The See Ben Realty Co. of Casper, Wyo., Ben L. Sherck, prop., offered a bargain in western real estate last week—the Big Horn country’s fabled Lost Cabin Ranch. Many a prospective customer was disconcerted at its size—Lost Cabin was designed expressly for an old-fashioned range king. But armchair adventurers were fascinated by its sagebrush-scented legend.
The first chapter was written in 1865, when seven bearded Swedes drifted out of the Big Horn Mountains, halted in a cottonwood grove to pan the gravel of an icy foothill creek. It was rich with coarse gold. They built a cabin, went feverishly to work. Three days later a band of Sioux swept down on them. Only two prospectors escaped. They headed for the Oregon Trail with three baking powder cans of gold, spent a fretful winter at Fort Laramie, then started back to claim the creek’s treasure. They were never seen again.
The Fruitless Search. In the years which followed, many another prospector searched for the site of the Lost Cabin. None ever found it. But in the early 1880s John Brognard Okie, a son of President Lincoln’s physician, came to Wyoming, resolved to turn the Lost Cabin country into a different kind of bonanza. He began running sheep along cottonwood-shaded Badwater Creek and in the high mountain meadows beyond.
He prospered. As his herds grew, so did his scale of living. He built himself a mansion which was the showplace of Wyoming: a 20-room structure of brownstone and pine lumber with a towering cupola, newfangled plumbing and acetylene lights. Impressed, the Indians took to calling him the Big Father, his house the Big Tepee. But the Big Tepee was only a beginning. To house his 200 employes the Big Father built a town, with hotel, saloon, store and school, incorporated it as Lost Cabin, Wyo. He made himself mayor, carried a deputy sheriff’s badge, set up a benign personal government. By the mid-1920s Lost Cabin boasted concrete walks, a golf course, a skating rink, motion pictures, and an aviary stocked with cockatoos and other exotic birds. Many a tourist mistook its gates for those of Yellowstone Park, drove in, stayed to marvel.
The Fruitful Life. Meanwhile John Okie enjoyed life. He traveled to Europe, brought back art objects for the Big Tepee, entertained lavishly. There were—and still are—deer and antelope, grouse, pheasant and duck to be hunted on the vast ranch. The tumbling creeks flash with trout. In 1930, aged 67, John Okie went hunting ducks along one of his irrigation reservoirs, slipped in and was drowned. The 57,500-acre empire of the Big Father declined.
Last year the Big Father’s amiable, balding son, Van Guelder Okie, sold the last 16,000 of Lost Cabin’s sheep. By last month only 14 people remained on the ranch and in the town. Realtor Ben Scherck had scores of queries from interested people, but doubted that they would buy (one hopeful client believed the ranch could be converted into a helicopter factory). Most would also find the price ($125,000) a little steep. Last week Scherck got tick fever, retired to his bed, groaning, “God, I ache all over.” But he brightened at a visit from a rough, rich Texas cattleman, who sounded as though he might fit Lost Cabin.
Cried the visitor: “I’ve got Herefords in Texas but they don’t grow big enough —get about the size of yearlings. I want to look at a full grown cow.”
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9ucGpiZ35wscypoKudXZu8s3nSmqOeZw%3D%3D