This afternoon Ed, Roni and I drive to Dubois to start the weekend at their cabin. It is located in Western Fremont County, approximately 20 miles Southwest of Dubois. It is on the Porcupine subdivision of Union Pass, just next to the Shoshone National Forest. Ed purchased the land 1990 on a great deal, and was one of the first individuals to purchase land in that area. They built the cabin themselves with the help of friends during a cabin raising weekend. Their adopted son, Shad Cooper, the man that helped me get this internship, did the cement work and other friends helped them to cut the wood and put it together. It is located in a beautiful area where the deer come to visit constantly, as well as a few moose every so often. The view from the cabin’s front door is stupendous as you can see in these two photos.
It is really awesome with the view changing throughout the day due to the positioning of the sun and the shadows. We stayed at the cabin all weekend relaxing, cutting down some trees that had been killed by the pine beetle problem, and shopping in town. On Saturday we went to two stores that I really liked. One was an antler, pottery, and bone store. They had an old cranium that we didn’t recognize so Ed took pictures of it and then asked Jake Korell (the man discussed earlier) if he recognized it. Jake said it was a young bear’s cranium. The teeth wear down as the animal ages, so that's how he knew it was young. The second store was a new antique shop that had "Wanted" posters around the walls of famous outlaws from when Wyoming was still a territory. One was for Cattle Kate’s murderer, and another was of a man thought to be one of the meanest men in the state and who had a ransom price of $18,000. To put this amount in perspective, the other wanted posters had ransoms between $1,000 and $5,000 dollars.
On Saturday night we went to a Swedish smorgasbord. The history behind this event is that in the mountains where Ed and Roni's cabin is located there used to be a lot of logging done. Many men from Sweden traveled to these mountains to work as tie hackers. Their job was to send the logs down the mountain using levies along the Wind River. It was common for them to have a feast of Swedish dishes at the end of the summer so they could come together and enjoy each other’s company before many returned to Sweden for the winter. Today, there are only 3 tie hackers still alive and living in the Dubois area. All of them were honored at the feast for their devotion to the city. Te hacking is what really brought the town of Dubois into existence because it brought so many people to the area. Each of the remaining men honored for their tie hacking background were around the age of 94.
The food was excellent at this feast and I was full after just one run through the buffet table. They had cabbage rolls, vegetables, meatballs, and rye bread with this cream colored jam that tasted like frosting. For dessert they had strawberry jam with cream and little Swedish cookies. The dessert and drinks were given out by kids from the community that were dressed in black pants with red vests over white shirts. All the girls had their hair in two breads with flowers. They were really cute and very professional. A couple times a man at our table from California tried to make the little girls smile, but I think they were told they needed to be very professional so they tried to remain serious. It was rather funny because he was trying so hard.
On Sunday we went to the Dubois museum where they had information about the Sheepeaters. This is the only tribe to live in Yellowstone, because all the others feared the geysers and the geology. Today for classification purposes the Sheepeaters have been incorporated into the Shoshone tribe. Outside this main room was a barn area with equipment that had been used for farming before modern inventions were created. In front of the museum were older buildings that had been relocated to the museum property. They had an old school house, a post office, a typical house, a two-seater outhouse, a building that showed pictures of the tie hackers, and a building that has wire all around it with a heater or a table in the middle that could have been a gazebo, or a chicken coop (we aren’t really sure, those are Roni and my guesses).
We had lunch with Vernon, who is the deputy coroner in Dubois, and then we left to return to Riverton. We got back in the afternoon and had time to harvest some spinach from Roni and Ed’s garden. We had that for dinner along with hamburgers and watched a movie. A good end to a very relaxing and historical weekend. That night I was informed of the next adventure I would be taking... driving to Loveland, Colorado in the morning for my first decomp autopsy.
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