Wyoming's Pioneers of the West

When Jim Gatchell died in 1954, the Johnson County Wyoming residents (Buffalo county seat) began making plans for a museum to house the collection of some 2,000 frontier-era artifacts displayed on the Gatchell Drug Store walls and stored in the back rooms. Jim's collection had long been a favorite of the locals and a featured attraction to visitors and tourists alike. In 1957 a new county-owned Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum was opened to the public.

The new museum contained, in addition to Gatchell's original collections, many heirlooms and other prized possessions donated by the local ranchers and townpeople. These individuals were descendents of Buffalo Wyoming's original ranchers and homesteaders. The goal was to make a museum about the history, culture and heritage of the Powder River Country - an area defined as extending from the Platte River north to the Yellowstone River and from the Bighorns east to the Black Hills.

Over the succeeding years, the Pioneer Rancher and Settler collections have continued to grow by gifts from local families. Presently, a large number of items (750) are displayed in ten cases on the Museum's main floor and in a large open-area exhibit on the lower floor. Included are a superb collection of firearms and a complete range of ranch and personal items, e.g., household utensils, musical instruments, toys, ranch paraphernalia of wide range, tack, saddles, chaps, clothing, spurs, blacksmith tools, wolf and bear traps, large saws and axes, ox-yokes, etc. Some example items are: Horsehair bridle and silver-mounted bit, Colt .38 caliber pump-action rifle, Tom Horn's spurs, rawhide lariat, leather cowboy cuffs, butter mold and paddle, lady's fancy leather riding gloves, and a dime, given by Calamity Jane to a Buffalo youngster, Kate Long.

These items comprise a true "grassroots" collection. They represent the everyday life and times of the pioneer Powder River Country people and their Wyoming ancestors. They help us all to recall the life and times in this nation when "Manifest Destiny" was indeed in progress!