treaty Nez Perce fled from Lake Wallowa, Oregon to Canada, which they considered their last option for a peaceful life. read more
