Saddled with history

SAVERY—Curators at the Little Snake River Museum in Savery are saddled with history.

Residents of the Little Snake River Valley on Wyoming’s southern border are proud of their agricultural heritage, which dates back to the late 1800s.

The area’s lifeblood river runs out of the rolling Sierra Madre Range and Medicine Bow National Forest where aspen and conifers overlook the dale. The Little Snake River runs through about 30 miles of irrigated ranchland along the Colorado border.

Shoshone and Arapahoe inhabited the area before settlement.

The towns of Baggs, population 411, Dixon, 97, and Savery, 25, lie along about 20 miles of Wyoming Highway 70 that parallels the river. Verdant ranches carpet the valley floor, their pastures and hayfields ending where the landscape climbs to drier sagebrush range.

In Savery, valley residents honor their ancestors with a museum that features photographs, stories, period clothing, medical instruments and other furnishings of early ranch life. In addition to the old Savery School that houses the museum, the site includes another 17 buildings and a pioneer garden.

The Relic Building is where you’ll find the two-headed calves, stuffed and mounted. It’s also the repository of a collection of saddles used by the ancestors of some of today’s cowboys and cowgirls.

The museum is open from Memorial Day until, as operators say, “some cold day in October.”

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