Old Trail Town Cody and The Big Horn Mountains

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Cody and the surrounding area needs more than just a one night stop so we are here for three days.
This morning, before we started out on one of our scenic route trips, we visited the "Historic Trail Town". It is a collection of buildings and relics of the Wyoming frontier. Local archaeologist Bob Edgar created Trail Town by moving 26 buildings built between 1879 and 1901 to the location that was once the site of original Old Cody City. Among the buildings are an old saloon, livery barn, blacksmith shop, general stores, post office and schools. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's "Hole-in-the-Wall" cabin is also located there. There are over 100 horse drawn vehicles and the original wagon trail.
There are also Plains Indians materials, guns of the frontier, carriages, clothing and many other relics of the past. Jeremiah " Liver-Eating" Johnson, the mountain man, is buried in the cemetery along with several other notorious Western characters. The buildings and furnishings are all original and the setting is just as it might have been back in the old days so the town had tremendous character and it really gives one a good sense of how it really looked. The general store, the saloon, the schoolhouse and the cabins were lined up along a street to represent an old western town. It is old and dusty and desolate looking and I found it to be really fascinating. I took lots of photos of course.
We then headed east on Route 14A back into the Bighorn National Forest area. We had seen the forest yesterday but each route brings something new and interesting and just like the temperature, the scenery can vary dramatically throughout the day. The temp was 48 degrees this morning and rose and fell as we changed elevation. At 10,000 feet it stayed in the high 40's and down in the valleys and desert it rose as high as 73. As you can tell, dressing for the weather is a bit of a challenge here. We just do "layers". For Frank that means shorts and maybe a zip up sleeveless vest. He doesn't feel the cold. For me it's long pants and several top layers and a jacket. I just put on and take off according to the temp.
Along 14A is found "The Medicine Wheel".
The wheel was constructed by Plains Indians between 300-800 years ago, and has been used and maintained by various groups since then. The central cairn is the oldest part, with excavations showing it extends below the wheel and has been buried by wind-blown dust. It may have supported a central pole. The star alignments are most accurate for around 1200 AD, since slight changes in the Earth's orbit have caused perturbations since. The solstice alignments remain accurate today.
The Bighorn wheel is part of a much larger complex of interrelated archeological sites that represent 7000 years of Native American adaptation to and use of the alpine landscape that surrounds Medicine Mountain. Numerous contemporary American Indian traditionsal use ceremonial staging areas, medicinal and ceremonial plant gathering areas, sweat lodge sites, altars offering locales and fasting (vision quest) enclosures, can be found nearby. Archeological evidence demonstrates that the Medicine Wheel and the surrounding landscape constitute one of the most important and well preserved ancient Native American sacred site complexes in North America. Between 70 and 150 wheels have been identified in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
The Medicine Wheel is located at 9,642 feet high and only reachable during the warm summer months. At the Wheel today the temp was 48 F but the sun was shining and skies were incredibly clear so it felt warmer. The scenery is the mountains in the Bighorn National Forest is gorgeous.
We were making a loop through the Bighorn Mountains. Each mountain pass is quite different and brings incredible scenery. We return to Cody via Granite pass into the open range of the Wyoming high country. Open range means no fences and so at any time we could see cows in the road. No fences, no power lines, no buildings, no people except for the occasional car, really no signs of civilization except for the cows. Talk about the wide open spaces......It was incredible.
This must be a popular area for snowmobiles in the winter because we saw many areas along the roadsides labeled "Snowmobile unloading".
Once through the pass we headed back to Cody. Along the way we made a stop at Shell Falls, a lovely waterfall at one of the information centers along the way.
We arrived back at the hotel just at sunset. While traveling, we make a habit of getting back before dark because of the danger of hitting the wildlife as they jump out into the road at dusk and when dark. The poor animals don't stand a chance against the cars and we see many dead deer at the roadsides. It's so sad.
Tomorrow we hope to take a scenic route through the Shoshone National Forest.

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Photos

Arial view of Medicine Wheel
This is a copy of a photo of the Medicine Wheel