Libby Lodge

Travois trails and artifacts are evidence that aborigines visited or inhabited the Medicine Bow Range of southern Wyoming, probably for many years before the white man saw those mountains. Among the tribes whose presence there has been noted are the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Snake or Shoshone, Bannock, Ute, and more recently the Sioux. The forest provided these peoples with lodge poles and food. The presence of multitudes of the game--buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and other wild animals--in and around the Medicine Bow Range is documented well enough to suggest that the region was an excellent hunting ground. Buffalo, essential in so many ways to the Indian economy, could be found in the Laramie Plains, the North Platte River Valley and North Park, but buffalo skulls and skeletons, and projectile points, found at altitudes of more than 10,000 feet indicate that hunting was not limited to the grasslands and that Indians followed their food supply to alpine pastures.

The earliest penetration of the region by the white man can be traced to the first decade of the nineteenth century, when Ezekiel Williams and a party of fur trappers followed the North Platte River to its source in North Park, Colorado. Mountain man Jim Bridger said Jacques Laramie was in the region about 1817. La Ramie, against the advice of others, in 1820 went up the river that today bears his name and was never seen again. Fellow trappers later heard that Indians had killed Laramie, and his body was stuffed under the ice of a beaver pond. Although fur trappers had no doubt thoroughly explored the inner recesses of the Medicine Bow Range, seeking pelts and working ice-cold mountain streams for beaver, there is no record of an exploration of the region until 1825. In March of that year, a party of trappers led by General William H. Ashley rounded the north end of the Medicine Bow Range, trapping as they moved to a rendezvous on the Green River. Ashley's account of that trip has survived for us to read. Perhaps the earliest settlers of the region were the "squaw men" of fur trappers and traders who, following the period of the fur trade, settled down there to a semi-nomadic existence with their Indian wives.

By 1843, the year that explorer John Charles Fremont arrived on the scene, the Western American fur trade period had nearly ended. Less than half a dozen years later a new period in the history of the West, one of migration, was underway. The settlement of Oregon Country, California and the Salt Lake Valley took place rapidly, as thousands of people each year moved west through central Wyoming. In 1850 Captain Howard Stansbury was sent west to make a reconnaissance of the Salt Lake Valley, and to establish a practical transportation and communication route through the Rockies. Guided by Jim Bridger, Stansbury moved east from Salt Lake City, crossed the Great Divide Basin, and rounded the northern end of the Medicine Bow Range. Stansbury followed, in part, a trace left by Cherokee Indians who had moved from Oklahoma to California. Following the Stansbury route, the stagecoaches of Ben Holladay rumbled across southern Wyoming, beginning in 1862. Taking its name from Ben Holladay's stage line, the route became known as the Overland Trail. The Overland Trail corridor was later followed by the Union Pacific, the eastern portion of the nation's first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869. A transcontinental air mail route and automobile highways U. S. 30 and Interstate 80 also followed the route at later dates.

The relation of this multi-faceted transcontinental traffic to the history of the Medicine Bow Range is that some individuals, who were a part of the great wave of human traffic funneled through the Rockies, paused to utilize the resources of forest and foothills. Prior to even the Wyoming Territorial period these individuals began to settle along the stream and river valleys, harvested game, timber, and coal and turned mountain stream water over hay fields. Some were rancher farmers who raised hay and stock to supply stage stations and military posts along the Overland Trail. Some were tie hacks that cut building logs, props for coal mines, and railroad ties. One tie camp, operated by a man named Gregory during the winter of 1868-69, was located on the site of the present Snowy Range Lodge. A member of Sir George Gore's pleasure-hunting expedition to the Rocky Mountains is reported to have found gold in the Medicine Bow Range in 1854, perhaps along a tributary of the North Platte River, but not until about the last quarter of the nineteenth century were serious mining attempts made in the range. Tie hacks and rancher-farmers were then joined by prospectors and miners who searched, and found in limited quantities, such minerals as gold, silver, copper, and platinum.

Until at least the turn of the century the resources of the Medicine Bow Range were being utilized with very little government regulation, but on May 22, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Medicine Bow Forest Reserve, and gradually the unregulated exploitation of forest resources was abated, and conservation policies initiated. Initially, the forest boundaries included the area along the entire length of the Medicine Bow Range as far south as Boulder, Colorado. However, through the years various presidential proclamations and executive orders, and acts of Congress, have altered the boundaries until today the Medicine Bow National Forest contains a total area of more than 3,200,000 acres of Federal, State and private land.

By 1910 the forest was becoming more accessible to people for recreational purposes. In that year, wrote forest historian Robert Keady Bruce, a 1910 vintage Franklin automobile was driven to Brooklyn Lake. According to George A. Duthie, Supervisor of the Medicine Bow National Forest from 1913 to 1916, prior to 1914--the year that the United States Forest Service began to develop the recreational potential of the Medicine Bow National Forest--only a few fishermen and campers were visiting the range for recreation. But as trails through the mountains became roads, and as roads were improved, more and more people began to visit the range for recreational purposes, particularly that area of perpetual snow called the Snowy Range. Not until the 1920s did forest reports include estimates or actual counts of people using forest facilities for recreation and then, after several years, reports reveal an almost geometric progression in annual recreation use. The traffic of recreationists prompted the construction of a number of lodges and other facilities which catered to these visitors. The Medicine Bow Lodge, on the west side of the range at Ryan Park, was built in 1919, but the lodge was inaccessible to automobiles driven up the east slope of the range. As roads were built into the timber on the east slope, other lodges were built, including Sand Lake Lodge, Brooklyn Lake Lodge, and Libby Lodge, or the Snowy Range Lodge. In 1915 a road was graded to Brooklyn Lake and Libby Flats from the east base of the range, but probably it was very rough. From September 1920 to July 1921 the first leg of a Federally-funded, graded highway through the forest, extending from the town of Centennial to the approximate present location of the Snowy Range Lodge, was constructed. However, not until the summer of 1925 was the last link of that forest highway completed, connecting Laramie on the east side of the range with Saratoga on the west, and not until 1937-38 was the road paved.

In an article in the Laramie Republican-Boomerang, dated June 20, 1925, it was reported that the construction of Libby Lodge was practically completed. "At any rate," stated the reporter, "a few days of work with a force of men would finish up the odds and ends and also put the ground and surrounding terrain in good order, but there isn't a stick of furniture in the place." With the addition of cabins to the property, the lodge owners were eventually able to accommodate 76 people, 44 in cabins and 32 in the lodge. Today, more than fifty years later, many people who visit the Medicine Bow Range bring along their own accommodations and supplies, and Libby Lodge--today is known as the Snowy Range Lodge-- is no longer in operation and is apparently obsolete. Unused and in a state of deterioration, the building and nearby cabins pose a number of problems for Forest Service administrators.

Nevertheless, the lodge building itself is worthy of recognition, and preservation, because of its architecture and because of its history. Its size and design call attention to this unique log structure, few of which remain in the Medicine Bow National Forest, or elsewhere in Wyoming, for the public to view. The association of the lodge site with historical developments in the forest is also important. Its location is one upon which was an early tie operation, an operation that was a part of one of the most significant historical developments in the forest, as well as a part of the development of the American West. Record books in the office of the Albany County Clerk show that mining claims were registered in the vicinity, and it is possible that the site of the lodge could have been the location of a small mining camp. Going further back into time, perhaps it was the location of a seasonal Indian camp, although an archeological reconnaissance needs to be done before such an idea can be verified. Finally, the Snowy Range Lodge itself has been a focal point for recreationists, beginning as early as 1925. As such, the lodge has played a role in the cultural development of southern Wyoming and is inextricably a part of the multiple-use concept of the National Forest administration.