Basin, WY, part 2, and Greybull, WY

On the way to Greybull this morning, we stopped in Basin to look inside the Post Office and the Courthouse since the last time we went here was on a Sunday. The inside of the Post Office didn't merit any photographs, so I took these three additional shots. (For more shots of the Post Office and Courthouse, see Basin, WY, part 1.)


Here is a link to William Gibbs McAdoo (see below). Here is a link to James Alphonso Wetmore.

This is the main entrance to the Big Horn County Courthouse:

As you can see, the driver's license department proudly displays the licence plates donated by George H. Hoffman who had the honor of being #1. The county code for Big Horn County is 9.

After taking the above pictures of the Courthouse, we went outside to walk around the building to see what else might be of interest. We were chased down by Annette from the Clerks Office who gave us a four page excerpt of A Survey of Wyoming County Courthouses: Their history, architecture, documents, proceedings, and personnel (1972). Thank you, Annette! You can find some real nice people in Wyoming.

Here is a quote which begins the chapter on Big Horn County:

The Commissioners of Big Horn County, Wyoming, made the following Resolution at their meeting of January 4, 1910:

"Wheras, the present County Courthouse is falling to pieces and is liable to collapse at any time, and is a menace to the lives of the public and the county officers therein and all the county records are liable to be destroyed because of the unsafe conditions of said building..., Be it resolved that the Chairman of the Board be directed, authorized and empowered to make any and all contracts and leases necessary to induce and secure some person to erect a building for county purposes upon the Courthouse square and to lease said building."

So by 1918 Big Horn County had a new Courthouse for $60,000.

This is downtown Greybull, just eight miles north of Basin:

We stopped in at Probst Western Store.

We also spent some time admiring Big Horn Quilts and talking to the clerks about its fame as one of the biggest on-line quilting fabric stores in the world (see the Montana Billings Gazette Newspaper, July 17, 2005). Julie Owens is the owner, and here is her blog (this is her biography).

Farther east on Greybull Avenue is this map on the side of a building. The Girl Scout National Center West, at the bottom of the map, is no longer in operation.

The building on the right used to be a lodge for IOOF, it was built in 1919.

This is the United States Post Office in Greybull:

Here are links which describe the photograph below: Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and James A Farley.

The next four shots I took at the Greybull Library (click on the link for a good shot of the library itself).

This photograph is of the west end of Greybull Avenue (on the other side is the railroad). Below the mural, the town plants blooming flowers, and often the flowers are in the shape of the Wyoming flag.

North of the above mural, along 7th and Railroad Street, are these buildings:

This is the old Masonic lodge on 6th Street or US-14/16/20:

Next door to the above, I found this old gasoline station sign:

This is Greybull's Town Hall and Police Department:

The day began with rain and hail (between Thermop and Worland), then to a partly cloudy sky, and finally such strong winds that it took the fun out of taking photographs. So we went home.

4 April 2010

Often, before I take a series of photographs of a place, I drive through it and get a feel for what I want to do. On the 4th of April, that's what I did with Basin and Greybull. Because of the evening sun, I decided to take a few photographs. Here are four of them:

Because of flooding, Greybull built a levee to protect itself from the Big Horn River. For some old photographs of the flooding (and other old shots of Greybull), click here.

link: index to photographs