Owen Wister, An Early Wyoming Dude By Candy Moulton
Trail ride near Jackson
"That region is the country I have loved best in the world. Were there any part of my life I would live again, it would be the time spent there." Such were the words of Western novelist Owen Wister regarding Jackson Hole, in a 1929 letter to a prominent resident.
Wister, who became famous for The Virginian, was a "dude" in Jackson Hole prior to 1900. He first visited the area in 1887 on a big game shooting trip traveling with his cousin, the son of Dr. John K. Mitchell. On their month-and-a-half-long trip, Wister and Mitchell spent time at Sheep Creek, known as Dick's Basin for mountain man Beaver Dick Leigh, Brooks Lake, in Yellowstone and in the Absaroka Mountain Range west of Cody.
Mitchell wrote of their journey, "We cantered on, crossed Arizona Creek and all along had a most splendid view on our right of the Teton range, Mt. Moran and the 3 Tetons hanging over the head of Jackson's lake. Great fields of snow, deep sharp-cut dark valley, and bare expanse of clear gray rock alternate on their sides." In 1888, they returned to go camping between String and Jenny Lake.
Wister spent time in other areas of Wyoming as well, and it is those experiences that became his background for The Virginian. Many stories circulate about his writing of the book
Moran Bay in Grand Teton National Park
and some old-timers claim to have been the character upon which he based The Virginian. The book itself is the stuff of legends and many of Wister's scenes are in Wyoming spots like Medicine Bow, the Goose Egg Ranch near Casper, the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, or from incidents that took place during his trips to Jackson Hole.
Of Medicine Bow, where he stepped off the Union Pacific train into a windstorm in July of 1885, he wrote: "This place is called a town. 'Town' will do very well until the language stretches itself and takes on a new word that fits." He added that the community of 29 buildings – including a depot, store, billiard house, feed stable, two eating houses and other structures such as "5 too late for classification" appeared as if "strewn there by the wind."
Should you visit Medicine Bow today, you can have a meal at The Virginian Hotel, constructed a few years after the book's first publication. While there you can stay in the "Owen Wister Suite" or eat in the Owen Wister dining room. Across the highway, you can visit the Medicine Bow railroad depot that has been converted into a museum, complete with Wister memorabilia.
The University of Wyoming in Laramie has Owen Wister's pencil-written diaries of his time in the West and two pages of pencil manuscript of
The Occidental Hotel in Buffalo Ryan Conway
The Virginian. Traveling north of Medicine Bow, you will pass through open prairie country as Wister did, and can have a meal outside Casper at the Goose Egg Inn, which was once a part of the Goose Egg Ranch, a place where Wister learned about cowboys and schoolhouse pranks.
Continuing to the north, experience another town Wister visited: Buffalo with its crooked main street and Jim Gatchell Museum. The Occidental Hotel has a guest register that shows Wister overnighted here, just as you can do in a structure much finer than the place the novelist once stayed.
Anyone who studies Western literature will readily tell you that The Virginian is the first widely-recognized Western novel, a story that glamorized cowboys, set up conflicts with rustlers, and involved a school marm as a romantic interest. They will tell you that all later books that had the theme "Buck Saves Betsy and the Ranch" came from that earliest Western penned by Owen Wister. But don't forget that the places Wister wrote about were real, and that he visited them. You, too, can enjoy time at Brooks Lake, along the base of the Tetons, in Yellowstone, or even in windy Medicine Bow, where the spirit of the man and his most famous book remain.
Just remember, you can say what you want about Wyoming any time, but, as The Virginian told Trampas, leader of the cattle-rustler gang, "When you call me that, smile!"
Candy Moulton is the author of Roadside History of Wyoming and Legacy of the Tetons. Visit her website at www.candymoulton.com.
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