It seems a strange name for a place where dreamers came to get rich a long time ago. Those same dreams remain today in a different form.
The very name, “Lost Cabin” is shrouded in mystery and remains a fixture in the lore of the West ebbing and flowing from myth to near reality before once again retreating into the mists of legend.
In reviewing Wyoming newspapers from 1868 to 1930, no less than 30 “true histories” of Lost Cabin were printed. Each of these “true histories” had a few flaws, with many of them being outright fantasy.
The most popular story is that seven Swedes set out from Ft. Laramie in (1835, 1853, 1861, 1864, 1865, 1878, or 1883 take your pick) to explore the Big Horn Mountains for gold.
Wyoming is a huge state, larger than 76 countries, and the 10th largest state geographically among the 50 American states. The middle section of the northern half of this vast area is dominated by the Big Horn Mountains.
It’s somewhere in the not-so-distant past in the Big Horns that the legend of Lost Cabin began.
The various stories printed in the Wind River Mountaineer, Cheyenne Daily Leader, Copper Mountain Miner, Shoshoni Enterprise, Greybull Standard, Lander Eagle, and the Wyoming Industrial News all share a few common themes.
A small group of miners, from three to a dozen ventured into the Big Horn Mountain Range, somewhere between Buffalo, Ten Sleep, and Lost Cabin, and discovered gold. These men pocketed from $4000 to $7000 in 1870s-era gold dust and nuggets and were determined to build a cabin to survive the winter when they were attacked.
The newspapers of the era cared little for tribal affiliations but in light of the War on the Powder River in the 1860s, the Native Americans were most likely Cheyenne.
The Cheyenne attacked, and in every story, all but two of the miners were killed in the initial assault. The two survivors holed up in a cave and kept the Cheyenne war party at bay for several days until they rode off.
The Cheyenne warriors captured their horses. The men then walked to Fort Reno where they were jailed as suspected deserters. When they were determined to be civilian miners, every version of the tale has them traveling to Ft. Laramie where the gold dust was placed in a safe at the camp.
The problem with most of the stories is that Ft. Reno only existed from 1865 to 1868. The Laramie River Treaty of 1868 removed most of the forts along the Bozeman Trail and Ft. Reno was one of them. The ink was barely dry on the treaty when Red Cloud’s men burned Ft. Reno to the ground.
That fact negates every narrative aside from the ones fitting between 1865 and ’66.
The miners were released at Ft. Reno after they were determined to be civilians. One remained coherent, while the trauma of watching his partners killed by the Cheyenne left the other man insane.
Jump ahead a few years and the tales get even better. Supposedly Jim Bridger led an expedition of 120 heavily armed men into the Big Horns to search for the lucrative vein of gold and silver, but there is no record of that expedition in the well-chronicled life of the legendary Mountain Man.
The location, even the existence of the Lost Cabin Mine remains an enigma well into the 21st century where explorers and dreamers continue to search for the Wyoming version of the Comstock Lode.
The most intriguing story is of an eccentric snake handler whose behavior bordered on insanity.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of claims have been made from 1883 to 2024 of someone “discovering” the Lost Cabin Mine, but none matched the story of C.T. “Rattlesnake” Jones of Buffalo.
In the summer of 1890, Jones blew open the doors of the Wyoming Saloon in Buffalo, yelling to everyone that he had found the Lost Cabin Mine. He tossed a saddle bag on the bar and pulled out a handful of gold nuggets, and a few small bones which the local physician identified as human.
To say Jones was an oddball, was a vast understatement. He kept a few rattlesnakes as pets in his room above the saloon.
Jones enjoyed his moment in the sun as the center of attention that day in Buffalo. He had his favorite rattlesnake, “Betty” wrapped around his neck. Someone brought out a piece of paper and handed Jones a pencil. He began to sketch a map of the mine’s location, accompanied by a few rounds at the bar.
Jones claimed all his pet rattlesnakes were trained not to bite, but as he began a detailed map of the Lost Cabin Mine’s location he stopped drawing and dropped his pencil.
One of his friends asked, “What’s wrong, Rattlesnake? Can’t you remember?”
Bar patrons were stunned to see Betty with her fangs deep in Rattlesnake’s neck. The venom hit an artery and Jones was dead on the floor within minutes.
So much for that supposed discovery.
The search, followed by the supposed discovery of the Lost Cabin Mine, and the eerily repeated demise of those claiming to have found it were as common as the folk tales surrounding the lost gold.
No less a character than Catholic priest Father Jean-Pierre DeSmet entered the story in 1873 as he was waiting at the train station in Cheyenne to return to St. Louis.
Father DeSmet knew the location of the mine and told his Crow friend Running Deer where he discovered the mine, the cabin of a miner near the mine, and his skeleton and a substantial amount of gold in 1856.
Running Deer returned to Buffalo and knew the area well but decided to share the secret with his friend Joe Svenson. Gold fever is a factual, psychotic phenomenon, and old Joe was hit hard with it. He demanded that Running Deer tell him where the mine was located at gunpoint. Running Deer was unable to finish a sentence when Joe squeezed the trigger, sending a .45 caliber bullet between Running Deer’s eyes. In his frenzy to find the location of the gold, Swenson didn’t see the Deadwood Stage rolling into Buffalo. He was run over and killed instantly by the iron clad wheels of the coach.
The legend of the Lost Cabin Mine began to take on tones similar to the curse that afflicted George Carter and his team after they discovered the hidden chamber of King Tut in Egypt in 1922. Many associated with finding the mine died soon after under mysterious circumstances.
Ironically, Running Deer, Swenson, and “Rattlesnake Jones” all died inside or in front of the Wyoming Saloon in Buffalo.
No story of Lost Cabin is complete without J.B. Okie. Books have been written about the intrepid pioneer of the Badwater Country, but here is a little known example of the courage, wit, and wisdom of this remarkable man.
Greybull Standard – Friday, March 17, 1922 – J.B. Okie, the sheep king of Wyoming and Mexico, named his ranch “Lost Cabin,” taking the title from the old story. When Okie arrived in Wyoming in the early days, he was poor but ingenious. He settled down upon a “dobe” flat on Badwater Creek eighty miles west of Casper. Badwater heads in the Big Horn mountains.
He built a road roach and drew trade for many miles around. The itinerant cow puncher took his ease there and the lonely shepherd washed the dust from his throat. It was the gathering place of central Wyoming.
Finally, Uncle Sam made the place a post office. They told “Jaybee” that he must find a name.
“Hell,” said he, “she’s a gold mine. I’ll call her Lost Cabin.”
In this material “gold mine” the worthies of the range headquartered at the Dew Drop Inn. They were hard men, but in those days the West possessed a certain, peculiar code of honor. A man’s word was a bond.
Okie had $4,000 to bank in Casper. He saddled his horse and was ready to depart on the two days ride. A friend told him that a certain “bad man” desired the money.
Okie rode thoughtfully on his way. Ten miles out of town the outlaw spurred up and fell into step with him. They exchanged the laconic greetings of the range. They made camp that night and dug for water in the bed of the dry fork of the Powder River.
As they rolled out their blankets for the night, Okie turned to his companion.
“Friend,” he said. “I have $4,000 on me and I’m afraid that someone may sneak up and tap me in the head tonight. I was you to take care of the money.” He handed the purse over to the outlaw, rolled up in his blanket, and sank into dreamless slumber. The next morning the outlaw was still present and cooking breakfast. He handed the money back to the rightful owner. That code of honor won the day.
J.B. Okie was no saint. He was an incredibly gifted businessman who took a little seed money from his mother and turned it into a fortune. Like many “Alpha or Type A” males he had noticeable flaws. The first being the wife he divorced after she gave him eight children in favor of what would be called a “trophy wife” today in a much younger, beautiful second wife.
He also had problems with his mother which left the private bounds of family issues and ended up with her charging him with fraud in a Wyoming court.
In between, Okie was an enigma on the plains.
He had Japanese gardeners creating incredible arrays of plants and trees that had no business surviving in the harsh conditions of the High Desert. He built a mansion that the local Arapaho and Shoshone people called the “Big TeePee” since they had never seen a building that large. He eventually built skating rinks, stores, hotels, and an airstrip in the isolated wilderness that was the Badwater.
His work was well beyond the pale.
It’s said that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp and that came with the railroad in the case of J.B. Okie.
Okie had stores in Moneta and Arminto on the Chicago Northwestern line from Chadron, Nebraska to Lander, Wyoming, but he had bigger plans.
Okie knew the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad (the future Burlington Northern) was working to connect Seattle with the East Coast and the deep South and wanted a piece of the action.
Lost Cabin was the spot Okie hoped the CB&Q would select for a station, instead, the railroad chose a more gradual grade at Lysite, just four miles to the west of Lost Cabin.
Undeterred, Okie simply purchased the Lysite Store and had his railhead for the expansive sheep empire in all of Wyoming.
A report in the June 1901, Wyoming Industrial Journal revealed how successful Okie’s sheep empire had become. Okie sold 90,000 pounds of wool to the Bock and Becker Company at 10 cents a pound and considered another 300,000 pounds to Silberman Brothers, of Chicago.
A neighboring Lost Cabin sheep rancher, William H. Goble consigned 60,000 to the Chicago broker as well.
Wyoming was the leading wool production state and the top producer of sheep worldwide at the turn of the 20th century. Much of that wool and lamb production was centered in Fremont County.
The Lost Cabin Gold had arrived, but it wasn’t on the Periodic Table, instead, it was in commerce, trade, sheep, wool, and cattle.
The Badwater had a well-earned reputation as a place of bad, desperate men from the days of Butch, Sundance, and the Wild Bunch that frequented the area.
In 1911, a bit of the “Old West” remained in an incident at Okie’s bar.
SHOOTING AT LOST CABIN
Drunken Herder Runs Amuck
ESCAPES TO HILLS
William Howard Puts Three Bullets Into John Ortiz—Sheriff Johnson and Posse Capture Man Near Depass
A sheepherder named Wm. Howard ran amuck in Lost Cabin late Saturday night or early Sunday morning and shot John Ortiz, a saloonkeeper of that place. Advices received in Lander stated that Ortiz was shot three times through the body and could not live and that after the shooting Howard escaped to the Rattlesnake Mountains, where he was in hiding.
Sheriff Johnson left Sunday for Lost Cabin and upon arrival there phoned back that he had organized two posses of man-hunters, one at Lost Cabin and the other at Thermopolis, and would at once start on the trail of the fugitive.
The Lost Cabin posse was in command of Sheriff Johnson, the one from Thermopolis being led by Deputy Sheriff Scott Hazen.
Yesterday (Thursday) morning Deputy Sheriff L. B. Gaylord was called to Shoshoni by phone and immediately started for that place. The same morning Sheriff Johnson found his man on Bridger Creek, about 14 miles from Lost Cabin and about 8 miles from Depass. He ran right into the sheriff’s posse and made no resistance when placed under arrest. He was unarmed, having cached his gun, as he later told the sheriff.
Despite three gunshots at close range to the body, Ortiz recovered with the aid of a nurse sent to Lost Cabin from the hospital in Lander. She traveled by train to Moneta, then by coach to Okie’s Dew Drop Inn, where Ortiz was recovering.
Isolated, with vast expanses of land and easy to hide operations made Lost Cabin a haven for illicit stills and bootleggers during the Prohibition Era. One man was arrested repeatedly until he met his end in a hail of bullets.
Wyoming State Journal – September 26, 1919 – Frank Miller and Andrew Offstead who were arrested last week on a charge of bootlegging, were bound over to the District court by Justice Wells under $1,000 bonds which was the amount fixed in the case of George C. Heard, charged with a similar offense.
Frank Miller had a still hidden in the hills near Lost Cabin and was well known by the sheriff’s office in Lander.
Deputy Sheriff James Thompson, stationed in Shoshoni had a warrant to arrest Miller and his partner, G. E. “Alabama Slim” Mitchell on a charge of bootlegging and possession of stolen property.
When Thompson arrived, a gunfight ensued, with the deputy wounded, but Miller and Mitchell killed on January 31, 1924.
Okie was fabulously wealthy with a new “trophy wife” when he suspiciously drowned in 1930 while duck hunting with friends in a pond near Lost Cabin.
Lost Cabin after the departure of Okie, remained a quaint, little town in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains south of the Nowood Canyon. The US Post office had an 80-year run from 1886 until it was closed forever in 1966.
The Big Teepee, the Big Bunkhouse, and several other impressive buildings have survived into the 21st century with the new arrival of another “Lost Cabin Gold Rush” in natural gas.
Natural gas production has made the isolated, rural area of Northeast Fremont County one of the wealthiest areas in the state.
Mineral wealth is a fickle thing. The value of Lost Cabin gas rises and falls with the international market, but it provides a viable link to a fading past when sheep, trains, and the dreams of gold filled the imaginations of men.