Arland
7 miles north of Meeteetse on Highway 120

A few miles up Meeteetse Creek from here, stood one of the toughest settlements of Wyoming’s frontier history. The town was founded in the spring of 1884 by Victor Arland, a French businessman, and John Corbett, a buffalo hunter. From 1880 to 1884, the men were partners in a trading post on Trail Creek and another on Cottonwood Creek, just north of Cody, Wyoming. They moved to Meeteetse Creek to be in the center of cattle country and the developing ranches.

“Arland” soon had a store, saloon, restaurant, U.S. Post Office, a two story hotel, blacksmith shop, red light district, coal mine, livery stables, residential cabins, and corrals. A mail and passenger stage ran weekly through Arland, helping the town to become a trade center for the area ranches and a mecca for the cowboys and other tough characters of the region. The nearest law was 150 miles away in Lander, Wyoming.

On February 22, 1888, Vic Arland shot and killed Broken Nose Jackson in self defense at a dance in Arland. Jackson’s friend, Bill Landon, shot and killed Vic Arland in revenge, at Dunivan’s Saloon in Red Lodge, Montana, on April 24, 1890. After Vic’s death Arland degenerated into a hang-out for the outlaw element. There were names such as Black Jack Miller, John Bliss, Al Durant, Butch Cassidy, W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill Hoolihan, Ed Nye, Rose Williams, Sage Brush Nancy, and Belle Drewry, known as the “Woman in Blue”. Most of the above, and others, died entangled in a web of lawlessness, romance, intrigue, and murder.

By 1896, the nearby town of Meeteetse had sprung up and by 1897 Arland had died. Today, nothing remains of old Arland but the stories and ghosts of days gone by.