Wyoming Minute

The Draper Natural History Museumwas founded in 1998. The founding curator, Dr. Charles Preston, had a surprise collection waiting for him when he arrived.

It’s well known that President Theodore Roosevelt helped shape the American West as we know it today. But the curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum, Jeremy Johnston, said Roosevelt, along with Buffalo Bill, also promoted the romance and myth of the American West.

During the Reservation Era, roughly from the 1870s to the 1920s, Native Americans were required to move onto allotments of land. Rebecca West, the curator of the Plains Indian Museum, said it was a time when the United States government followed a policy of extermination and assimilation. 

It's normal for librarians at the McCracken Research Library to find postcards, photos and other pieces of paper tucked away in a book. But it isn't every day that you find a postcard written to the famous painter Charles Russell.

Back in 2015, when Karen McWhorter just started her position as curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, she was interviewed for a magazine.

One of the questions: what was her favorite painting in the Whitney’s collection? 

Throughout history, it was common for royalty to present another noblemen or royalty with a firearm. The gift usually symbolized peace between countries or two parties.

Before the expansion of the West, there was an estimate of almost 600 million beavers throughout North America. But in the early 1800s, when unregulated harvesting of beaver pelts began, the beaver almost went extinct within a 40-year period.

The McCracken Research Library is a local history library not only a library specializing in all things Buffalo Bill. And the Cody area is not lacking interesting stories of the west.

Often the uniqueness of a piece stands out more than something that follows the trend. For Hunter Old Elk, the curatorial assistant of the Plains Indian Museum, this rings true for a particular beaded bag in the museum’s collection.

Don Stinson is a contemporary artist who uses traditional methods and materials. His painting “I-80 Energy Romance” portrays a western landscape, but also depicts a gas station sign, truck tracks, and windmills.

In firearms history, there are many parallels between firearm production and automobile production. So Ashley Hlebinsky, the curator of the Cody Firearms Museum, was excited to find one lever action shotgun that held significance to two tycoons in the automobile industry.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was so famous by the end of the 19th century it traveled to Europe. These shows were celebrated back in America by billboard-sized posters. These posters are rare to find. This was the time when posters were plastered on walls, then the next show would come in and a new poster would be plastered over it. So eventually the poster would be scraped off the wall.

Between 1995 and 1997, 41 wolves from Canada and Northwest Montana were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Twenty years has passed and the population has grown close to 400 in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Recently Rebecca West, the curator of the Plains Indian Museum, discovered an unique feather bonnet in the Paul Dyck Buffalo Culture Collection. The bonnet didn’t look like any of the typical bonnets seen previously.

Alexander Phimister Proctor was a known as the sculptor in buckskin. Born in Canada, he fell in love with the American West and most of his work featured the West. However, he didn’t only sculpt, he occasionally painted.

The wheellock rifle was invented in the 1500s. These were incredibly popular guns in England during the 1600s so there are many that have survived until modern times.

Theodore Roosevelt worked hard during his presidency to conserve the natural resources of the United States. As such, he was often traveling around the West. During these trips, he often went out on hunting expeditions.

The black-footed ferret is one of the fiercest, tiny predators. In the 1950’s scientists suspected the predators had gone extinct in the wild. But Corey Anco, the assistant curator of the Draper Natural History Museum, says in 1981 there was a new discovery.

At the turn of the century, ethnologists and anthropologists were trying to collect objects from different Plains Indian cultures, since they believed the cultures would not survive. The “laundry list,” as it was referred to, attempted to collect everything special and unique from the disappearing cultures. This usually included fancier items like beaded clothing, since they were considered to be more aesthetically pleasing.

The painter, Alfred Jacob Miller, was an early artist explorer depicting the American West. But it turns out, he only went out to the West once. His patron, William Drummond Stewart, commissioned Miller to come along to a rendezvous out near present day Pinedale, Wyoming. A rendezvous was a gathering of fur traders and trappers of Native American suppliers. They convened to get ready before the fur trade season came.

The M1 Carbine is a short, lightweight rifle that was introduced during World War II and then used throughout most of the rest of the 20th century. The army developed the rifle as an alternative to their big and heavy M1 Garand rifle, which was close to nine or ten pounds.

Buffalo Bill Cody’s two-story childhood home stands in the courtyard of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. It’s the largest object in the Center’s collection.

It's Christmas Eve 2000. The curator of the Draper Museum of Natural History, Dr. Charles Preston and his wife were driving along the North Fork corridor when they spotted a truck.

Native American women used whatever materials they had to create objects. Hunter Old Elk, the curatorial assistant of the Plains Indian Museum, came across a very square, beaded box. The squareness surprised her and as she observed the object more, she realized the structure was made out of a commodity cheese box.

Thomas Moran was one of the artist documenting the expansion to the West. He was on the first formal expedition in 1871 to Yellowstone country to document the geological wonders of the area.

The American cheetah is a prehistoric mammal that roamed Northern Wyoming in the Miocene and the Pleistocene Epoch. The American cheetah is thought to be the driving evolutionary force responsible of the speed of today’s pronghorn antelope.

There are stories, which pass through hearsay but one can never be sure if the story is completely true. The Buffalo Bill Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West was aware of a story behind a certain Winchester Carbine but not until recently were they able to prove it.

The earliest known reference to the Winchester Arms Collection is a letter from Oliver Winchester to R.S. Lawrence in 1871. Oliver Winchester asked to have the Jennings rifle for his collection because it was a link to the development of the Winchester lever action.

It’s a weird story not often told at museums since it’s against the rules. But at the Whitney Western Museum of Art, there’s one painting visitors can’t resist touching.

During the 19th century, Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company frequently played with each other’s markets. One would manufacture double barrel shotguns another would then import double barrel shotguns. But Colt always had the lever while Winchester had the revolver.