Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409120040
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: SHERIDAN, WYO. LENGTH: Long
The Mint is a long-necked Budweiser kind of place, with a neon bucking bronco on its sign out front, but this gal (hey, cut me some slack, we're in Wyoming here) ordered a daiquiri and set to brooding, her back to the pool table. The stuffed animal heads stared blankly at the facing wall's faded photos of trophy trout, conquered broncos, anglers, Indians and young wranglers who were now old men.
``Next time,'' she said, ``I'm getting a cowboy.''
In Sheridan, a woman can make such a pledge. And a stranger can find a bracing taste of the American West.
Sheridan, population 13,900, sits at the edge of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming's northeastern corner, lighted by a big sky, animated by historic Main Street architecture, neighbored by pasturelands, snowy peaks, trout-bearing lakes and streams, working ranches, guest ranches and several monuments to 19th-century frontier battles (including the one that killed Custer). From above, the hilly, rippling high Plains landscape looks like the rumpled linen of a great big unmade bed. Yellowstone National Park lies 201 miles to the west on Interstate 16; Mount Rushmore lies 280 miles east.
So far, the city is largely free of the artificial sweeteners that have lured so many travelers to showplace cities such as Bozeman and Livingston to the northwest, in Montana. But the boutiques and all the rest may be arriving soon.
A 700-unit housing development is proposed on one end of town. Sam Paul Mavrakis, whose family has owned Ritz Sporting Goods in Sheridan for decades, has collaborated with his wife, Carol, to convert an old dairy barn in neighboring Big Horn into a three-room bed and breakfast operation, the Blue Barn, which opened last month. A coffeehouse opened on Main Street six months ago, and one of the waitresses there has a ring in her nose.
Maybe it's nothing. The visitors bureau counted a relatively modest 230,000 tourists to the area last year, and on any day, when you walk the streets of Sheridan, the people you see are locally grown Westerners. Men with cowboy hats older than I am. Men and women who use toothpicks after every meal. College students and high school graduates passing their summers as wranglers at the Spear-O-Wigwam Ranch in Sheridan, or Eatons' Ranch in nearby Wolf, or the 14HF Bar in Saddlestring, or the Paradise Guest Ranch near Buffalo. Homemakers who own rifles. And children who sit, unarmed, in public school classes of a dozen or so students.
The place is Western in a refreshingly uncosmeticized way. And, for the record, no more than 15 minutes after the woman with the daiquiri in the Mint confessed to me her new ambition, an apparent cowboy ambled in and pulled up a stool next to her. When I last saw them, they were still whispering beneath the glassy animal eyes.
Sheridan, named for Civil War Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, was born in 1882 as a grid sketched on a brown paper bag by entrepreneur John D. Loucks. It is the lowest town in the state, geographically speaking. But, Wyoming being Wyoming, it is nevertheless 3,745 feet above sea level, which makes it often hot in summer and cold in winter.
The most popular roads out of town lead to the Bighorn Mountains, which lead to many things: fishing, for trout, usually, in scores of lakes and rivers in and around Bighorn National Forest. Hunting for birds and game animals, in season. Hiking and horseback riding, most spectacularly near the snowy peaks of the 137,000-acre Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, within the national forest. Snowmobiling and skiing in winter. And the year-round pursuit of wildlife sightings: elk, moose, deer, mountain sheep, bear, fox and coyote.
The most popular roads into town lead to Main Street, which in the space of seven blocks has 16 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. For instance: the 1908 Crescent Hotel, which rises on the former site of the original Bucket of Blood saloon, and the 1882 building at 1 South Main, Sheridan's oldest building, which once held a general store and now holds a pharmacy.
If you ignore the second-floor ``skyway'' tunnel that the Best Western Sheridan Center put across Main a few blocks north in the 1970s - a Jetson's convenience in a tumbleweeds town - it's not hard to imagine a wooden boardwalk under foot and horse troughs alongside it. But it's more educational to investigate the enterprises that Main and neighboring streets still sustain.
At King's Saddlery and King Rope, cowboys from miles around come to buy tools of the trade. Though now retired at 72, Don King (no, not the boxing promoter) has lived in Sheridan on and off since 1936 and built a reputation as one of the nation's premier saddle-makers. The walls jangle with spurs, bridles and belt buckles, the scent of leather work hangs in the air, cowbells are sold for use on actual cows, and broad sheets advertise home-grown instruction on barrel-racing and ``the three D's of goat-tying.'' Determination, dedication, devotion.
In the back stand stacks of hats and sweat shirts for tourists. In workshops downstairs, leather is sculpted into saddles, and sisal from Africa (among various substances) is heated and twisted into rope. King's sells about 35,000 lengths of rope yearly, most of it these days including nylon, or polyester or polypropylene. Four King sons fill various roles at the store, and a cavernous building in back holds Don King's Western Museum.
Across the street, next to the Mint, stands Ritz Sporting Goods. Ritz is proof that Sheridan remains unglamorized - its looming yellow and green sign will win no prizes for subtlety - and it may be the only sporting goods store in the nation to open daily at 6 a.m. and feature a counter for coffee drinkers. For several dozen old ranchers, and one boxer dog dozing beneath a display of fishing poles, the Ritz is where one goes each morning to lament the lack of rain or muse on the triumphs of the high school football team.
A few blocks away stands the Sheridan Inn, root of all imported civilization in Sheridan. Less than a year after the railroad came to town in late 1892, the 62-room inn sprung up near the tracks at Fifth Street and Broadway. Its design was based, strangely, on a hunting lodge the architect had visited in Scotland. Buffalo Bill Cody, a part owner and part-time resident for many years, is said to have sat on the inn porch, auditioning acts for his Wild West show. The hotel closed to lodgers in 1965, and is now owned jointly by the city and county, but a restaurant continues in the old bar and tours are offered by the Sheridan Heritage Center (adults: $3).
In the nearby town of Buffalo (population 3,500, about 35 miles south of Sheridan), a tourist boomlet has breathed life into the Main Street with a dozen buildings that date to the 1890-1920 era, a few quite lavish-looking galleries, and several bars. The old Occidental Hotel may not be taking guests (though it is open in summer for historic tours), but the Buffalo Bar endures, as does the 21, as does the Century Club.
In the high, pine-stubbled town of Story (population 650, about 16 miles south of Sheridan), for instance, I had a surprisingly good Mexican dinner at the Lodore Supper Club. The chef, it turned out, had emigrated from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Wyoming more than a decade before.
In Big Horn (population 217, about nine miles south of Sheridan), the Bradford Brinton Memorial preserves the ranch and impressive art collection of a wealthy rancher and art patron. There's also a free Bozeman Trail Museum in the old blacksmith's shop.
Between Sheridan and Big Horn, and Sheridan and Story, and Story and Buffalo, are the open spaces, the amber waves of grain, the round hills and trickling creeks, the shadows of massive and fast-moving clouds. Half the fun of being a tourist in this part of Wyoming is finding your way from place to place in that landscape. There really are more cows than people, as the old saying goes, and there are probably more acres than cows. The question is for how long.
``Only a handful of people have known about Sheridan,'' said Sam Paul Mavrakis, the new B&B proprietor. ``But now, a lot of people in Jackson [Hole] and Aspen are getting tired of that, and they want to come here.''
by CNB