Main Street, Wyoming; 1102; Risky Business: The Ghost Town of Kirwin

In a deep A deep cleavage cut by the Wood River in northwest Wyoming, Weathered buildings mark an abandoned mining town: Kirwin. These ghostly structures are at the center of interconnecting stories. Stories of miners in search of elusive treasure, Natural disasters sweeping away lives and livelihoods, Intrepid adventurers navigating ice clogged seas, And daring aviators winging over continents, oceans and islands.

Stories tracing back to this remote location. This singular place. Stories of risky business and the ghost town of Kirwin. of Kirwin. (singing) You take Take your troubles with your flood maybe through again. Across the line (end singing) [guitar music plays in background] [Narrator]: It's a slow journey, up a pleasant winding road, near the town of Meeteetse in northwest Wyoming. The way is paved at first. A gentle rolling 2 lane country route. [rumbling] After a few miles the pavement gives way to gravel, [water rushing]

Then transforms into a single dirt track. [noises of car driving on a dirt road] Gaining some 4000 feet in elevation, it funnels past Absaroka vistas and cramped passageways. [gravel crunching] Thick forests, and thin traces of human habitation. Then the road terminates, and Kirwin beckons. [guitar music playing ends] [fast banjo music plays] Gold and silver were first discovered in the Wood River Valley in 1885. [Guest Speaker 1]: Harry Adams and Will Kirwin came up here and, uh, were on a-a actually deer hunting and, and recognized this as being a ?inaudible?

area and they did some searching around and found some good gold samples on the south side of, uh, Spar Mountain. On their way back from, uh, to here they stopped at old Arland and, uh, told the story and no doubt and relished a little bit. The Arland was, uh, was kind of a wild town. People just moved away because of the killings and the wildness of it. [Guest Speaker 2] Arland was a, uh, a pretty rough town. I mean, the businesses there were the kind that, you know, you wouldn't, uh, talk about in a, in a mixed crowd. Arland got its start in the earlier 1880s, but Meeteetse's started growing in 1886. So they co-existed for a while, but being that traffic came through Meeteetse, all the wagon traffic came through Meeteetse, and Meeteetse grew quickly and Meeteetse a took over the trade from Arland. [Guest Speaker 1]: Anyway, that caused a lot of excitement for, for Kirwin to start. There was a lot of activity that, uh, people were interested, uh, from all over. They

talked about the, uh, b-big possibilities of it. They had gold in a lot of areas. Anyway, it's supposed to be prob- very possibly one of the bigger strikes and could even compare it to some of the big ones. [banjo music ends] [Guest Speaker 3]: Kirwin is located in, uh, a volcanic field. The, these mountains are volcanic, uh, layer deposits that where the molten lava came to the surface, flowed out, and formed layers, and then later there was other volcanic activity which pushed up through the layered rocks, the intrusive rocks, and that's when the mineralization occurred and that's when the gold, and silver, and other minerals were deposited. [guitar music playing] [Narrator]: In 1886, Adams and Kirwin began staking and filing claims around the area that would become Kirwin. September, 1891,

saw 16 other hopefuls join them in officially forming the Wood River Mining District. By 1894, eastern speculators caught wind of the find, and a New York capitalist organized the Wyoming Mining Company. Charles Tewksbury, formerly superintendent of the failed Fortunatas Mining Company near Dayton, Wyoming, became resident manager and owner of a general store with his wife Sarah. 1899 marked the creation of the Galena Ridge Mining Corporation by Henry Schnitzel and other lead South Dakota investors. They also purchased land along the Wood River and established the Antler Land and Cattle Company as a base for their mining operations. This diversification would prove to be an astute business decision in the coming years. [Guest Speaker 4]: This is the mine manager's house. The story goes, it was built by Henry Schnitzel for his wife. Now, Kirwin is at 9,200 feet in elevation, They had beautiful summers, but long, cold, snowy winters and his

wife evidently didn't wanna live up here. He told her that he would build her the nicest house in Kirwin if she'd come up here. Schnitzel built this house. It has dormers. It had wallpaper. It had wainscotting, decorated very nice. The story is she came up for a while, but she still didn't stay. [guitar music ends] [ominous piano music plays] [Narrator]: As more miners and mining companies arrived on the scene, a maze of tunnels and shafts penetrated the surrounding mountains, evidence of the growing optimism and avarice permeating Kirwin. [Guest Speaker 3]: In the early 1900s, somewhere around 1902 to 1907, was when the most of the Kirwin tunnels and shafts were driven. We have the Bryan up on the, on the hill on Spar Mountain. We have Molly Logan was driven. Galena Ridge tunnel driven down at the Canyon Creek. The Long Horn tunnel was driven under Mineral Mountain, and then we have the tunnel on here. The main idea was to drill,

drive this shaft vertically to intersect a vein, and then drive southward under Wood River to, uh, follow that vein and with pockets within the vein of rich ore. So this is one of the richest discoveries in the Kirwin area. And they needed to get- keep pumping the water out of the, out of the shaft they were driving because the water was coming in from Wood River rapidly. So they decided to bring a boiler up to generate steam. They then, uh, hooked up to steam driven pumps to pump the water out. Bronco Nell, one of the, one of the characters in this area, was the one that hauled the boiler up in pieces in the wagon, and she was one of the freighters in the Kirwin area and, uh, I guess she was quite a character. [Guest Speaker 2]: Bronco Nell the-was the only lady that ever served two te-terms in the prison in Wyoming. Her first day there was for stealing horses, and then

later on she was arrested for moonshining in Meeteetse. But she was also a mule skinner. She had a freight business and she hauled freight from here to Lander and she also hauled to Kirwin and she was probably one of the-the most busiest persons in, in supplying that town. She had hauled the boiler and, and th-the big steam wheel to, to Kirwin, which was a magnificent, uh, uh, thing to do because it was a very large load. It took many, many mules and horses to pull that up, and uh, most the time would have never known she was a woman. She dressed, it was almost like a Calamity Jane, and most of the time she dressed like a man, but she, she was, she was quite a character, didn't die until the 50s and she died right here in Meeteetse. [piano music ends] [guitar music plays] [Narrator]: By 1904, there were more than 200 people and 38 buildings in

Kirwin including a hotel, a boarding house, 2 general stores, post office, and an assay office. [Guest Speaker 4]: This is the assay office. Miners would regularly bring ore samples into the assayer here. He would crush the ore, put it in the cru- crucible, and then put it in a furnace, melt it down until he got gold or pure silver and that way he could calculate how much a ton of ore would be worth and they could determine then whether that ore was going to be valuable enough to be worth mining. [Narrator]: Yet with all this development, 2 establishments commonly associated with booming mining towns, were conspicuously missing. There were no saloons or brothels at Kirwin. [Guest Speaker 2]: They didn't allow unmarried women except a schoolteacher, no gambling, and no alcohol. So you had a lot of miners that had to look for their fun in Meeteetse. So at, uh, that period of time we had 7 saloons and brothels, and it was

a booming business. [guitar music ends] [Narrator]: In those bars and brothels, the miners of Kirwin encountered an assortment of intriguing individuals. It seemed like everyone had a nickname: Bronco Nell, Grasshopper Bill, Blind Bill Hoolihan. But the most famous of them all was a young fellow named Robert LeRoy Parker, better known today as Butch Cassidy. [Guest Speaker 2] Butch was a, a Mormon boy. He was born on April 13th, Friday the 13th, 1866. The father, Maximillian, went to his oldest son, Roy, and says I need your help to support all your brothers and sisters. So he goes to work on a neighboring ranch, but on that ranch was a part-time outlaw named Mike Cassidy. Back in those days when you were somebody's junior, they called you Butch. He idolized this man, followed him around. Well the other hands kiddingly said "Oh look, there goes little Butch Cassidy."

Now, it didn't stick at the time, but a few years later, when he was arrested for stealing a saddle, going up against that judge he knew that it would go back and haunt his family. So when the judge says, "What's your name boy?" he says, "I'm Butch Cassidy." [Narrator]: One of the most powerful and influential people of the area at the time was Otto Frank, who established the famous Pitchfork Ranch, just outside Meeteetse, in 1878. He also served as Justice of the Peace for the region, and purportedly helped fund the brutal Johnson County Range Wars of 1892. [Guest Speaker 2]: In 1886, Otto Frank, he decided that he needed a bridge across the great Bow Rivers. He thought it would funnel all the traffic through here and make his freight cheaper and save him money. So he started passing a petition around the county. So he goes into the Henry Rivers saloon, and sitting at a table there in the card room was Robert LeRoy Parker, which everybody today knows is Butch Cassidy, and along with him was three outlaws, and um, he signed that petition, but he did it under

protest. He said that, the three of them said to Otto Frank, "Well we're not registered voters. We don't live around here." Otto Frank said, "I don't care, sign it." There were only 17 registered voters and Otto Frank got 88 signatures on that petition. So it passed. The bridge was built, and, and, Butch Cassidy always felt that that was the one civic thing he did and he came by several times to visit his bridge, as he called it, and he enjoyed that. [guitar music ends] [music playing in background] [Narrator]: As the Kirwin investors eagerly awaited their returns, in the comfort of their eastern enclaves, life for the miners who work the loads was decidedly different. They swung heavy hammers, single and double jacking drilling steels into the dense rock creating holes for powder charges. After the explosion the miners shoveled, or mucked, the heavy rock into ore cars or head frame buckets. The mines were cold, damp, and dusty. Breathing the foul gritty air

often led to respiratory health problems, even early death, from Miners' Consumption, also known as "the con" or "rock in the box". Other dangers lurked in the tunnels as well. Premature explosions, cave-ins, and noxious gases all took their toll. In 1905, a Kirwin miner by the name of Chubb was killed in the Bryan mine by one such explosion. In another incident, one R.L. McGeer was seriously injured when dynamite caps suddenly exploded, riddling his body with chunks of copper shrapnel. It was no picnic for the miners' families either. Although summers in Kirwin could be pleasant, the long winters at over 9,000 feet were brutal. Deep snow, freezing temperatures, and long months of isolation took their toll on wives, sons, and daughters. Yet life went on. Entertainment came in the form of dances and holiday celebrations, which the whole camp

attended. [music stops] [new song begins playing] At the turn of the century, Kirwin was on a roll. Wagon's ran from Meeteetse to Kirwin every other day. [Guest Speaker 1]: Wagon traffic was, uh, would come up, uh, one day and then other- every other day they would change directions so they didn't, on the narrow roads, they couldn't, uh, that's the only way they could do it. [Narrator]: Rumor had it that the Burlington Railroad would build a line from Cody to Meeteetse, and from there a spur-line to Kirwin. Rocky Mountain Bell announced it would construct a telephone line. An ingenious power plant was built that converted river water into electricity. [Guest Speaker 3]: This is the site of the electric power for Kirwin, and also the powered, uh, gave air power to the Galena Ridge tunnel. It's up the hill here. The, uh, this is the-the flywheel that provided the stabilization for the air compressor which is behind here. What they did was take the water out of Wood River, on

grade, on a flume, run it around here ju-just due north of this flywheel, send it down through a penstock and shot it into a pelton wheel. This provided the power for Kirwin. [Narrator]: In 1905, the town was awash in tales of new prosperity. All the hard work seemed to be paying off. The Galena Ridge tunnel had been driven into the mountains some 600 feet. Assay reports showed great amounts of copper, silver, and gold. The Wyoming Mining Company had taken its shaft to 250 feet and uncovered a ledge 6 feet wide showing very high grade ore of gold and copper. A 14-inch streak looked like it might pay off big in silver. Newspapers predicted Kirwin would have a population in the thousands within three years. [music stops playing] The mood in the mining camp was jubilant. [ominous music plays] There was talk of building an ore concentrator and a smelter.

Prosperity seemed almost palpable, but dark clouds were forming on the horizon. October 1906, saw the Galena Ridge mine shut down due to lack of power and supplies. In late November, a fire destroyed the surface works of the Bryan mine. Most of the promising finds were simply not panning out. [Guest Speaker 3]: The gold and silver was in-in discontinuous veins and pockets within these veins. Some rich, but not that much of it. Even though the hype was, in the early days of 1900, "there's a lot of gold there, there's rich gold ore there, and plenty of it". [Guest Speaker 4]: Now they found some very valuable ore here, but in this area the ore occurred in pockets. At first they found some very rich ore, and later they found some good pockets, but never enough to make it worthwhile and finally in- toward the end, uh, they just didn't have enough gold or silver values to keep Kirwin

going. [Narrator]: Snow ushered in the new year of 1907. It piled higher and higher around Kirwin. Then, on the evening of February 5th, after 9 consecutive days of heavy snow, and an estimated 50 feet of accumulation, it let loose in a white fury. [Guest Speaker 3]: When that slid, it slid down Brown Gulch and took out a, a cabin below, killing Charley Burnell, Mrs. Burnell, and another man, and they reported that the lady, Mrs. Burnell, was still in her rocking chair doubled over, dead, when they found her. The Meeteetse, a Meeteetse crew came up to-to rescue the people, any that wanted to go, and also retrieve the bodies. They said at that time, "If you want to go, if you want to leave, leave with us, or you'll be staying here". Many people just picked up and left, left everything, and- except

the clothes on their back and went with-with the rescue crew. That was pretty much the end of the Kirwin mining boom, the night February of 1907. [Narrator]: Even though Kirwin was essentially abandoned, Tewksbury still came every summer until 1922, filing and proving up claims, trying to revive interest, but to no avail. The buildings gradually fell into disrepair and decay. Broken rocks lay strewn about, echoing the broken dreams of the prospectors and promoters. The speculators and mining families who once called Kirwin home. [ominous music ends] But a new era was dawning. [hopeful music starts] During the 19th century, the American West began to develop a heroic mystique. Through dime novels and magazine stories, books and posters, romantic images filled the heads of city bound easterners. Images of cowboys and

Indians, horses and cattle, wide open spaces and starry nights. Buffalo Bill Cody was one of its major advocates and promoters. When he brought his Wild west show east, people thronged to the venues to get a taste of this mythic culture. By the late 1880s, railroads had opened up the west. Now people could travel in relative comfort to a land long inaccessible to the general public. At first, those traveling through western cattle country were invited to stay with ranch families free of charge. Western hospitality quickly became legend. Gold seekers and homesteaders, immigrants, and adventurers began arriving in Wyoming by train. They were soon followed by tourists, or "dudes" as the ranchers called them. Railroads actively promoted dude ranch vacations to increase ticket sales. As more people arrived, the burden and expense of putting up and feeding visitors increased. Many ranchers began charging for overnight stays.

Before long the "dude" became an important source of income on many western cattle ranches, and dude ranching as a business began to take shape. [Guest Speaker 3] Quite a few of the ranchers that were seeking an alternate, err, supplemental income would say, "Well maybe we can put somebody up then, some of these easterners would like to come and they, they're interested in the West, maybe we can, we, maybe we can, uh, accommodate them and, and, and then maybe even take them, show them around, and maybe we can make some extra income". [Narrator]: By 1929, Wyoming dude ranches alone were hosting more than 10,000 guests a year. [hopeful music ends] [guitar music starts playing] Into this heady mix of the old and new West, strode a man who lived for adventure. A man whose enthusiasm for life was as big as the Wyoming sky. Entrepreneur and raconteur, Expeditionist and family man,

His name was Carl Dunrud. [First Speaker]: Uh, dad was born in 1891 in Fosston, Minnesota. In the 4th grade, his dad said, "We need you on- to help, with the farm". So he left school at 4th grade, and uh, it's kind of amazing when we look forward at his life, how he had been a self-taught person all his life. He picked up things and, and you might say it's on the job training and in 19, uh, 11 he left home to- to go homesteading in Montana and at that time your homestead plot was 160 acres. And he began to raise fairly good cro- cash crops, but then he hailed out. How many times? [Second Speaker]: Three years in a row. [First Speaker]: Three years in a row, and hailing out means that he, he lost his crop to hail. In 1917, as dad put it, my Uncle Sammie wrote me a letter, 'Greetings! Would like you to join my army.'

And he was, uh, then shipped to Camp Lewis, Washington, and where he served in the remount, which is the-the cavalry, and he was in the veterinarian corps of the cavalry. He stayed there till the war was over, uh, serving as a veterinarian helper. Get the wounded horse's back healthy. They used to do a lot of games on horses, on their off-time, boxing on horseback, trick riding, and then uh, riding some of the unbroke horses or the partially broke horses, in that time. [Third Speaker]: [reading from a journal] I ran Shaved Hill up to the hurdles, but he wouldn't jump. I went back and whipped them a little, and gave him another try. He jumped a hurdle and then went to bucking across the arena until he was in the midst of a group of men boxing on horseback. I stopped him from bucking and rode back to where he had bucked my hat off. As I leaned over to pick up my hat, Shaved Hill clobbered me with a front hoof. He staggered me,

but I didn't let go of the reins. I had a 3 inch gash in my head which didn't hurt, but the blood ran down my face and shoulder until it even soaked through my olive drab coat as I rode to the infirmary. I had to ride by a mounted guard who said, "My God, you're pretty near dead!" "The hell I am!" I!" I said, and kept going. [First Speaker]: In 1921 to 1925, dad was a packer and a ranger in Yellowstone Park. During that time he took out different groups, uh, fishing trips and so on, scenic trips in the Yellowstone Park. And one of the more famous ones was George Palmer Putnam, who was there once and then returned for a second trip. [guitar music stops playing] [Narrator]: Putnam, heir to the famous publishing company G.P. Putnam's Sons, matched Dunrud in his thirst for new experiences. Anything that could get him away from his desk bound work, he pursued with vigor. [Guest Speaker 5]: One of his jobs as a ranger in a park was to guide Putman

around in the geyser, uh, basin to get the scientific information on all the temperatures in-of the geyser basin. [Narrator]: When the prospect arose [music plays] for Putnam to lead an expedition to Greenland in 1926, he seized the opportunity and put together a crew, including his friend Carl Dunrud. Putnam was excited. In addition to Dunrud, he had secured a Pathe Newsreel photographer to document the trip, and Robert Bartlett, Admiral Peary's skipper during the North Pole discovery of 1909. They would sail for Greenland aboard his 109-foot schooner the Morrissey. [First Speaker]: So they went to Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle, got shipwrecked up there,

and, uh, they went across one of the more dangerous glacial fields twice. They call it the Sailor's Graveyard in northern Greenland. [Narrator]: During the expedition, Carl was called upon to put his rodeo talent to use. [First Speaker]: He had ridden a buffalo in Yellowstone Park, and George Putnam said, "Oh! We want you to ride a musk ox when you get up in the Arctic Circle, north of the Arctic Circle." When they got [chuckles] to the herd of musk ox, it was overcast, a blizzard, a real rough weather, and George said, "Well, we don't need to do this." And dad says, "I was really glad". [Narrator]: Carl also used his ranching skills to rope animals of quite a different nature than the horses and cattle he lassoed back in Wyoming. [First Speaker]: He'd put a rope on the- he would rope the walrus. The walrus would dive, and, and tried to shake the rope off, and a lot of times it could because his neck was so big. He said he had a hard time roping a walrus.

[Narrator]: But the biggest prize, was the capture of two orphaned polar bear cubs. [Guest Speaker 5]: That was one of the main, uh, reasons he went up, besides being an interpreter, I think, was, uh, to bring back, uh, live specimens. [Third Speaker]: [reading a journal entry] Realizing the cubs were some 20 miles from shore, I was determined to rope them, take them aboard ship, and feed them. I roped one of them with my first throw. He was full of fight when we started to pull him in. He growled and snarled at me. Then he tried to chew the rope, scratch the boat, and climb in the boat with us, all at the same time. Soon we had both the male and female on deck. The 2 bear were held with the ?inaudible?, so if they made a run at someone on deck they would swing off the deck and then swing back. We soon had both the male and female in cages. [Guest Speaker 5]: They got really, really tame, uh, and uh, they would lick the-lick the butter off his hands,

he said. [Narrator]: The bear cubs continued their journey with the crew. By the time they arrived in New York, after 3 months at sea, Carl helped transport the cubs to the Bronx Zoo. [music stops playing] [banjo starts playing] New York wasn't Carl Dunrud's idea of the good life. He was 35, and thoughts of settling down had begun to cross his mind. So he headed back to Wyoming, where he met up with an old buddy from his Yellowstone Park days. It was 1928. [Guest Speaker 6]: And Elmer ?Verquest? got a hold of him and told him that he had a dude ranch. If, uh, if Dad was interested he would, uh, like to go in partners with him, and because they'd, they'd met each other previously and, and knew each other pretty well. [Narrator]: Carl and Elmer, with a loan from a Meeteetse bank, leased the Timber Creek Ranch, a property owned by the famous Pitchfork Ranch, pioneered by Otto Frank. The Pitchfork was under new ownership and managed by a camera-toting foreman named Charles

Belden. [banjo music stops playing] Charles Belden was born in 1888 to a wealthy California family. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1909. After traveling and photographing Europe with his college roommate, Eugene Phelps, he was invited to the Phelps Pitchfork Ranch to work. There, Belden continued to pursue an interest in photography and began taking pictures of everyday life on the ranch. [piano music plays] Today, his photos from the Pitchfork are widely regarded as among the best of the Great Western photographers. [piano continues to play] [piano music stops] [country music plays] In 1929, Carl wedded Vera Staley, a schoolteacher from

Nebraska. Vera would be the glue that held things together in the coming years. On that same June day, Elmer also married. Now there were 4 to run the dude ranch. Through Carl's east coast connections business continued to thrive, but after a year the ranch house seem small for 2 growing families, so they mutually decided to part ways. Carl and Vera negotiated with Henry Schnitzel's relatives to buy the Kirwin mining property and surrounding land. On this 3,500 acre parcel, they intended to build a dude ranch from the ground up. Moving into an existing one room homestead cabin in the fall of 1931, they called it the Double-D. [Guest Speaker 6]: This is land that dad acquired, Carl Dunrud, in 1931 and started building this uh, these uh, the lodge and the guest cabins for a dude ranch. [Guest Speaker 3]: He really was a risk-taker because, you know, uh at the time he was buying it, the 1929 crash had already happened.

So you knew that things were gonna get worse for- an- instead of better for a while, and he was a risk-taker and kind of an entre-entrepreneur. [Narrator]: Carl immediately began building a 2 room log cabin for his family, and then turned his attention to a lodge and guest cabins. He designed and built the structures employing the same craftsmanship handed down by his Norwegian ancestors. [Guest Speaker 3]: So you have building stone that is unbelievably, uh, precise. You can, you can build things with it. Dad, when he built this foundation, he snaked it with a steam- a team and a stone boat, or just a team if he had a great big rock and pulled 'em over and used them for his foundation and for the, the flower garden and the bonds in front. Some of them are just unbelievably planer, a unique, uh, building block for, for the lodge. [Narrator]: Carl and his ranch hands also fabricated the furniture for the interiors; tables,

beds, chairs in the rustic plank and pole tradition he knew from his homesteading days. Using local materials readily available to them, they built functional sturdy furniture without much thought to design. Ranch furniture like this would soon inspire a craftsman who distinguished himself by creating fine furniture in the rustic tradition: Thomas Molesworth. [country music stops playing] [guitar music plays] Molesworth trained at the Chicago Art Institute in the early 1900s, where he became familiar with the prevailing furniture and design influences of the day. In 1931, he opened the Shoshone Furniture Company in Cody, Wyoming. During the next 30 years, he would employ his unique sense of style with a keen attention to detail and materials, and a playful creativity to fashion his own vision of cowboy ranch furniture. [guitar music continues playing] [guitar music]

[guitar music continues playing] [guitar music stops] [Narrator]: When the Double-D was completed in 1933, Carl once again went to his eastern contacts to solicit business. He called his old Yellowstone and Arctic expedition friend George Putnam, who made arrangements to visit with his wife Amelia Earhart. [music plays] Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1897. From the

beginning she displayed a penchant for risk and adventure. As a young girl she climbed trees, hunted rats with a .22 rifle, and did belly flops on her sled to speed down snow covered hills in the winter. She saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair in 1907. [Female Speaker]: [reading from a journal] It was a thing of rusty wire and wood, and not at all interesting. [Narrator]: But in 1920, while attending a stunt flying exhibition, she took a 10 minute ride with pilot Frank Hawks that would change her life forever. [Female Speaker]: [reading from a journal] By the time I had got 2 or 300 feet off the ground I knew I had to fly. [Narrator]: Just five5days later, she enrolled in flight school with instructor Neta Snook. Amelia had found her calling. But her career really took off in 1928 when she was asked if she'd be interested in being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She jumped at the chance. After interviews with the project leaders,

including George Palmer Putnam, Earhart joined the team, which included pilot Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and co-pilot mechanic Louis "Slim" Gordon. In a Fokker F.VII aircraft dubbed "The Friendship," the crew departed Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland on June 17th 1928. Since she had no training on navigational instruments, Amelia did not pilot the airplane. But when they arrive at Burry Port, Wales some 21 hours later, even as a passenger, Amelia was a celebrity. Headlines flashed across the world. They were heralded with a ticker tape parade in New York City. President Calvin Coolidge held a reception for them at the White House. But Amelia wasn't happy with her status as merely a passenger on that famous flight. She wanted to soar to even greater heights, as an aviator and a champion of women's rights. [music stops] [another song starts] During preparations for the Atlantic flight, a romance with George Putnam had bloomed.

In 1929, he divorced his wife and asked Amelia to marry him. 10 years his junior, she was reluctant at first, writing to Putnam: [Female Speaker]: [reading from a letter] You must know again my reluctancy to marry. My feelings that I shatter thereby chances I work, which means so much to me. [Narrator]: But after signing a prenuptial agreement that guaranteed her continued independence, the couple married in February 1931. She referred to the arrangement as a partnership with dual control. Amelia was ready to conquer the world of aviation. Putnam would continue supporting and publicizing her flying career. Over the next several years, Amelia Earhart set a dizzying array of flight records and cultivated even more fame. Earhart was at the height of her celebrity. She was one of the most famous women in the world. The lecture circuit was a lucrative way to fund future aviation adventures, and George Putnam,

like any good promoter, took advantage of it. But the pace of it all was as strenuous as her flights. She sometimes spoke in 30 different cities in 30 days, and everywhere she went she was hounded by the press. Before their marriage she had confided to Putnam. [Female Speaker]: [reading from a letter] I may have to keep someplace where I can go to be by myself now and then. For I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage. [Narrator]: And so, in the summer of 1934, Amelia made arrangements to flee from the spotlight, if only for a while. Her husband would join her later. [music stops playing] Always keen for adventure she drove her air-cooled Franklin automobile from New York to Wyoming. It wasn't until she reached Douglas, Wyoming, just east of Casper, [music starts playing] that she was recognized by a service station attendant. The anonymity must have been delightful. [First Speaker]: She drove to Meeteetse, drove up that road, Car- dad must have met her because, uh [another voice mumbles]

she got, she stalled out on the, uh, one of the steeper hills and luckily, uh, he was able to adjust the carburetor for higher altitude and made it on up to the Double-D. [Guest Speaker 3]: I first met Amelia Earhart in 1934 as a little 4 year old kid, and she really enjoyed our family and, and uh, enjoyed this country and dad took her on a 2 week pack trip to, uh, the Wind Rivers back here and she fell in love with the country and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, did to. [Guest Speaker 6]: In his advised trip he did pretty good the scenery and all, and then, then usually a day or 2, then we'd head up to Kirwin and, and go over to- pack out from there then go into, uh, Emerald Creek which was always really good fishing and that, uh. We got pictures. I think there's some pictures of Amelia ?inaudible? back. We- that one's over there. [First Speaker]: She really liked us kids, and uh, she liked uh, us as a

family, and my mother, I remember saying, is Amelia was a very kind, gentle person. She sent us a footlocker, a big locker full of, uh, presents for us. And I recall that she sent me a bamboo fishing pole with a beautiful aluminum case to it. She sent a .22 rifle and an air rifle and I cherished those, uh, ah, all my life. And, uh, she sent dad a, uh, a a set of tires for his Model A truck. We drove those, used those tires, for at least 10, 15 years. [Guest Speaker 6]: In a trip back into the, into the mountains above Kirwin, they- she found a place that she really liked and asked dad to build her cabin there. [Guest Speaker 3]: Putnam wrote to my dad in 1935 with instructions of how to build this cabin.

And he, he uh, he had said, uh, "build a fireplace, we want it, uh, this certain way". And, uh, and then he said, '"well Carl looks like we're going to have a cabin, a home out in Wyoming". And so in 1937, dad started the cabin and then, here's the cabin site here. It's kind of dilapidated now. It was 4 logs high when, uh, Amelia in July 2nd of 1937 37 was lost in the Pacific. [music stops playing] [Narrator]: Shortly before her 40th birthday in 1937, [background music plays] Amelia confided to George that she wanted to fly around the world at its girth, the longest possible distance. [Female Speaker]: [reading from a letter] I have a feeling that there's just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it. [Narrator]: Amelia asked Fred Noonan to accompany her, because of his experience over the Pacific as a

navigator for Pan-American Airlines. On May 21st 1937, Earhart and Noonan boarded a Lockheed Electra and embarked on their epic flight of 29,000 miles. [music interlude] Departing from Oakland, California, over the next 30 days they would jump from point to point on a prepared flight plan, while dealing with such issues as monsoons, dysentery, engine and instrument repair. From California to Florida, Then off to Puerto Rico, on to South America and across the Atlantic to Africa. To India and Southeast Asia then on to Indonesia and Australia. The flight, for the most part, was going as planned. On June 29th they reached Lae, New Guinea. Only 7,000 miles to go. But the next stop before Hawaii would be a navigationally challenging location. Tiny Howland Island,

a mile and a half long by half a mile wide, over 2,500 miles out in the Pacific. Earhart and Noonan jettisoned all non-essential items from the plane to make room for additional fuel. They would have a cushion of approximately 274 extra miles. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Itasca, was stationed offshore at Howland Island to provide radio contact. At noon on July 2nd 1937, the Electra took off from the dirt runway at Lae, packing 1,000 gallons of fuel, about 20 hours of flight time. Noonan's flight plan called for approximately 18 hours of travel. They would fly using Noonan's celestial navigation skills and then rely on radio contact with the Itasca to find the island. [background music stops, another song starts playing] Despite good weather reports, overcast skies and intermittent rain moved in, making celestial navigation impossible and hampering communications. During the

flight irregular radio transmissions from Earhart were faint and filled with static. But at 19:30 hours into the flight Earhart's voice came through to the Itasca. [Female Speaker]: We must be on you, but we cannot see you, but gas is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet. [Narrator]: The Itasca continued transmission, but two-way communication could not be established. A few minutes later it was Earhart again. [Female Speaker]: We are circling, but cannot hear you. [Narrator]: And then the final transmission. [Female Speaker]: K H A Q Q to Itasca. We are online of position 1 5 7 - 3 3 7. Will repeat this message on 6 2 1 0 kilo cycles. We are running north and south.

[Narrator]: The radio controllers aboard the Itasca frantically sent and resent messages. But there was no further contact. At 21:30 hours, they abandoned their effort. Under the orders of President Franklin Roosevelt, 9 naval ships and 66 aircraft embarked on a massive air and sea search across 250,000 miles of ocean. After more than 2 weeks of concerted effort, the search was abandoned on July 18th. George Putnam continued the search until October to no avail. Amelia and Fred Noonan were gone. [Guest Speaker 3]: And we were all saddened by the- by her loss in the Pacific. [Guest Speaker 6] As far as Amelia, mom really thought she was uh, a really nice lady and, And, uh, she uh, uh, they were- got along real good and it was uh, really uh, of course quite a blow when she was, uh,

lost and they, uh, had ?inaudible? hard feelings. [Narrator]: Earhart's own courage and bravery are illustrated in a letter left to Putnam, in case the flight would be her last. [Female Speaker]: Please know, I'm quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge for others. [music stops] [Narrator]: Years later, Carl Dunrud would spearhead a drive to install a monument in Meeteetse, commemorating Earhart's visit to Wyoming. [guitar music plays] Carl Dunrud close the Double-D dude ranch in 1941, after tourism fell off with the advent of World War II. He sold the Double-D property in the late 40s, and the land around Kirwin in 1959. But the thirst for adventure never left him. Carl Dunrud went on to more escapades.

Working for oil companies on the Alaska peninsula, where he made friends with the native Aleuts, and then on to the North Slope, 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle. He died in 1976 after 85 years of risky business. [Guest Speaker 3]: Risky business, yeah. [background voices] Risky business. But let's go, let's go do it. That was his philosophy. [guitar music plays and ends] [another song starts playing] [Guest Speaker 4]: The Amax Company, a mining corporation, bought this property in 1962. [Speaker 1]: Amax drilled out, uh, vast tonnages of molybdenum and copper. It's kind of ironic after much pain and little gain, there could have been gain another ways, but it would have been environmentally unacceptable to a lot of people to, to

open pit that beautiful mountain. [Guest Speaker 6]: The copper felt like it was the main mineral that was, uh, gonna pay off. The price of it dropped and uh, so that, that was kinda the end of it. [Guest Speaker 4]: And it was purchased by the Mellon Foundation in 1992, and the Mellon Foundation then donated it back to the public. And then that year the Shoshone National Forest took over management of the Kirwin area. We recognize that all these buildings and this area was an important historic area. It actually is one of the premier historic areas in, in Wyoming. Together with the state historic preservation office and the Shoshone National Forest, we worked out a partnership where we would work to preserve these buildings, kind of in their current state. Some of the buildings had leaking roofs and some had lost their roofs. Once you lose a roof you lose the building. So we began a process of bringing volunteers up here for a week every year and stabilizing these buildings. Putting new roofs on, patching

roofs, fixing walls. We weren't restoring the buildings to their original state. We were simply stabilizing them in the current state, kinda like moth-balling them. We had our first work project in 1991. At that time most of our volunteers came from the surrounding area of Meeteetse, Cody, and Wyoming in general. As the years went by the word got out all over the country, basically. We began having volunteers from as far away as Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, Washington, Colorado, and Montana. A typical volunteer crew has from 20 to 30 people. These volunteers came up to Kirwin, brought their own tents or campers, their own food, and their own tools, and worked hard for a whole week at a time. And we did this from 1999 up to, about to 2005. We ended up restoring or basically stabilizing 22 buildings.

These range from mine shaft houses to old cabins to livery stables to the assay office to barns, meat storage sheds, and even 3 outhouses. But this is allowing us to save this historic site which, we call a window to the past, And allow people to come up and see what a town looked like back in the 1880s, during the historic gold rush era. [music stops playing] [another song starts] [music continues] [Narrator]: The story of Kirwin is a tale of adventurers, risk-takers, and dreamers. A focal point for intersecting stories of the famous and infamous. The every-man and the artist. [music interlude]

And for all those who first fled the area in despair, it later drew others back to its myriad charms, its pristine beauty, as it still does today. [music interlude] In August every year, the Meeteetse museum sponsors a trip to Kirwin for modern day adventurers. [music interlude] There, they can sample the history and explore the ghostly structures and abandoned mines. [distant voices] They can soak in the scenery and the wildness that surrounds Kirwin, and come to understand and appreciate the history and the remains of over a century of risky business.

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