I find it a good and comforting fact that dog-hauling pickup trucks outnumber SUVs in Dubois, Wyoming, a rugged Rocky Mountain town (pronounced DU-boys) that so far has succeeded in hiding from the New West's modem cowboys and Lycra-clad cowgirls. As I watch ranchers enter town on horses, hitch them to posts, and stroll over to the Village Café for coffee and cherry pie, I think about how this horse-powered burg holds as tightly to its Old West roots as a bronc-buster to the reins of his steed.
Less than two hours by car southeast of Yellowstone National Park and the nouveau-Western resort town of Jackson, in the shadow of the Wind River and Absaroka Mountain Ranges, Dubois hasn't changed that much since mountain men Jim Bridger and Kit Carson plundered its rivers for beaver in the 1800s. Most Rocky Mountain towns seek that image, but would blanch if such rustic realism--horses parked on main street, a real butcher shop--were actually in place.
I amble down a wooden sidewalk that lines the main street, Ramshorn, the name a nod to the bighorn sheep that clatter around the Wind River Range towering south of town. Stepping into the Rustic Pine Tavern, I sidle up to its wood-plank bar and have a draft beer while taking in the six-shooters, steel-jawed traps, rifles, and other cowboy paraphernalia decorating the back wall. A reminder of how Old West justice once was dispensed--with a long drop and a short rope--dangles from the rafters above my head. Following my gaze, bar manager Lynne Slawiak jerks a thumb toward the noose and says, grinning, "we use that on customers."
Down the street I come across another example of Western grit, at Wind River Meats, where I watch big game taken only hours ago from the surrounding mountains being butchered.
With mountains running right up to Dubois, it's no surprise to locals when bears stroll into backyards, or moose roam the banks of the Wind River where it murmurs through town. The river's fish are the topic at Twin Pines Lodge, whose log inn with cabins, most of them built in 1934 by one O. Ernest Stringer to cater to tourists heading over to Yellowstone. The inn, a masterpiece of log construction (it's on the National Register of Historic Places), is announced by the same two pine trees that Stringer planted and named the lodge for. As I enter the lobby, my eyes wander the log-walled interior and the burled pine railings before climbing the polished river-stone chimney that draws smoke from the large fireplace.
On the second floor I find bookshelves stocked with fishing references, from the Montana Angling Guide to McClane's Game Fish of North America. Trout--cutthroat, rainbow, brown--confer blue-ribbon fishing status on local rivers, streams, and lakes, drawing anglers from all states.
In fact, wildlife outnumbers people here. Dubois is so devoted to bighorn sheep--"Ramshorn" is worked into many local business names--that it is the fitting site for the National Bighorn Sheep Interpretive Center. "This town loves its sheep," the center's director observed--maybe because Dubois is close to Whiskey Mountain, home of the largest wintering herd of Rocky Mountain bighorns in North America. Exhibits on bighorns serve as a primer to the guided winter driving tours of the Whiskey Mountain habitat area, a sort of half-day safari that brings you near bighorns, elk, and deer.
With all this wildlife and scenery, the area is ideal for guest ranches, from the rustically elegant Bitterroot, Brooks Lake Lodge, and Triangle C ranches to the simpler Crooked Creek, T-Cross, Lazy L & B, and CM ranches. But I'm happy tucked into Twin Pines Lodge. And it turns out to have an unlikely neighbor.
Along Ramshorn I chance upon one of Dubois's concessions to the New West: Café Wyoming, where California cuisine meets mountain heartiness in a log building along the Wind River. While a cosmopolitan setting would profit L.A.-trained chef and owner Ken Wolfe more for such dishes as pasta with wild-mushroom cream or ginger-crusted salmon with an apple-cucumber relish, the red-bearded Wolfe prefers his rural setting.
"I would rather go to the big city once a year and live in these mountains," he tells me with a smile, "than live in the city and visit the mountains for two weeks."
Indeed.
Copyright Kurt Repanshek 2005
