There are many beautiful mountain drives in the American West and I have travelled many of them. If asked to pick my favorite, it would be the Beartooth Highway in Montana and Wyoming. The road spans 68 miles from Red Lodge, Montana, to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park. I have travelled this highway…
Category: Places
Butch Cassidy: Utah’s Outlaw Son
My wife and I recently visited the boyhood home of Butch Cassidy near Circleville, Utah. The unassuming log cabin was the family home of this famous outlaw during his early teen years. Born Robert Leroy Parker on April 13, 1866, he was the oldest of 13 children. Times were hard for a family of that…
Buffalo Bill Center of the West
One of my all-time favorite towns is Cody, Wyoming. Situated at the base of the Absaroka Mountains, Cody is the eastern gateway community for Yellowstone National Park. The heart of Cody’s main street business district exhibits Western charm. Some buildings are original with the centerpiece being the Irma Hotel, which Buffalo Bill Cody built and…
Mason-Lovell Ranch Site
The Mason-Lovell Ranch, also known as the M-L Ranch, is probably unknown to anyone reading this blog. Located on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming along the Bighorn River, just before it empties into Bighorn Reservoir, is a historic site that was once the headquarters for a vast cattle ranch in the…
General Grant National Park?
On October 1,1890, Congress established two new national parks – Yosemite and General Grant. The much smaller General Grant National Park was four square miles on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada about 64 miles due east of Fresno, California. The park was established for the purpose of protecting two groves of giant sequoia…
Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn
Yellowstone National Park in the northwest corner of Wyoming is known as the mother park of the National Park System. Over four million people visit Yellowstone annually to see its hot springs, geysers, and abundant wildlife. The Old Faithful Geyser is probably its most famous feature. Most people don’t think about Yellowstone as the site…
Niagara of the West
Shoshone Falls, near Twin Falls, Idaho, is one of the natural wonders of the West. This little-known waterfall on the Snake River is impressive for its width and height. The falls are 900 feet wide and 212 feet high, 45 feet higher than the famous Niagara Falls on the border between New York and Ontario,…
Ghost Town of the Saints
There are numerous ghost towns in the western part of the U.S. Most were mining boom towns that went bust when the mines ceased to produce. This is not the case for Grafton near the village of Rockville, west of Zion National Park in southern Utah. Grafton was a religious, agricultural community founded in 1859…