The Old West was a place of hardship, extreme hard work, deprivation and mind-numbing isolation, but the romantic image portrayed in Hollywood and in dime novels of the late 19th century provides a different picture of life on the plains, foothills and mountains.
Fremont County had more than it’s share of pioneer hardships, but it also had a few outlaws, bandits, colorful characters and lawmen to break up the monotony.
While the area along the Sweetwater experienced a few robberies, occasional rustling and a couple of violent encounters, it was the area 70 miles north, on the Big Horn County boundary that saw most of the nefarious action.
This was were “Butch and Sundance” and their gang, the “Wild Bunch” hid out while cooling their jets after robberies on the Union Pacific, and where Robert Leroy Parker, aka “Butch Cassidy” had many friends. Butch was regarded as a helpful, courteous, generous neighbor. An image the Union Pacific Railroad and the Pinkerton Agency did not share.
Deranch was a small town, with a post office, a bar, and a stage stop on the road from Casper to Thermopolis that led eventually to Birdseye Pass until the railroad cut through the Wind River Canyon in 1914. It was built as a company town by an eastern corporation in 1880.
William Long homesteaded the area and was the first Deranch postmaster when it opened on January 19, 1893. Small farmers and ranchers along Bridger Creek came to Deranch for their mail, a little conversation and perhaps a quick shot or two before returning home.
A free spirited French Canadian arrived at Deranch sometime in the 1880s.
David Picard spoke with a heavy French accent, was born to a family with 13 children, and left home when he was 13.
Born in 1861, Picard joined an immigrant train heading west and took a job herding sheep in the Shirley Basin, then worked on the Union Pacific Railroad as a brakeman. Picard preferred to keep his fingers so his tenure as a brakeman was brief. Before hydraulic coupling, brakemen routinely lost fingers and had their hands ripped apart while dropping pins into the connectors between cars.
He became a cowboy working at a ranch near Lost Cabin, but remained a prankster, and a man one step ahead of the law for much of his life.
Picard was no friend of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association, siding with the small ranchers in the Johnson County War of 1891 that saw his friend Nate Champion killed by the invaders, hired guns brought into Wyoming to run off small ranchers in Johnson County.
Picard and his future brother-in-law Vince Hayes were enroute to the fight when Champion was killed, and by the time they arrived the invaders had been captured.
He sided with smaller ranchers for the rest of his life.
Deranch was a bit of an agricultural haven on Bridger Creek. Area ranchers put up hundreds of acres of alfalfa and grass hay each year after the disastrous winter of 1886-87 ended the open range style of cattle raising on the high plains.
Deranch was a stage station on the 140-mile trek from Casper to Thermopolis. It was the last stop before teams had to pull uphill toward Birdseye Pass then drop down into Big Horn County with a welcome late evening stop at Tom Clark’s ranch on Kirby Creek.
Mr. and Mrs. Joe Burgess ran the diner at the Clark Ranch.
Mrs. Burgess was an excellent cook. Weary stagecoach passengers and freighters alike sat down to blue ribbon quality meals at her table. It was regarded as the best meal on the entire 140-mile route.
Picard was living peacefully in the area on a homestead and was highly regarded by his neighbors.
Guilt by association usually has a viable connection and Picard’s came through Tom O’Day, a nefarious neighbor with a penchant for stealing horses.
O’Day was an occasional member of the Wild Bunch Gang and frequented often with Butch Cassidy who traveled through the area and occasional with Harry Longabaugh, aka “The Sundance Kid.”
It was O’Day’s connection that brought Butch and Sundance to Picard’s ranch in the second week of June 1899.
Butch Cassidy had a reputation of using too much dynamite when he blew up the money car on Union Pacific trains and he did just that on the night of June 2, 1899, near Wilcox, Wyoming in northern Albany County. The charges blew the rail car several hundred yards off the track and the gang escaped with an estimated $36,000 in gold, silver and cash.
They arrived a week later at Picard’s place, cooling their heels while waiting for Joe LaFors, a Pinkerton Agent hired by the Union Pacific to lose their trail. O’Day was likely with the Wild Bunch.
After Butch and Sundance cleared out, O’Day remained, traveling across the state as far as Laramie and Douglas to steal horses. He brought them back to Deranch where he found buyers for the purloined horse flesh throughout the year.
Contrary to the Hollywood image, rustling wasn’t a capital offense, and aside from a few isolated lynchings, most rustlers spent a few years at the state penitentiary before being released.
O’Day was a busy rustler, drawing the ire of well-established cattle and horsemen, the type of ranchers who had strong connections with the local sheriff and both federal and state judges.
O’Day’s luck ran out in November 1903, when he was captured with 23 head of stolen horses in the Big Horn Mountains.
O’Day was captured in the mountains just as he came out of a cabin, where he had slept all night.
The sheriff’s posse tracked him to the cabin Saturday night, and they remained nearby until 3 o’clock while stationing themselves close to the cabin and waited until he came out.
He was a few yards from the cabin when Natrona County Sheriff Webb shouted: “Throw up your hands!” O’Day raised his hands about midway of his body and pulled off his glove, and the sheriff a second time commanded him to throw up his bands, and added, “If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
O’Day threw up his hands and shouted, “Good God, Webb, don’t shoot me.”
Tom O’Day got a free trip to Natrona County for his efforts and was remanded to the jail to await trial.
Meanwhile, back at Deranch, a few of O’Day’s friends decided to help him by freeing the captured horses from the sheriff’s corral. The drove the animals about 25 miles across the Nowater, crossing several trails made by other horses to hide their tracks, but veteran lawmen were able to locate 11 of the horses and brought them back.
O’Day was tried three times within a month on a charge of rustling horses. He was saved by a hung jury the first two times in Judge Carpenter’s court. O’Day was a hero to many small ranchers, some of whom made up the jury.
In the third trial, in Judge Hench’s court, his luck ran out. He was sentenced to eight years in the state penitentiary despite testimony from Picard and Hayes that proclaimed his innocence.
The prosecution wasn’t happy with Picard and Hayes and charged both with perjury, sending a posse to Deranch to arrest them.
The posse arrived Thursday afternoon led by Sheriff Webb, Deputy Gene O’Brien and Deputy US Marshal Joe LaFors. LaFors was the same Pinkerton Agent who had chased the Wild Bunch across the state and believed Picard and Hayes were involved in the murder of one of his agents earlier in the year.
Picard invited the posse into his home, made them a meal, and then asked if he could change his clothes. They complied, but when he returned, he had a Winchester lever-action rifle in his hands and a revolver on his hip.
He said he’d go peaceably if they allowed him to carry his guns to Casper. Picard feared he would get jumped on the way to Natrona County. It was a tense situation, Webb and LaFors had their hands on their six-guns, but the room was filled with women and children and they complied with Picard’s request, at least for a while.
A day later, as they boarded a buggy for the trip to Casper, Picard put his rifle under the front seat when Webb appeared with a cocked, double-barrel shotgun and force him to give up his guns. Picard and Hayes rode the rest of the way to Casper in handcuffs and leg irons.
Picard and Hayes weren’t in Casper for long, they both posted $3000 bonds, equivalent to about $110,000 today. No one questioned who or where the funds came from, but many suspected their friends in the train robbery business had played a part.
They returned home to Deranch then traveled back to Casper in February where they were both acquitted in a trial lasting just a few hours.
In a rare occurrence, the judge verbally reprimanded the prosecuting attorney and refused to allow him to make closing statements.
O’Day languished in prison, but in 1907, started to appeal for parole. He promised to leave Wyoming if he were released. He was released early, but didn’t leave the state. Instead, he married Mabel Anderson on November 13, 1908, and the couple moved to Shoshoni.
In 1910, O’Day had another brush with the law, this time accused with partner Jay Smith, of breaking into a railcar at Shoshoni and stealing 15 cases of beer. The case was thrown out due to lack of evidence. Locals joked that the pair had drank the evidence.
Picard continued his life as a prankster, supposedly getting the attention of one the great western authors of the early 20th century.
Owen Wister traveled through Deranch a few times, and as legend has it learned of this stunt by Picard. A stunt that made its way into the pages of his classic novel, “The Virginian.”
Picard enjoyed dances, as did everyone else on the isolated frontier. Families would gather at a central location or the local schoolhouse and enjoy live music and dancing. Those with small children bundled them up and placed them under tables and chairs. Picard decided to play a joke on them by switching babies. He carefully changed two babies into each other’s clothes, then placed them in different blankets.
He waited for the commotion that ensued when parents discovered the baby was not theirs. One night he grabbed several sleeping infants, wrapped them in different blankets and once again waited. One couple was a full day’s ride away when they discovered a misplaced baby.
There were other incidents at the small community not involving Picard, O’Day or the Wild Bunch. In 1903 a local physician Dr. Dr. Julius A. Shuelke of Thermopolis was passing through Deranch on the stage when he died from an overdose of morphine.
Sheulke had his own sordid history, killing Lander pharmacist Isaac Sullivan at point blank range with a shot between the eyes in Schoo’s Barbershop on Main Street in April 1890. Though many witnesses testified to the murder, Schuelke was acquitted and moved to Thermopolis.
Lander mayor Eugene Amoretti testified on behalf of the doctor with this statement, “Yes, it was well known the doctor was frequently drunk, and he abused drugs, but he was a “better doctor drunk than most doctors are sober.”
Other desperate men used Deranch as a getaway way station a year after the O’Day incident.
A gang of bank robbers who had just hit a bank in Cody were surrounded by a posse led by Sheriff Stough of Fremont County and Big Horn County Sheriff Fenton.
They were able to capture the outlaws with additional help arriving from Casper.
By 1912, progress was changing Deranch from a wild western community to just another isolated outpost on the rapidly fading frontier.
A story in the Thermopolis Record from September 19, 1912, indicated the progress.
The telephone company has the wire strung to the top of the mountains and has the line in operation as far as Deranch. They expect to be in Thermopolis by October 1.
David Picard has recently returned from Omaha, where he bought 14 head of the best Hereford bulls ever brought to this part of the country and has them on his home ranch at Deranch.
David Picard too had been “civilized” and was now a respected local rancher.
A story from the Wyoming State Journal, printed years later, on July 28, 1922, recalled the infamous trial of Tom O’Day in Judge Hench’s court.
Prior to Judge Hench’s Incumbency as county attorney, Natrona and adjoining counties had become infested with bands of outlaws, and particularly horse thieves. Judge Hench, with the assistance of the peace officers, determined to clean up affairs, and succeeded in capturing the then most famous chief, Tom O’Day, in the act, and after three trials in one month, owing to jury disagreements, O’Day was finally convicted and sentenced to eight years in the Wyoming penitentiary, which broke up the hosts of horse thieves, and the state has been practically free of the wholesale kind of horse stealing ever since.
The wild days have ended. David Picard’s descendants still own and operate the ranch, but there hasn’t been any rustling, baby swapping or posses chasing bad men in a long time.