YCGL - The New Adventure - Fort Caspar and the Southern Big Horn and Red Cliffs Backway

I messed around this morning trying to get the pictures to download and then insert them into the blog, and it didn't work, at all. So, I got to the Fort Caspar Museum bright and early at 11:30. It's not big, but it is a very nicely done museum with a lot of exhibits from mammoth bones to native american artifacts to the trails and the fort to life in the city of Casper in the 50s and 60s. On the grounds are a reconstruction of the buildings in 1850 and the location of the Mormon ferry (1847) and the Guinard bridge (1860) which replaced it.

The grounds at the Fort Caspar Museum

You may have noticed that the fort is Fort Caspar and the city is Casper. Colonel William Collins was the commandant at Fort Laramie. He authorized moving a camp in Colorado several miles down stream from the current site on the Cache La Poudre river near LaPorte, CO. The camp was made into a fort and named after him, Fort Collins. Colonel Collins' son was 20 year old Lt. Casper Collins who was at the Platte Bridge Station on July 26, 1865. That morning, he led a group of soldiers across the Platte River Bridge and into a surprise attack by an estimated 3,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. He was killed while trying to save his men. The Station was made into a fort. Because his father already had Fort Collins named after him, the army decided to call the fort by his first name. Except the commander who named it, Major General John Pope, misspelled his name to "Caspar". And, being the Army, it remained Fort Caspar from November 21, 1865 until it was closed on October 19, 1867. And is today!

I spent over two hours here and had to leave because I was supposed to be at my Harvest Host/Boondocker's Welcome site around 2:00. It is located at 9000 Poison Spider Rd. (Love the name.)

After getting set up, I decided to go for a drive. I had seen on a map there was a BLM Backway tour of Southern Big Horns and Red Cliffs. Knowing about that much, I took off on the drive. The drive was located about 40 miles west of Casper, and then was a 102 mile loop back to the highway. It followed two stockways, the "33 Mile Stockway" and the "Arminto Stockway". Stockways were established by the 1916 Stock-Raising Homestead Act to protect lands used for transferring stock from summer pasture to winter pasture and back and keep them from being fenced. In this case, it consisted of five Natrona and Washakie County roads, 125, 110, 109, 104 and 105. What could go wrong there?

Turning off of Highway 20/26 to County Road 125, the first 15-20 miles is paved and a pretty nice road. It runs through bentonite country and there are several bentonite mines along the way. The first sign comes up with some information.

Some of the fine print....

Note the bullet hole through the antelope's heart. A warning shot, so to speak.

My destination became the Centennial Sheep Monument

Then the road becomes unpaved, still nice, drive at 50 mph. Nice, beautiful country. For a while. Then the road becomes a little less smooth, a little rutted. Hey, monster truck, heavy tires, diesel engine, I'm doing fine. Then, instead of bridges, we start going through washes. (Note, it had just rained a while ago. I won't send the video of the windshield wipers beating time to the opera.)

Well, the road got worse. From about 50 Mile Flat, the road started to become more rocky, bladed off rock with soil in between. And then into silty-clayey-sandstone dust that was rutted because of the rain over the last several days.

(Note, I didn't stop to take a lot of pictures of the road.) By the time I got to the intersection of CR108 and CR109, I was thinking maybe I should just take the shortcut and cut bait, but of course, I didn't. I mean, how much worse can a county road become?

Well, for one, the GPS is showing me 5 miles from the intersection, but is neither telling me to go ahead or turn back. I guess that's kind of how I felt also. BTW, the Rerouting message was on a spinner and it just kept trying to reroute.

Then the road started to become more soft soil, ruts and grass in between the tire tracks. Yes, CR 109 became a two-track.

I think the real indication of how far off the civilized world I was was the County sign.

Yep, handwritten and misspelled. But, your intrepid traveler finally made it to the Centennial Sheep Monument!

Out in the middle of nowhere. I drove past it and happened to see it when I was checking to make sure I was at the right location for a crossroad. There was no sign on either road indicating it was there. But I found it.

This is a 270-degree panorama of the site. There's really not much there. There are two signs on it.

and, on plywood and leaning against the monument is:

Now, this may come as a great surprise, but the Centennial Sheep Monument is not shown on either Google or Apple maps! I tried last night to send the location of the monument in to Google. We'll see if they respond.

OK, I've joked about this all along. The road was marginal in places (most of CR 108 and 109), but it was gorgeous. Beautiful Wyoming views everywhere. I think I saw four vehicles from when I started the unpaved road on CR108 until I got to Waltman. Sometimes, you just have to stop the truck and smell the sagebrush.

Be sure to click on the pictures to make them larger. They really pop out!

Do you remember the BLM sign that said "3-4 hours at a leisurely pace"? I felt I was almost flying and it took me 4-1/2 hours to get back to the main highway.

But, I wasn't done yet!!! Behind curtain number three was:

Hell's Half Acre!

From Waltman to Casper, you pass Hell's Half Acre. Which is incorrect. It is actually about 320 acres, but that doesn't sound as neat as Half Acre.

(Total Aside: The old gym on UWyo's campus is named Half Acre Gym. At the time it was completed in 1928, it was the largest gymnasium west of the Mississippi and one of the biggest in the country. The overall basketball record from 1928 to 1951 is 222 wins vs. 44 losses. It had a $27 Million upgrade in 2016, just in time for me to retire!)

Hell's Half Acre is like a mini-Bryce Canyon. Lots of interesting and colorful rock formations, but I was there just at sundown, so much of the color is faded out in the pictures. I took a lot of pictures, and there is no story, so I'll just show the pictures and you can imagine the native Americans trapping buffalo and outlaws trapping themselves in bottom. There used to be a bar there that trapped a lot of tourists and locals, but its not there anymore.