Road Trip Yellowstone

by Dina Mishev

  The Diehls are the first ones to point out that they remodeled the place rather than renovated it. “We kept as much of the original stuff as we could, but before, the interior was all heads and horns,” Ev says. “I had spent 8 years at the [Buffalo Bill Center of the West] and was tired of that look. We went with an art nouveau theme instead, which was a look at that time.” The Chamberlin has twenty-one rooms in three different historic buildings. The public lounge, Chamberlin Spirits, serves wine and cocktails. Also, “we encourage anyone to stop in. We love giving tours,” Ev says. “If rooms aren’t occupied, we leave all of the doors open.” 1032 12th St., (307) 587-0202, chamberlininn.com

  Dug Up Gun Museum

  Guns can be expensive to collect. Especially when you’re 8 years old. But if a gun is rusted, ruined, or jammed, it’s a lot cheaper. So that’s what young Hans Kurth started collecting. “It was a way to collect all of these models of guns I couldn’t afford in any other condition,” Kurth says.

  By the time he was old enough to afford guns in better condition, Kurth was hooked on the busted ones. “They get your imagination going,” he says. “They’re living history. These aren’t the guns that spent their lives in a box in a desk drawer. These were the guns that paved the way for us to travel west and do things that are often taken for granted now. These guns and people paved the way and sometimes paid the price.” For example: Kurth’s collection includes several guns that are half loaded or cocked and half loaded. “That’s not a good sign,” he says. “You don’t have to be a CSI guy to figure out what happened.”

  Kurth and his wife, Eva, opened the Dug Up Gun Museum in Cody in 2009 with about 900 guns and artifacts on display. Since opening, several hundred guns have been added to the collection. And Kurth says he has even more, but he’s holding them back until he has a better idea of their history. “I never want to sell an item short, so I really want to do as much research as I can.”

  The museum has an 1873 Colt single-action Army revolver that was found in 1971 in an old mining payroll office in Price, Utah. Kurth’s research indicates that it is possible this gun belonged to Butch Cassidy. In the late 1890s, Cassidy and a compatriot (not the Sundance Kid) robbed the payroll office. During the robbery, Cassidy and his partner got away with $9,980 in silver and gold, but Cassidy dropped his gun and it fell through the floorboards. It’s believed that the gun sat beneath the floorboards until it was found in 1971. “There’s no way to say for sure that this is that gun, but it is certainly the exact type of gun Butch is known to have used,” Kurth says.

  LOCAL LOWDOWN DAN MILLER, Owner of Dan Miller’s Cowboy Music Revue

  The first time Dan Miller sang on stage, he was 8 or 9, and the stage was near the Indiana dairy farm he grew up on. The first time his youngest daughter, Hannah, performed on stage, she was 6. That stage was in Cody, Wyoming, and the show was Dan Miller’s Cowboy Music Revue. Hannah is now in college, and, despite Dan’s own successful music and broadcast career in Nashville (and Cody), “it’s gotten to the point where I’m Hannah’s dad and not Dan Miller,” he says. “But I love it. I absolutely love it. I’m very proud. Our favorite daddy/daughter thing to do is play music.”

  While Hannah’s career is yet to be determined, Dan’s is still in full swing. Monday through Saturday from June 1 through September 30, he headlines the Cowboy Music Revue at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Since founding the show in 2005, Miller’s group has performed more than 1,400 shows together. When not performing in Cody, Miller produces and hosts television programming including Xtreme Bulls and Best of the West. It is his live performances that are closest to his heart though. 720 Sheridan Ave., (307) 578-7909, cowboymusicreview.com

  Q: How’d you get into music?

  DAN MILLER: I think I grew up doing the typical things, and started in bands when I was pretty young.

  Q: How’d you get from local bands to Nashville?

  DM: I went to college on a football scholarship and after college I went to L.A. In the early days, it was the Dan Miller Band and we’d play Vegas, Reno, Tahoe wearing tuxedos and playing lounges and showrooms. It was always country music that was in my soul though. In the mid-1980s, the Nashville Network was just coming online. I thought Nashville might be the best of both worlds, so I went there and started auditioning for everything. I’ve hosted more Nashville Network shows than anyone else.

  Q: What brought you to Cody?

  DM: I love Cody for its proximity to Yellowstone and also because of Wyoming’s public school system. My daughters have both gone through that system. And I just thought it was a nice place to raise a family.

  Q: How do you keep the music review fresh for you and the group?

  DM: I never do the same show twice in a row. There is always some spontaneity and that makes it fun. My goal with every show is for us to enjoy it as much as the audience does.

  Q: There are a lot of variations to choose from in country music. Why’d you decide on a program of the genre’s classics?

  DM: My thought was that people were in Wyoming looking for an authentic western experience. So we do Sons of the Pioneers, “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water”—Roy Rogers–type stuff. People remember those songs from their childhood. I’ll do some cowboy poetry. There’s also some Asleep at the Wheel though—it is a real variety.

  Q: Sometimes you bring Nashville friends—the Bellamy Brothers, Kathy Mattea, Billy Dean, Asleep at the Wheel, Gary Morris—out to play in Cody. What do they think of the area?

  DM: Every single one wants to come back. Gary [Morris] would rather fly fish than sing.

  There’s also the loaded Colt that was pulled from muck in the Meramec River in St. Louis in the summer of 1971. A family on a rafting trip spotted the gun and called the police. The sheriff came and retrieved it, then took it back to the sheriff’s office where he washed it off. Once it was cleaned, he couldn’t find a serial number, but could tell it was a Colt, and that it was loaded. For 30-some years, it sat in the sheriff’s office. When the deputy that retrieved it retired, it was given to him as a going away present. “He came into the museum one summer and said, ‘I got something for you,’” Kurth says. “And then he mailed it to us. He and I both know that somehow, someway that this was some type of crime gun. The gun dates from the early 1920s. St. Louis did have quite a history with the Mob in that time period.”

  And then there is the musket that was found in the fork of a madrone tree in California. The tree had grown around the musket. “There are a thousand stories you could come up with about that one,” Kurth says.

  Included in the museum’s collection are pistols, revolvers, muskets, and rifles dating from the Civil War to World War II. The museum is open May through September. 1020 12th St., (307) 587-3344, www.codydugupgunmuseum.com

  THOMAS MOLESWORTH

  Thomas Molesworth is known as the godfather of ranch-style furniture. Trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, Molesworth moved to Cody with his wife in 1931 and opened his own furniture business. He developed a distinctly western style of furniture that was inspired by the Arts and Crafts style but used natural wood, antlers, and hides. A 1940s Molesworth sofa recently sold at auction for $50,000. A 1930s club chair went for $25,000. Several original Molesworth pieces are in the collection of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Vintage Molesworth furniture and accessories are a big deal, and they were all made at his workshop in Cody.

  LOCAL LOWDOWN LESTER SANTOS, Furniture Maker

  Lester Santos’s furniture has been featured on the Today show, on the Home and Garden Network, and in Architectural Digest. Clients from across the county find him despite the fact, “I don’t advertise anywhere,” he says. A piece of his—a phantasmagorical desk made from burled juniper, cherry, copper, rosewood, and stained glass—is in the permanent collection of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Still, the thing Santos is most proud of professionally is not a piece of furniture. That honor goes to a guitar he made in the mid-1970s while working at the now-defunct
NBN Guitars. santosfurniture.com

  Q: What’s so special about this guitar?

  LESTER SANTOS: It was the last guitar we built before we went out of business. We gave it to Elvis Presley right before he played in Denver. I think we were kind of hoping he would ride in and save the company. Recently, I saw it on the auction channel and it sold for $42,000.

  Q: So Elvis never rode in and saved NBN?

  LS: No, but he used the guitar when he played his Denver show.

  Q: How’d you get into furniture building?

  LS: Around 1971, I answered an ad in the paper in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A harpsichord builder was looking for an apprentice. I learned how to understand wood and tools. We didn’t have any electricity in the shop—there were huge windows with natural light. We did everything by hand—it was the best way to learn. I learned how to put wood together so it won’t come apart. No one teaches that anymore.

  Q: And then you went on to make guitars?

  LS: I was a musician beginning at age 13. A friend of mine had moved to Boulder [Colorado] and sent me a local paper where NBN was hiring. I moved from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to work for these two brothers. But in 1976 and 1977, Japanese imports started flooding the American market and that just killed us.

  Q: How did you end up in Cody?

  LS: My neighbor in Colorado and I started a band, Button Fly. We ended up playing all over the Rocky Mountain West, including Cody. We did Top 40, country, a few originals—kind of Jimmy Buffett/Eagles style of music. I eventually got tired of all that and found myself in Cody. I started doing some remodeling and making kitchen cabinets. I had one project that was Molesworth revival and that got me hooked on making this western furniture.

  Q: How would you describe your style?

  LS: I’d say there is a Molesworth inspiration. I fall back on it as something that is easy for me to do and it is popular, but what I really like to do is take rustic and mix it with art deco. It’s just a little different.

  ROAD TRIP 3 CULTURE

  Perhaps more than any one thing, Cody is known as being home to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (BBCW) (formerly the Buffalo Bill Historic Center). This western-centric, mega museum has been called “the Smithsonian of the West.” But that doesn’t do it justice. As high as your expectations for the BBCW are, it will exceed them. While the BBCW celebrates (mostly) the positives of the American West, a newer museum in the area, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, takes a closer look at a low moment in the country’s history.

  Buffalo Bill Center of the West

  Buffalo Bill’s niece Mary Jester Allen spearheaded the founding of a museum celebrating her uncle. The Buffalo Bill Museum opened in 1927, adjacent to the 12-foot-tall bronze sculpture titled Buffalo Bill—The Scout by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney that had been unveiled 3 years earlier. (In addition to being a sculptor, Whitney was also a prodigious supporter and collector of art; she’s the same Whitney who, in 1930, founded the Whitney American Art Museum in New York.) In 1959, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art opened. (Whitney donated the land it was built on.) In 1969, the Buffalo Bill Museum moved into a bigger space closer to the Whitney Gallery. (The original museum still stands; today it’s the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce.) In 1976, the Cody Firearms Museum opened. Three years later came the Plains Indian Museum. The McCracken Research Library followed in 1980. In June 2002, the Draper Natural History Museum opened (with Clint Eastwood in attendance).

  LOCAL LOWDOWN ASHLEY HLEBINSKY, Curator of the Cody Firearms Museum

  “There are lots of people who end up wandering in here and have no interest in firearms; they just come in because they’re already at the center,” says Ashley Hlebinsky, Robert W. Woodruff Curator at the Cody Firearms Museum. “And they’ll still be here 3 hours later. They’re awestruck.”

  You do not need to be a gun person to appreciate the artistry and history of the firearms museum’s extensive collection—only about 4,000 of the 7,000 pieces in the collection are currently on display. Take the Lincoln-Head Hammer Gun. Sharpshooter and gunsmith Hiram Berdan made this breech-loading percussion rifle in 1863 to honor President Lincoln, who was known to have an interest in firearm technology. Instead of a traditional hammer, this rifle has a portrait bust of Lincoln as its hammer. “It was never given to Lincoln though,” Hleblinsky says. “He was assassinated before that could happen.”

  The museum also has dozens of Hollywood guns and artifacts, including a revolver believed to have been used in High Noon, guns from the show Bonanza, a Gunsmoke gun, and several original Gunsmoke scripts.

  Hlebinsky did not grow up around guns. She grew up wanting to be a doctor and was interested in the history of medicine, specifically battlefield medicine. When she was 18, she did a Civil War medicine tour at Gettysburg. Part of the tour covered how the advancement of weapon technology changed medical technology. “Before that I had never thought about firearms in my life,” she says. “It was then that I decided to study history.” Hlebinsky soon landed an internship at a military museum in Pittsburgh. “They put 200 guns in front of me, from the Civil War to one that belonged to an Iraq War veteran and I got totally hooked on the technology side of it and the diversity of firearms.” When getting her master’s degree in American history and museum studies, she focused on the perception of firearms in culture. 720 Sheridan Ave., (307) 587-4771, centerofthewest.org/explore/firearms

  Q: Do you have your own gun collection?

  ASHLEY HLEBINSKY: A little one. According to the curator’s code of ethics, you cannot collect what you curate. Following the code, if you are at a gun show and you have the option to buy a historic piece, you should buy it for the museum before you buy it for yourself. The nice thing about managing a collection of 7,000 firearms is that anything I can afford, we already have many of. But I have some historic pieces I bought when I first started studying firearms. Now I prefer to play with the ones I don’t have to pay for.

  Q: Do you just study guns, or have you started shooting?

  AH: I’ve taken NRA courses and learned to shoot historic and modern guns. I’m an NRA-certified instructor too. I taught my dad to shoot about 2 years ago. When I took my NRA basic pistol course, I did that with my mom.

  Q: You’re not yet 30 and you’re already curator of what is arguably the finest firearms museum in the country. Not that you’re looking at leaving, but where would you go from here?

  AH: Probably into consulting. Most museums have at least one gun in their collection but don’t have staff that know how to interpret it. Being a firearms curator is a unique thing. There are people who study guns and people who do museum studies; not many people study both.

  Q: What do you mean when you say “interpret” a gun?

  AH: Here we interpret military history, western history, hunting and conservation, embellishment history—all through the lens of firearms. Ours is the only [museum at the BBCW] with a mission that goes beyond the American West. Our collection dates back to the 1400s and has international pieces. It’s an encyclopedic collection.

  JUST SAYIN’

  A few common American sayings that owe their origins to firearms. “A” is the original definition, and “B” is the modern meaning.

  Bite the bullet:

  A. Prior to modern medical care, a wounded person was given a lead bullet to bite down on while undergoing surgery to lessen the pain.

  B. To do something unpleasant in order to get it out of the way.

  Flash in the pan:

  A. When a flintlock’s priming pan powder burns, or “flashes,” but fails to ignite the main powder charge in the barrel.

  B. A person who claims great skills or achievements but accomplishes nothing.

  Going off half-cocked:

  A. Placing the hammer of a firearm on a halfway position so that it is unable to be fired.

  B. Thoughtless or hasty behavior.

  Buffalo Bill started working at the age of 11. By 14, he was a rider for the Pony Express. During
an 18-month period when he was in his early 20s, he killed an estimated 4,280 bison to feed the Army and Kansas Pacific Railroad. He founded his famous Wild West Show when he was in his mid-30s. The town of Cody was incorporated when Buffalo Bill was 55. Buffalo Bill died when he was 70.

  Together, these five museums and research library total 300,000 square feet of displays and exhibitions, larger than five football fields put together. Displays include a lock of Buffalo Bill’s hair; a costume worn in the Wild West Show by Annie Oakley; Bear 104, a grizzly often seen on US 14 between Cody and Yellowstone that was eventually killed by a car; paintings by Charles Russell; 16th-century dueling pistols; and, seasonally, the Draper Museum Raptor Experience, which allows guests to see real-life birds of prey like a golden eagle, great horned owl, and American kestrel. The center is an affiliate of the Smithsonian. 720 Sheridan Ave., (307) 587-4771, centerofthewest.org

  McCracken Research Library

  When you’ve got the Buffalo Bill Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Whitney Western Art Museum, Cody Firearms Museum, and the Draper Natural History Museum all under one roof, it’d be understandable to overlook the McCracken Research Library. Especially since seeing most of the items in the library’s collection requires an advance appointment. The library has a small, no-appointment-necessary gallery with changing exhibits that “show what the library is about,” says library director Mary Robinson. When the National Park Service celebrated its centennial in 2016, the display in the library gallery was of early Yellowstone photographs. But you can’t just waltz into the library’s stacks, which house nearly 450 manuscript collections, 750,000 images, and more than 30,000 books. The library’s collection is worth advance planning and making an appointment for though.