It was the last stop before reaching Lander on the stage and freight route from Rawlins. The Derby Station located about 15 miles southeast of Lander was a quiet place, aside from one of the most infamous murders in Fremont County history.
Derby is intertwined with the history of the stage and freight route, early ranching and the McKinney family in the confines of the red rocks surrounding the ghost town.
On July 20, 1879, the first freight wagon left Rawlins for the 158-mile trek to Fort Washakie.
John Bircumshaw, an English immigrant from Derbyshire, England. During territorial days, claims and property ownership were more “first come – first served” than the formal homesteading process that came with statehood.
Bircumshaw built a stage station with a roadhouse and livery stable. The buildings were all built of logs hauled from nearby. A two-story log cabin, and smaller cabins to the west for the livery and the stage keeper.
His station master, the only permanent worker at the Derby Station, C.J. Warren, lived in one of the smaller cabins. Warren was a friendly, elderly man, who staked out many young ranchers and was well respected. He was always ready for a drink with a weary traveler and one of most well-liked men on the Rawlins line.
On May 5, 1888, Bircumshaw filed for a post office at Derby and the name was accepted by the U.S. Postal Service.
Bircumshaw served as postmaster for the short seven years that Derby had one. On March 16, 1895, the Derby post office was closed and area ranchers had their mail delivered from Dallas, five miles to the north.
By 1898, Bircumshaw had moved to Lander, where his wife built a tennis court, a novelty of its time.
John Carmody, a local rancher with a large herd of sheep rented Bircumshaw’s property. The two families were good friends as evidenced by dozens of social page notices of visits by the Carmody family with the Bircumshaw’s in Lander.
Bircumshaw lived a long life, passing away at 98 in Snohomish, Washington.
Wind River Mountaineer March 4, 1896
John Carmody and John Iven have leased the Bircumshaw ranch at Derby and took possession yesterday. They are both energetic men and will keep a good hostelry. They purchased all furniture belonging to the house and all farm implements belonging to the place. We have no doubt but Derby under the new management will again become a popular place to stop –
The most infamous event at the Derby Station came in the wee hours of December 1, 1901. The story was summarized the following year by the Sheridan Press.
Sheridan Post – October 10, 1902
Lander, Wyo., (via Rawlins). July 5th— James Keffer was sentenced to hang today in the district court at
this place by Judge W.C. Bramel for the murder of C. J. Warren at Derby last December, and the date of his execution fixed on September 5th.
The crime for which Keffer must swing was an unusually bloody one. Warren was stock tender at Derby,
A station on the Rawlins-Lander stage line, and last October Keffer showed up at the ranch and was taken care of by Warren. One evening in December the two went down the creek together and later went home about ten o’clock.
The next morning about 4 o’clock Keffer made his appearance at a road ranch nearby, aroused the people and stated be bad killed the stock tender and wished to give himself up. He claimed the old man had drawn a gun on him and fired two or three shots and that be shot in self-defense.
Two men went down to the ranch at daylight and found the old man lying undressed on the floor beside his bed with a hole about five inches in diameter blown through his head and his brains, blood, flesh, and pieces of skull on his pillow and scattered over the wall adjoining the bed. A Winchester lay cocked in his hand with an empty shell in the barrel.
At the trial all of the evidence tended to show that Keffer had acted with premeditation and a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree was returned by the jury and the condemned man was sentenced to hang on September 5th.
Keffer didn’t hang until 1903, and the station kept providing meals, fresh horses and whiskey to travelers until 1906.
In 1905, Carmody purchased the property and built a long, rock building using the red rocks from the nearby cliffs that overlooked the ranch as a stage station. His new station lasted just a year, as the Chicago North Western railroad reached Lander in October of 1906 and the stage route from Rawlins was abandoned.
Carmody was born on March 4, 1862, in Ireland. His family moved to Ithaca, New York, but by age 15, Carmody had the urge to roam. He left home and reached Nebraska in 1878. He arrived in the Wind River country in 1881 driving a herd of cattle from Hugo, Colorado north to Antelope Springs Creek for Hanna & McCauley. He was hooked.
He worked for Hanna & McCauley for two more years, then signed on with the 71 Ranch. In 1890 he was staked by Fred Noble and began his own operation. The pair leased about 50,000 acres of land and grazed sheep.
Accidents were common on the isolated ranches of Wyoming and John Carmody had one.
Cheyenne Daily Leader – August 9, 1892
Robert McCoy, a cowboy, was shot at Boyd’s ranch on Wind River last Saturday by the accidental discharge of a revolver in the hands of John Carmody. Carmody had taken his revolver from the scabbard for some purpose while holding a fractious horse with which he was having some trouble, when the firearm was discharged, the ball passing through the groin of McCoy inflicting a very painful, though not fatal wound. The wounded man is now receiving careful attention at the Cottage Home Hotel.
He married Mary Jane Pollard in Lander on September 3, 1893. They had a daughter, Ellen.
Hardship was a way of life in the early days of Fremont County. John’s brother Dan was an underground miner at South Pass City working a shaft of the Carissa Mine. An unexpected blast ended the life of one of Dan’s friends.
Wind River Mountaineer – December 6, 1897
…By this time Mr. Llewellyn had come up out of the shaft. Mr. Keighton and I picked Bill up and carried him to the shaft. Mr. D Carmody was there having just come up with the bucket. Mr. Leighton sent Dan after Judge Wygal.
After we had tied the knot in the bucket Mr. Leighton ordered Mr. Llewellyn to go on top and tell Engineer Hinkley to hoist slow. I then picked up the hand and arm, which was blown off between the hand and elbow, and placed it in the bucket. We then rang to hoist, Mr. Leighton steadying the top while I kept hold of the bottom.
We got to the surface and placed the body on a bench. The face was badly powder burnt and the breast was horribly torn. A rock the size of a hen’s egg was blown through his chest. Everything indicated that he was facing the shot when It went off. As it was sixteen hours and twenty-five minutes from the time of firing to the time of the explosion it will always be a puzzle how and what caused it.
Sunday, we laid him by the side of Miss Ida Schwabe, whom he was to have married the 15th of this month, had death not have claimed them. He was followed to his last resting place by a large concourse of people. Almost everyone did some little bit to help in the sad affair. Messrs Thos Blackburn and J. B. Richardson deserve great praise for their work in making the body presentable. The ladies worked tillnear midnight making the shroud ; they are Mesdames McGetrich, Wygal, Bennett, Marrin and Bates. Mrs. Lida Sherlock and Miss Mamie Crowley made a handsome cross and Mrs. Harsch sent beautiful flowers. Everyone, that could, did their share. Too much praise cannot be given to our fellow townsman Mr. J. J. Marrin in carrying out the wishes of the brothers, George and Francis, in the arrangements of the funeral.
Will was a brave, generous hearted man. Probably it was best that in the prime of manhood that he should be called upon to drop his mortal duties and take up those in the other sphere, for he often said “There is no death, they look the same over there that they did here.” May his bark glide on smooth waters into the “Harbor of Peace.”
A few years later, Arthur Thomas Farthing was running a scraper for John at the Carmody Ranch east of Derby. Scrapers, or “Fresnoes” were large scoops pulled by horses or mules used to excavate dirt. It required great strength, ability and balance to run one effectively.
The April 1, 1921, edition of the Wind River Mountaineer described Farthing’s accident in a side note.
A.T. Farthing broke his collar bone running a scraper at the Carmody Ranch when the handle slipped and hit him.
The Farthing family would join another family, the McKinney’s in the future of Derby over the next century.
Earl and Amelia “Dottie” McKinney leased the ranch in 1940 from Francis and Ellen (Carmody) Savage. Dottie was Andrew Farthing’s sister.
The ranch sat between Gobbler’s Know to the south and a line of red cliffs to the north.
The couple had leased other places nearby beginning in 1913. In the 1930s they leased a ranch on Dry Lake, north of the Savage place near Dallas.
They had three children, Lenore, Edward and “Don” Donald.
“Our father Donald, resided with his parents at the Scott place and briefly at the Twin Creek ranch when they were leasing it in 1940 and 41, they also moved to the Mackey place later in 1941,” son Donald Jr. said. “He left Wyoming in October 1941 when he joined the Army. He became a career Army man and met our mother Eda Faye “Tommie” Thomasson (from Arkansas) who was in the WAACS at Fort Riley, Kansas. They were married in 1943 raised their two sons Donnie and Richard McKinney on various military installations until retirement in Junction City, Kansas in 1962.”
Earl and Dottie’s son Edward married Hilda Liams in 1938 and they settled on the Scott place with his parents.
Edward and Hilda moved with them to both places. Ed and Hilda raised their children Marilynn, Tim and Kelly McKinney on the Twin Creek place.
Earl eventually purchased the ranch by “Executor’s Deed” on September 12, 1949. The deed included the main Carmody Place near Derby Dome on Twin Creek, with the Kurtz and Sharp places, all once owned by John Carmody. His only child, daughter Ellen Savage inherited the ranches.
How the McKinney family arrived in Wyoming is a study in geography, migration and a succession of unrelated events.
Andrew Jackson McKenney, left his home in Stetson, Maine, stowing away on ship. It was quite an adventure for the young man, rounding Cape Horn and ending up in Hawaii. Anrew worked on a sugar plantation.
Louisa Grace Richards arrived in Hawaii through a more traditional, though still adventurous route. She left Cornwall, England on a world cruise to Australia. She married William Rowan, a sugar plantation owner.
Rowan died, and Luisa married Ed, who had worked for Rowan. They had a son, Edward Coffin McKinney, born on February 25, 1866, on a sugar plantation near Kaneohe, Oahu.
Andrew was also a guard for one of the last kings of Hawaii, King Kamehameha V.
Luisa and Andrew had three more children, eldest son Andrew Jr., Catherine and Lydia.
Andrew died in 1878, and Andrew Jr. and Ed were sent to live with their older half-brother Charles Rowan in Utah.
Life in tropical Hawaii was vastly different than in the arid American West.
In 1881, Ed rode from Utah, through Wyoming to Pony, Nebraska in a reverse route on the Oregon Trail with his half-brother Charles.
Ed liked the look of the land along the Sweetwater River in Wyoming. He left his Utah family and began working on ranches in Fremont County, Wyoming Territory, breaking horses.
He also made several long cattle drives from Texas to Wyoming.
In 1893, Ed married Lenora “Nora” Gaylor of Lander. The young couple settled at Split Rock, running horses on the open range with their partner Gus Lankin.
A few years later, they entered a partnership with James Graham, whom Grahm Ranch Road between Sweetwater Station and Jeffrey City is named for, near Myersville.
In July 1912, both James Graham and Ed McKinney were part of a posse formed by Fremont County Sheriff William Johnson. They tracked Harry Sharpley, a sheep herder turned outlaw who had just robbed three Riverton saloons earlier that month. Sharpley opened fire on the posse and was killed in the subsequent gunfight.
The Graham ranch they lived on is better known as the Flagg ranch after Graham’s daughter Donna Flagg. On September 8, 1895, their son Earl was born at Hailey. They had four more children, a son Lloyd, another son Bill, and daughters Viola and Ida. Earl married Dottie Farthing on September 9, 1913.
They sold the ranch in 1923 and moved to Covina, California.
Earl and Dottie soon returned to Wyoming.
The youngest son Bill and his sister Ida came back to Fremont County. In 1928, Ed returned to Wyoming to work on the Ellis Ranch on the Sweetwater, but he returned to Covina in 1929. He was badly injured in a car wreck that left him partially paralyzed and Ed died of pneumonia in 1930.
Back in Wyoming, Earl and Dottie moved onto the ranch on Twin Creek at Derby Dome in 1949. They had leased this ranch for several years before purchasing it. Ed and his wife Hilda became partners in the daily operation of the ranch and raised a family there. Earl worked at the ranch until he died on April 5, 1974.
Ed and Hilda’s children Marilynn, Tim, and Kelly grew up on the ranch.
Tim and his wife Rosanne still live there and raised a family of their own. Their ranch is 2700 acres along Twin Creek.
“Grandpa lived at the old Scott Place,” Tim said. “He leased it in 1939 and bought it from them in ’49.”
The land their ranch is on is just a portion of the area once owned by John Carmody.
“Carmody owned everything from Sweetwater Station to Atlantic City,” Tim said.
Tim and Rosanne graduated from Fremont County Vocational High School in Lander in 1964. Tim was a star football player, and Rosanne was a cheerleader.
Tim’s most famous feat as an athlete was kicking the tying field goal against Riverton during his senior year in one of the greatest games ever played between the two Fremont County rivals. The play preserved the Tigers’ seven-game win streak and was the only game Riverton didn’t win in 1963.
Growing up in Fremont County, they have long memories.
In the brutal winter of 1949, Tim was just three years old, but he has vivid memories of that destructive winter.
“You would look across the prairie, and everywhere you saw a lump, you would find a dead sheep,” Tim said.
His family raised sheep originally. Now cattle graze the McKinney ranch.
Tim’s dad worked for the highway department as well as on the ranch and when he retired he purchased a bulldozer.
“My dad bought the bulldozer when he quit the highway department,” Tim said. “He dug most of the reservoirs up here.”
The countryside along Twin Creek is dotted with season catch basins that trap snow melt and rainwater providing water holes and some irrigation for local ranchers.
The runoff from the Twin Creek drainage is minimal, sometimes non-existent, so 2700 acres doesn’t support that many cattle.
“Dad ran 100 head of calves, due to the water situation,” Tim said. “I cut it down to 50 head, and now we run 40.”
Tim was recruited at universities across the West, including the University of Wyoming, but ended up in Montana. It didn’t work out, and the young couple returned to Fremont County where Tim went into law enforcement.
Tim started as a jailer at the county jail in Lander before becoming a deputy sheriff. In 1977 he and a Lander police officer responded to a call at a trailer house in Lander and a man inside shot McKinney twice with a .357 magnum.
He survived the gunshots, and returned fire, disabling the gunman.
The following year he was elected for the first of three terms as Fremont County Sheriff.
Tim and Rosanne live a quiet life on the ranch where he grew up. Their daughter Tara Berg continues the family tradition of public service as Fremont County Assessor.
From territorial days to the digital age, the Derby Station has changed with the times. The prevailing northwest winds are the same that buffeted mule skinners, cowboys, and stage drivers well over a century ago, and so is the setting sun to the west above South Pass. Derby remains a quiet treasure that links us to the Old West.