The original Big Horn County covered approximately 8 million acres in the Bighorn Basin-roughly 12,500 square miles, or about an eighth of the entire state. 4, 1897, however, with the election of commissioners and the beginning of county government. The new county was not officially organized until Jan. In March 1890, less than a year after the Rustler began publication, the Wyoming Legislature approved creation of Big Horn County out of parts of what then were Sheridan, Johnson and Fremont counties. A copy of this first edition of the Rustler has survived and is currently housed at the Fremont County Library in Lander, Wyo. Like many other early newspapers, it exaggerated the virtues of the new settlement, telling of unlimited coal deposits and the healing powers of "Bonanza Oil." Also like its contemporaries, DeBarthe’s paper included very specific news items about specific people-who, for example, was cutting logs for a house. The premier edition of the Big Horn Rustler, edited by Joseph DeBarthe, was published June 1, 1889. Bonanza was also the location of the first newspaper in the Bighorn Basin. Hyatt was the town's first postmaster, and by all reports was a fine citizen.Īnother early town, Bonanza, southwest of Hyattville near the confluence of Paintrock Creek and the Nowood River, was likewise started in the 1880s and became the focus of activity surrounding the discovery of a small oil spring. Hyatt, an early settler who established a store there in 1886. First called Paintrock for the creek next to it, the town was renamed for Samuel W. Hyattville, one of the first settlements in what’s now Big Horn County, predated the arrival of the Mormons by perhaps a decade. In 1895, when Mormon settlers arrived from Utah by the hundreds and began digging canals to irrigate their crops, the era of the small farmer had clearly begun. Many of the earliest settlers ran sheep as well as cattle, and an inevitable clash arose between those who regarded the open range as their property and those who wanted to fence and farm the land. ![]() Settlers also began filtering into the basin in the 1870s, including, as time went on, men with their wives and children. The original Big Horn County courthouse, in Basin, 1901. The present-day town of Otto in Big Horn County was named for him. His ranch was in part of what is currently Park County and also stretched into the modern boundaries of Big Horn County. Otto Franc von Lichtenstein, who soon shortened his name to "Otto Franc," established his Pitchfork Ranch on the Greybull River in 1879 with about 1,200 head of cattle. Henry Clay Lovell owned one of the largest herds-approximately 25,000 head-with his range covering nearly the whole length of the basin from southern Montana to present Thermopolis, Wyo. ![]() Blackfeet attacked Ashley’s group as they followed the Bighorn River north, downstream, through the basin.Ĭattlemen moved into the area starting in the 1870s. Louis from a rendezvous on Henry's Fork of the Green River. Ashley chose this roundabout route back to St. Other expeditions followed, including members of the Missouri Fur Company in 1823-24 and a party headed by General William Ashley in 1825. He encountered a Crow village near present-day Cody, Wyo. In 1807, George Drouillard, who had first come west three years earlier with the Lewis and Clark expedition, may have been the first beaver trapper to enter the northern Bighorn Basin. The Medicine Wheel on Medicine Mountain overlooking the Bighorn Basin is clear evidence of the work of native cultures, most probably Indians sometime in the 1770s. Crow ceramics suggest the presence of that tribe in perhaps the mid-1700s. ![]() Beginning in the late 1800s, canals tapping into these three main waterways furnished water for irrigation.Īpproximately 10,000 years ago, mammoth hunters probably occupied the area. When displayed on a map, this suggests a wiggly tic-tac-toe design with one vertical bar missing. The Bighorn River flows from south to north through the county, with the Greybull and Shoshone Rivers flowing into it from the west. ![]() On its east and west sides, the basin is rimmed by the Bighorn Mountains and the Absaroka Range, respectively. Big Horn County, on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains, takes up most of the northeastern portion of the much larger Bighorn Basin, which stretches north from the Owl Creek Mountains to the Pryor Mountains in southern Montana.
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