Annual Kane Museum Bus Tour a hit on Saturday

A mixture of local and out-of-town residents spent 5½ enjoyable hours learning about area history Saturday during the annual Kane Bus Tour, organized by Lovell-Kane Area Museum board president and curator Karen Spragg.

A group of 38 people boarded a school bus driven by Nancy Walker for the tour narrated by Spragg, who led site visits and explained area history using a booklet filled with information and historic photos.

One other couple drove a personal vehicle to the first site before moving on to other priorities.

Spragg was pleased with the turnout and the response to the tour.

“I thought it was good,” she said. “Everybody said they enjoyed it.”

The tour group paused at the site of the Sunlight School east of town, then continued to the townsite of Kane just west of Big Horn Lake, which ceased to be in the 1960s when the planners of the Yellowtail Dam believed the town would be inundated by the reservoir, which never happened, Spragg pointed out.

The museum and National Park Service joined forces a few years ago to create an interpretive walk at the townsite, including the history and photos of many of the buildings that once occupied the site. A Kane native, Spragg enthusiastically led the tour group through the walk on Saturday.

Next on the tour was the Mason-Lovell Ranch, where the group was met by Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Chief of Interpretation Christy Fleming and summer intern Karson Mollett. Fleming told the history of the ranch and explained the efforts of the Park Service to stabilize the Orchard Cabin as the staff already did with the North Cabin at the ranch.

The tour continued to the John Blue cabin once occupied by the locally famous hermit. Spragg told the history of the man and the site and expressed appreciation for recent work by the Bureau of Land Management to build a path with steps from the road level up to the cabin. She said further work on the cabin itself is in the planning stages. Members of the tour group enjoyed lunch at the site.

While driving from site to site, Spragg explained the history of other notable figures like Frank Sykes, Stephen and Elizabeth Gervay, the Frame and Abercrombie families and others.

The final stop was the Kane-Ionia Cemetery, where Spragg told the story of Matilda Waters, who killed four of her children and then herself in March of 1921, and legend has it that her spirit in the form of “The Blue Lady” roams the area to this day. Spragg showed the group “grave dowsing” with dowsing rods that indicate where a grave is located, though a stiff breeze interfered with the process on Saturday.

Spragg said the Homesteader Museum in Powell sponsored the first Kane Bus Tour in 2011, and the Lovell-Kane Museum has conducted the tour ever since, except for the COVID year of 2020. She said the tour has evolved over the years as research and oral history has produced more knowledge about the various sites and the pioneers who lived there.

Future programs

Next up for the Lovell-Kane Area Museum is a tour of Hillsboro and Dryhead on Saturday, Aug. 30, featuring the history of silversmith Eddie Hulbert, who lived at Hillsboro and worked at the Cedarvale Guest Ranch, and Caroline Lockhart, a noted author and journalist who moved to the Dryhead from Cody and ran the Lockhart Ranch for many years.

Spragg said the tour will feature Julie St. John, whose grandmother was Edith Barry, wife of pioneer entrepreneur Grosvernor Barry, and who grew up at Hillsboro near Barry’s Landing.

A fundraising dinner and concert is also being planned for Saturday, Oct. 11, at the community center featuring a dinner catered by Wyoming 310 Restaurant and music by the Dan Miller Band of Cody.