Table of Contents  [ Hide]

Statistics
Towns
Well-known residents of Big Horn County
History
Early Settlement
County Creation
County Seat Election
1st County Courthouse
Gorman and Walters Mob Killing
Ten Sleep Raid/Spring Creek Raid
Division of the County
Burlington Railroad
New County Courthouse

Statistics

Towns

Well-known residents of Big Horn County

	Hon. Percy W. Metz	a district judge for 37 years (1913-1950) and youngest person to ever serve as a district judge in Wyoming (29).
	W.S. Collins	entrepreneur and town founder
	H.C. Lovell	rancher
	B. F. Wickwire	rancher
	Bruce Kennedy	publisher and syndicated columnist

History

Originally, Big Horn County encompassed the entire Big Horn Basin, hence the name. Created March 12, 1890, and organized June 4, 1897, it was taken from Fremont County and the western portion of Johnson County. Three new counties were made from parts the original Big Horn County: Park, Hot Springs, and Washakie. The first county seat contest for the Big Horn County Courthouse was between Basin, Cody and Otto. Basin prevailed and remains the county seat. Irrigation agriculture and petroleum production are the major industries in the county.

Early Settlement

Livestock was first driven into the Big Horn Basin in the 1870's to graze on the immense open range, but permanent settlement was slow to come to the Basin. In the 1880's Hyattville was established, as was the short-lived settlement of Bonanza, the result of the first oil drilling boom in the basin. During the 1890's settlement began in earnest, with Mormon colonization resulting in the towns of Byron, Cowley, Lovell, Burlington, and Otto; and other pioneers establishing Basin City, Meeteetse, Cody, Ten Sleep, and Germania, now called Emblem.

County Creation

The Eleventh Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Wyoming created Big Horn County on March 9, 1890, from Sheridan, Johnson, and Fremont Counties. The new county was named for the Big Horn Mountains, which rise to above 13,000 feet elevation in a long curve similar to the mountain sheep for which they were named. The Big Horn Mountains comprised the eastern boundary of the new county, the Pryor Mountains and the Montana state line were the northern boundary, the Rocky Mountains (Continental Divide)were designated the western boundary, and the southern boundary was more mountains, the Owl Mountains. Enclosed by these breathtaking mountain ranges was an arid depression, eighty miles wide and one hundred miles long, with an average elevation of about 4,000 feet, that had long been called the Big Horn Basin.

Although the legislative assembly authorized Big Horn County in 1890, it was January 4, 1897 before the county was organized. Why nearly seven years passed before the county was organized is not clear, but possible answers for the long delay are found in the creating act. The act required that three hundred qualified electors, residents in the proposed county, petition the governor for organization of the county. A second condition stated in the enabling law that could have delayed organization was proof, to be submitted to the governor, that both Fremont and Johnson counties would retain an assessed valuation of at least $1,600,000, after the organization of Big Horn County. Additionally, Wyoming's newly adopted constitution required new counties to have a minimum assessed valuation of $2 million. Any one, or a combination, of these provisions could have retarded the organization of Big Horn County for seven years.

The petition for organization of Big Horn County was presented to Governor W. A. Richards in the spring of 1896. On June 27, he appointed a Board of Organizing Commissioners, composed of S. A. Lampman of Shell Creek, Lou Blakesley of Otto, and A. L. Coleman of Nowood. The board's function was to organize the election to be held in November to approve organization of the county, elect county officers, and choose a county seat. In deciding to proceed with the organization of Big Horn County, Governor Richards chose to ignore the constitutional provision requiring newly organized counties to have at least $2 million assessed valuation.

County Seat Election

The Democrats and the Republicans of Big Horn County both held conventions in Otto, and a full slate of candidates for county offices was nominated by each party. The towns of Otto and Basin City announced their candidacy for designation as the county seat, followed later by Cody, when the campaign was underway. Otto was located in the most populous area of the county and was the largest town. Basin City had been founded by lawyer and promoter W. S. Collins, who had been thwarted in a promotional scheme by Otto and had platted Basin City, a few miles east of Otto, to gain revenge. Cody, newly established by Colonel William F. Cody, was a late entrant into the contest for county seat, and Otto supporters claimed that the late entry into the election was a plot to take votes from Otto.

If this was the purpose of Cody's candidacy, it worked, as the voters of the county selected Basin City as their county seat by 44 votes. At the time of the election, there were two log cabins and a few dugouts in Basin--hardly a city. County officers elected were the county commissioners, A. J. McDonald, chosen as chairman, Edmund Cusack, and Lee Nansell; W. H. Hunt was elected county clerk and ex officio clerk of the district court; John L. Kracy was elected justice of the peace; J. H. Hall, constable; and Virgil R. Rice was the new county's first sheriff. Other officers elected were William J. Morgan, coroner; Coker F. Rathbone, county attorney; D. P. Woodruff, treasurer and ex officio assessor; Virgil S. Grant, county surveyor; and the first county superintendent of schools was Mrs. Belle T. Howell.

1st County Courthouse

On January 4, 1897, in one of the log cabins, the first county commissioners met, and county government had begun in Big Horn County. At their first meeting, the commissioners designated a recently erected log building as the county courthouse, accepted specifications for building a jail, and adopted a county budget of $15,000 to pay for the general expenses of government, road, and bridge costs and to care for the county's poor. Between 1897 and 1901, the county used several different buildings for the county courthouse, frequently moving to a larger building to accommodate the county's business. The move in 1899 was a forced one when the building occupied by the county burned to the ground. Fortunately, most of the county's business records were rescued.

At a cost of $4,400, in 1901 the county built a brick courthouse,34 x 48 feet, to serve as a permanent county courthouse and jail. Apparently, with only 1,532 square feet in the building, the commissioners were not anticipating a lot of growth in the county, but by 1911, the commissioners were calling for bids for an addition to the courthouse, suitable for county offices. Before this occurred, however, the county was shaken by two events which gave it major experience with law and order.

Gorman and Walters Mob Killing

Two convicted murderers, Jim Gorman and Joseph P. Walters, were being held in the county jail in July 1903, while their convictions and death sentences, hanging, were under appeal. Gorman had been convicted of killing his brother Tom, apparently over Tom's wife, Maggie. Jim and Maggie had been captured together and were charged with Tom's murder. Later, Maggie turned state's witness to testify against Jim, and charges against her were dropped by the county attorney. Walters, described as "love crazed and spurned," had shot and killed Agnes Hoover, a well­ known county widow. Walters had turned the gun on himself, but had been saved for the hangman.

Gorman and Walters had been in the county jail for more than a year, and feelings among the county citizenry were running high, with many people expressing their belief that the tricky lawyers were going to get Gorman and Walters off. Feelings intensified shortly before July 19, when Gorman made a brief escape from the jail. Rumors began to circulate that the good people of the county were going to give justice a helping hand. Consequently, on the afternoon and evening of Saturday the 19th, Basin began to fill with county residents. Both hotels in the town were overflowing with guests.

During the night a mob marched to the jail, with no one making an effort to stop them. They battered down the door to the sheriff's office with a telephone pole and began banging on the cell doors with a sledgehammer. The eerie noise was heard throughout Basin, but no one stirred. Both Gorman and Walters were shot and killed (Gorman died in a doctor's office), and somehow in the melee, Earl Price, who was both a deputy sheriff and a deputy county clerk, was also shot and killed. A grand jury was empaneled to investigate the incident and determine if charges should be brought, but the one witness to "The Raid on the Jail," jailer George Mead, could not, or would not, identify any members of the mob. Except for an entry on August 4, 1903, in the minutes of the county commissioners: "Coffins, Gorman & Walters, $40.00, and jail expense and burial for Gorman and Walters, $24.00," the entire episode went quietly into history.

Ten Sleep Raid/Spring Creek Raid

The next major test of law and order in Big horn County began in April 1909, and has come down through history as the Ten Sleep, or Spring Creek, Raid, the last violent event in the long range war that plagued Wyoming for more than twenty years. Along Spring Creek, near Ten Sleep, then in Big Horn County, at least 15 armed and masked men attacked a sheep camp, murdering in cold blood two prominent wool growers, Joe Allemand and Joe Emge, and a herder, Joe Lazier.

Big Horn County prosecuting attorney Percy Metz and Sheriff Felix Alston launched an exhaustive investigation, which resulted in a grand jury's being summoned. One of the grand jury witnesses committed suicide but left behind letters implicating important cattlemen in the county for the murders on Springs Creek. Seven cattlemen were indicted by the grand jury. Two of those indicted turned state's witnesses and charges against them were dropped. The remaining five cattlemen pleaded guilty and received penitentiary sentences, ranging from three years to life. Unlike the lynching of Gorman and Walters, the Ten Sleep Raid failed to die and tensions remained high among Big Horn County residents for many years.

Division of the County

At the time of the Ten Sleep Raid, 1909, Big Horn County was concerned with another issue - the creation of Park County by the Tenth State Legislature. Despite active opposition by Big Horn County legislators and county residents, the legislature approved the act creating Park County on February 15, 1909. The county, not organized until 1911, was formed from what had been approximately the western half of Big Horn County. The construction of the Shoshone Project by the U.S. Reclamation Service had caused considerable settlement in the Cody and Powell areas, and the residents felt isolated from county government in Basin.

The same year Park County was organized, the legislature created Hot Springs and Washakie Counties. Both counties were organized in 1913. Hot Springs County was formed from parts of Big Horn, Park, and Fremont Counties, while Washakie County was created entirely from the southern and eastern part of Big Horn County.

Despite this loss of territory and assessed valuation, the Big Horn County Commissioners submitted a bond issue for $60,000 to the electorate in 1916 for the construction of a new courthouse. The voters approved the bond issue, and W. N. Bowman of Denver was commissioned as architect by the county commissioners. The needed $60,000 bonding capacity was available to the county because of both industrial and agricultural growth in the county.

Burlington Railroad

In 1901, the Burlington Railroad built a railroad line from near Billings, Montana through northern Big Horn County to Cody, and five years later, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad began constructing track southward from Montana through the county, eventually extending their track through the Wind River Canyon to Shoshoni in 1913. East of Basin, in 1910, oil was discovered and a producing field developed. Agricultural expansion resulted from the construction of irrigation canals in the county during the first decade of the twentieth century, and was a direct cause for the construction of a sugar factory in Lovell in 1916.

New County Courthouse

The new Big Horn County Courthouse, with its stately columns, was finished in March 1918, and a formal dedication, with most of the county's citizens pridefully taking part, was held on June 19. The sheriff's offices and the county jail were in the basement, with offices for the commissioners, the county clerk, the county treasurer, and the county assessor located on the first floor; and with the courtroom, judge’s chambers, and the offices of the clerk of district court on the second floor. Except for interior remodeling and modernizing, and the removal of the jail and sheriff's offices in 1974 to a new facility built directly behind the courthouse, the Big Horn County Courthouse remains much as it was in 1918. Landscaped with spacious lawns, bright flowers, and imposing trees, the courthouse continues to be a symbol of efficient county government for the county's citizens.