The Big Horn Basin’s Roaring ’20s: Progress, not jazz

They came for Yellowstone and discovered Wyoming

As the 1920s began, the Big Horn Basin was still a relatively isolated place. World War I had just ended, and the Spanish Influenza still lingered in memory. The region depended almost entirely on farming, ranching and mining. Most families traveled to church and school by wagon. Roads over the Big Horns were little more than muddy trails, passable only for brief windows in the summer. The route from Cody to Yellowstone’s East Entrance was rough, often requiring pack horses and a guide.

By the middle of the decade, the Big Horn Basin was roaring, but not in the way of The Great Gatsby, with champagne and city lights. The roar here came from road construction, men with picks and shovels, horses pulling graders and early gasoline tractors. It was the sound of blasting, bridge building and carving roads through the forest.

By the end of the decade, that sound had shifted to the steady hum of automobiles reshaping everyday life. It wasn’t just the wealthy. Farmers hauled products, families went camping, couples honeymooned, and even European royalty came west, staying in dude ranches. The sound carried over the Big Horn Mountains, through the Wind River Canyon and into Yellowstone.

From Pahaska Tepee to Shell, and from Frannie to Thermopolis, everything was transformed through Buffalo Bill Cody’s vision, aggressive local commerce clubs and a Wyoming Legislature willing to invest in roads. Highways replaced wagon trails. Mountain passes became drivable routes. The Wind River Canyon, once a barrier, became a gateway, and most importantly, Yellowstone’s East Entrance became a viable route for tourists.

The Lincoln Highway, established in 1913, was the nation’s first transcontinental automobile road. Though it did not pass through the Basin, it funneled Americans into Wyoming and onto its new roads.

Just 50 years before, Wyoming was something that Americans had to get across heading to Oregon, Utah or California, but now a new pattern of migration was established. 

Towns like Ten Sleep and Shell followed the pattern. The process was not carefully planned, but it reflected the best of the American dream. A small town with little more than a post office and a church, if it was lucky enough to sit along a road to somewhere, began to change almost overnight. 

When a few cars a day started passing through, transformation followed. A roadside stand appeared. Then a woman with vision opened a small café. A man with mechanical skills started a repair shop. A rancher with a bit of extra land charged a few quarters for travelers to camp. As traffic increased, small motels were built, and gas stations soon followed. Over time, travelers realized that Wyoming was more than a way west; it was a way of life they loved, and they never left.

Communities adapted in practical ways. One report noted Ten Sleep farmers expanding into beans because they were “compact and can be transported to the market quite cheaply,” while others turned to turkey production, making the town “a general farming locality of importance to the state.” Roads were reshaping both daily life and livelihoods.

The stories of those early travelers mixed hardship and wonder.

“We rattled and bounced half the way,” one visitor wrote, “but by heaven, we made it over the mountains in a motorcar.” Another noted, “Every mile of road felt like a victory, … and every turn showed us a country most folks had never seen.” What had once been barriers were becoming attractions. “These hills used to keep people out … now they’re bringing them in.”

For many, Yellowstone was the destination, but Wyoming became the experience.

“We came for the park,” one tourist admitted, “but the ride through Wyoming was the real surprise.”

Along the way, strangers became neighbors.

“We camped by the road with a dozen other families, … all of us sharing the same adventure.” Some stayed longer than planned. “We meant to stay one night, … and we’re still here 40 years later.”

As one traveler put it, “The West didn’t get louder with music and parties. It got louder with engines.”

Beyond cafés and garages, towns grew. Grocery stores, bakeries and auto dealerships appeared. Cowley had an opera house, Meeteetse and Deaver had their own newspapers. Manderson had a Ford dealership, and Greybull had a semi-pro baseball team. Nearly every town also had a hidden bar to skirt Prohibition enforcement.

Was it too much, too fast?  Historians will debate the era forever, but the prosperity of the Roaring 1920s did not last. Almost exactly a decade after World War I, the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Great Depression brought uncertainty to communities across the country.

As you are reading this 100 years later, we are the beneficiaries of the vision and impossibly hard work of those who came before us. They conquered distance, carved through mountains, built bridges over rivers and laid down the highways we still rely on today.

The question is no longer what they built or the legacy they left, but what we will leave behind. How will our children and grandchildren look back from the roaring 2120s and measure what we have created for them?