Dubois Museum Interpretive Signs
At Dubois Museum

School House
The first Dubois high school, established in 1925, originally had approximately 12 students who attended for only two years. Those who wished to continue their education beyond what was offered locally had to make arrangements to board with friends or relatives in nearby Lander or Riverton, about 88 miles away. The first Dubois curriculum consisted of Latin, American History, English, Algebra and Geometry.

Like most rural schoolhouse, the Dubois high school contained only the bare essentials. It was the teacher’s job to start the wood burning stove on cold mornings, fill the water bucket and care for the kerosene lamps. Toilet facilities consisted of an outhouse, located “outback” which required a quick dash in cold weather.

Swans Service Station
Swan’s Service Station, which opened in 1930, was built by Swedish immigrant Swan Swanson (or Swenson). Swanson first came to Dubois in 1914. After a six year stay, he returned to Sweden and became engaged to his wife Sigrid. The couple immigrated officially in 1921 and settled in Dubois where Swan’s father was a contractor for the Wyoming Tie and Timber Company.

Swan worked as “tie-hack” and Sigrid was employed as a cook at the Dunoir tie camp for their first nine years. Many other Scandinavian immigrants were also employed in the tie camps. In 1930, the Swansons moved to town to operate the service station and run a trucking buisness between Riverton, Lander and Dubois.

The filling station originally consisted of two small rooms with an office in front and sleeping room in the back. To the left of the station was a pit with wooden tracks on each side to hold vehicles while the oil was being changed.

Bunkhouse
Cowboys and other hired hands seldom found much in the way of luxury or home comforts in the ranch “bunkhouse” that served as their living quarters; a bed, wash basin and a place to store personal gear was about all their employers offered. Picture magazines, mail order catalogs, copies of Shakespeare (which could be bought with coupons that came with the Bull Durham brand of chewing tobacco) and card games were among the few sources of entertainment.

Tim McCoy, who worked for the Double Diamond Ranch east of Dubois, describes the winter montony of bunkhouse life in his autobiography, Tim McCoy Remembers the West:

“The thing that put a bee in my britches and got me moving from the Double Diamond was that I had spent the long, cold and boring Wyoming winter of 1909-1910 in the confines of the ranch’s bunkhouse, with only occasional, dreary forays outside. I remember vividly at some point during the seemingly endless frost reading a poem in a magazine which extolled the virtues of lush Wyoming. Somehow it didn’t jibe with what I saw outside the window and between furtive glances at the bunkhouse thermometer which frequently registered a teeth-shattering forty-degrees below zero, I wrote an answering piece.”

Saddle Shop
Maxwell’s saddle shop, a small buisness located behind what is now the Ramshorn Inn, provided horse tack and supplies for dude and working ranches in the Dubois area.

The equipment displayed here represents a cross-section of the types of horse gear used in this part of the west. The large stock saddle in the front (right) is typical of the heavy duty roping saddles used in Wyoming around the late 1930s and 1940s. Both saddle and saddle bags show the traditonal “California rose” pattern, typical of the decorative tooling of this era. The saddle to the left is a somewhat earlier model with larger square-cornered skirts, similar to those that came up from Texas with the start of the first cattle drives in the 1870s.

On the back wall are two pairs of “chaps,” protective leggings worn by cowboys to shield them from the cold or thick brush. The pair on the left made from Angora goat, are straight or “shot gun” style chaps which would have been used in colder weather. Those on the right, with wide, flared edges are known as “batwings.” Made of heavy cowhide, this pair was designed to protect the rider from the heavy willows and underbrush in the wrangle pasture at the T Cross Ranch at the head of Horse Creek.

Hanging by the horse collars on the left-hand wall are reins made out of braided horse hair. This kind of work and the braided leather reins and quirt to the left of the window on the right of the shop are typical of the kind of craft work that used to be done by ranch hands during the long Wyoming winters.

The center two bridles on the back wall have “spade” bits with extremely high ports. Their use required considerable training and sensitivity on the part of the horse and a high level of skill on the part of the rider. The bridle on the left is decorated with the brass brad or stud work typical of the late teens, twenties and thirties.

The mule pack saddle on the right of back wall is typical of the “saw” or “cross-buck” pack saddle used by outfitters and dude ranchers in this area. Pack saddles were used by working cowhands to transport salt to summer feeding grounds and bedrolls and other gear to mountain cowcamps.

Side-saddles, like that on the back wall (right), were used by a few women in the early west when riding astride was considered un-lady like. The flat hornless English Saddles (center-right) wereused by the more “modern eastern women, “dudines” who brought the liberating fashion for riding “cross saddle” west with them when they began coming out as tourists, shortly after the turn of the cenntury. (The Ladies Astride, a kind of hybrid version of the English saddle and the stock saddle flurished briefly in the west’s more urban areas around the turn of the century but was soon discarded in favor of lighter versions of the more practical stock or roping saddle.)

In the center of the shop is a McClellan saddle originally used by the miltary’s calvary units. Some McClellans had horns attached and could be used for ranch work. With a large number of surplus McClellans on hand after World War I, these saddles were also issued to the Forest Service, which continued to use horses well into middle of the century, and other government agencies.

Forest Service Cabin
This cabin may have originally served as a bunkhouse at the Sheridan Creek ranger station west of Dubois.

What is now called the “Wind River District” of the Shoshone National Forest was initially part of the Yellowstone Forest Reserve. It was later designatied the Bonneville National Forest, and most recently, the Washakie National Forest, in honor of the Shoshone leader, Chief Washskie.

Beginning in 1891, when President Harrison established the first federal forest lands, the United States Forest Service has monitored timber sales and grazing allotments as well as recreational use. The history at Dubois is closed, linked to its National Forest resources. Public forest lands provided timber for a number of early sawmills and for the large railroad cross-tie industry which produced ties for the Chicago-Northwestern Railroad and timber products such as fence posts and mine props, along with dude and cattle ranching, were the area’s most important economic industries during the 1920s through the 1940s.

Homestead Cabin
Originally located about eight miles east of Dubois, this cabin is in many ways typical of homestead buildings around the turn of the century. Exceptions are the large windows and relatively high ceiling which would have made the cabin harder to heat. These more spacious features may indicate the influence of a woman’s interest in the planning: most earlier cabins tended to be squat and low with narrow, horizontal windows.

Many of the articles in the cabin kitchen belonged to Nettie Stringer who came to Dubois in 1901. Nettie and her family, her mother and 6 brothers, settled west of Dubois where she filed her own claim in 1985.

Keeping house for her brothers, mending and ironing, cooking and tending outdoor chores kept Nettie busy year around On a typical day, in May of 1908, her diary reads as follows: “I washed early—baked bread and four pies, dress two chickens. Carl and Albert and two other men were here for dinner. I ironed the boys collars and basted up a bonnet, then did several turns (chores) and took a bath…”

We have left the cardboard and newspaper insulation on the kitchens back wall in place to show visitors how homesteaders “made do” with materials on hand. When the cabin was first moved to the museum grounds, this early insulation was covered with the same cardboard panelling and of the original outside chinking has been left visible on the west side of the cabin, above the boardwalk, to show how the outside looked before restoration work.

Meat House
Originally located in a pine grove on the Dennison Ranch along the west fork of Wind River, on Bear Creek, this building served to keep meat cool and safe from bears and flies. The pyramid shape and screen sidings provided natural cooling and ventilation.

The Dennison Ranch was a 5,500 acre ranch belonging to millionaire Richard Dennison. A true eccentric, Dennison also ran an exclusive dude operation which catered to the likes of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. The ranch was also famous for the many safari trophies which decorated its extravagant interior. Dennison owned and bred a string of Kentucky racehorses and ran a herd of registered Jersey cattle which he kept in a three-story barn with hardwood floors. The barn has since been moved to the Thunderhead Ranch.

Two-Seater Outhouse
This large “privy” was originally located at the first Dubois Airport, on Table Mountain. Airport facilities were constructed as part of a WPA project in 1936.

Buffalo Bill and the Long Ride
Legend says that Pony Express rider William “Buffalo Bill” Cody exchanged horses here on a record ride from Red Buttes Station to Rocky Ridge Station and back. Due to another rider’s untimely death, Cody was forced to add an extra leg to his relay and eventually covered a total of 322 miles in 21 hours and 40 minutes, using 21 horses. On another occasion, he rode one horse at top speed for 24 miles when chased by Indians from Horse Creek Station east of Independence Rock to Plant’s Station just east of here.