Trailer Life: Buffalo, Wyoming

Interstate 90 will take you by Buffalo twice: once in New York state and again in Wyoming. I'm in the latter, the smaller of the two, although the trend is up. The population of Buffalo in 1995 was 3,868. In 1980, 15 years earlier, the town was smaller by 69 people. Numbers of people are important in Wyoming - our country's least-populated state - even small numbers.

Buffalo is an old town, lightly refurbished. With swept sidewalks, edged lawns and sparkling picture windows, it has a prosperous feel about it. The Old West still manages to show through, which is gratifying, as it's a place that I wish I'd visited 100 years ago. It's good to be here, however, even today.

Buffalo's centerpiece is the impressive Johnson County Courthouse, its seniority chiseled in granite in 1881. From a grassy knoll overlooking Main Street, this citadel of law and order appears to look down its nose at us humble pedestrians on the sidewalk below.

Behind it, among beautiful old pine trees, is a Carnegie Library. In the early 1900s, Andrew Carnegie built 2,500 libraries in this country and around the world. This is one of three that remain in Wyoming. It's now the annex of the Jim Gatchell Museum, which is actually more a bookstore that sells those regionalized books found only in local museums.

A volunteer worker behind the desk was handling book sales. "This was the original library desk," she said, rapping it with a pencil. "I checked out many a book here when I was a girl."

She gave her name as Janet Sackett Johnson. Obviously, I asked about her middle name - made famous by the prolific Western novelist Louis L'Amour.

"He patterned his stories after the Sackett family from England. They had two sons. They were my ancestors," she said. "I do genealogy and have traced my family back that far."

Janet has read all L'Amour's books, except his last one. She is still looking for it. "I would love to have met him. I trespassed on his land one time in Colorado."

Unfortunately, we got side-tracked and I never heard the rest of that story.

On Main Street is the old Occidental Hotel. Its second floor is now the office of a publishing company. No plumbing up there, I was told. Can't put today's people up in rooms where there is no running water. At one time they did. Teddy Roosevelt slept there; so did William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Martha Jane Cannary, better known as "Calamity Jane," drove freight wagons through here on the Bozeman Trail and stayed at the Occidental too.

The hotel's saloon has changed little since it was built in 1908. It has the original embossed tin ceiling and a bar that's 25 feet long. A couple guys rumored to have done some drinking and gambling here were Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longbaugh, also known as "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sundance Kid," respectively. Their prime hideout in Wyoming is 75 miles south, near the town of Kaycee, in Hole-in-Wall country.

The Hole-in-Wall was a favorite hideout for rustlers and outlaws long before Cassidy and his Wild Bunch showed up. A mystique surrounds the name; its origin is a mystery. It i mplies the presence of an arch or circular break in the side of the mountain. In reality, it identifies both the vast fertile valley where outlaws took reluge and the narrow passageway or game trail cutting through its sandstone cliffs.

This whole place was Wyoming at its wildest. After the settlers fought the Indians to get control of the land, cattlemen fought homesteaders to keep it. The Bozeman Trail ran through here, used mostly by crusty miners chasing gold in Montana. Indian battles caused forts to be built along the trail to protect those who used it. Buffalo was founded in 1879 and instantly became known as the "Rustlers' Capital." By 1882, tensions between cattleman and farmers, called "nesters," had erupted into the Johnson County War. It took the U.S. Army to restore order.

A part of today's Buffalo is Tom's Main Street Diner. Tom Spence opens at 5:30 a.m. for breakfast, then serves lunch until 2. Tom gets here about 2:30 a.m. and starts baking. Laureen, his only waitress, shows up at 5.

Tom's brother is Jerry Spence, a well-known Wyoming attorney who has become somewhat of a national television personality commenting on legal matters. He's the guy who never changes his wardrobe - always a black turtleneck shirt and a tan buckskin jacket. I guess he wants to effect a cowboy image. But he always reminds me of those fellows in safari outfits on Zoo Parade and Wild Kingdom.

Tom is in his 60s now. He has a couple degrees from the University of Wyoming and spent a lot of years in New York, working in the subway system. "My wife says that I have reinvented my life here. I just call it a reincarnation."

He works most of the time, but closes the diner on Tuesdays, "so I can clean the store," he says. He does lock up from Christmas until the middle of February. "Then I stay home and ride horses in the snow."

That's probably what everybody does here in the winter.

Bill's e-mail address: roadscribe@aol.com.