DOUGLAS — History literally melts out of the Plains Old Fashion Ice Cream Parlor at the Plains Motel and Trading Post on the east side of town at 628 E. Richards St.
It’s a sweet finish to a rich past that emanates from the buildings that make up the rest of the complex.
Wanda Hegglund opened the one-of-a-kind complex of historic buildings from the region in 1979 to create the combination motel, restaurant, lounge and ice cream parlor. A local architect helped make the vision happen.
Current co-owner Ed Hegglund, Wanda’s son, said the ice cream building in the 1970s had been used for apartments and then condemned before the family bought it and moved it south on Fifth Street to turn it into the ice cream parlor and museum it is today.
“That was the first part of everything that we opened here — the ice cream parlor,” he said.
But before the parlor existed and before the structure housed apartments, it had other uses. It began as a country barn built in 1880 and moved to 138 N. 5th St. in Douglas in early 1900s.
The Barn
Mark Dorr, of Gillette, said the barn was part of his great-grandfather’s historic Dorr Ranch northeast of what is now Bill, Wyoming, where the remaining buildings are part of the National Registry of Historical Places.
“One significant building was removed from the ranch, and that was their barn,” Dorr said. “The barn was moved to Douglas and at first was converted into a birthing house, and my father was actually born there.”
Turns that the barn-turned-birthing house also was where the future proprietor of the Plains Motel and Trading Post would be born in 1932 — Wanda Hegglund.
A history on the wall of the ice cream parlor’s second-floor museum states: “A wood stove used to stand in center of the building with newspaper on the walls. … In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mrs. Smith operated this as a maternity and boarding home. Mrs. Smith was the midwife for many Wyoming ladies and delivered their babies.”
Little about the barn is evident today. However, late Douglas architect Neil Goodrich incorporated remnants of other former Douglas buildings and one from Casper into its aura.
For instance, plinth blocks used in the trim came from several residential homes in Douglas. The parlor’s ceiling and ice cream counter were made of doors from the Henning Hotel in Casper. Marble came from the old Converse County Courthouse. The stairs and banister that lead to a second-floor museum came from Douglas’ former south grade school.
The counter at the Plains Ice Cream Parlor was also built using doors from the Henning Hotel in Casper. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
A huge three-scoop sundae. (Plains Old Fashion Ice Cream Parlor) 
The ceiling in the Plains Ice Cream Parlor came from doors of the Henning Hotel in Casper. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Nothing refreshes on a hot day like a cool cone. (Plains Old Fashion Ice Cream Parlor) 
The Plains Ice Cream Parlor in Douglas offers ice cream, sundaes, shakes and more – as well as a flavor of past historic Douglas-area structures woven into its building. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
The second floor of the Plains Ice Cream Parlor features a museum with a lot of antique and historic items that represent life in the past. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
The staircase to the museum above the Plains Ice Cream Parlor in Douglas comes from a former grade school in Douglas. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
A room at the museum above the Plains Ice Cream Parlor offers some taxidermized animals as well as a display of model cars and a train. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
On the the three rooms upstairs represents a dining room with items that came from Douglas-area families. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Plains Trading Post in Douglas contains several historic structures architecturally put together into an ice cream parlor, restaurant, lounge, and motel. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
A Museum
In the museum upstairs, visitors can check out an old 5-cent jackpot machine as well as vintage artifacts and antiques displayed in three rooms that decades ago housed mothers and babies. One room offers a display case with antique model cars and a train. There is also taxidermy from the West on display — a lynx, fox and coyote.
Another room features a dining table set with several dishes, bottles and other knickknacks. A third room shows a kitchen with period stoves, cupboards and utensils.
Ed Hegglund’s wife Valerie said that while spring typically is a slower season, the ice cream parlor gets busy in the summer.
“When it gets hot, they come in for ice cream,” she said.
The shop features four booths, six stools and a parlor that holds the original bank teller cage from the first bank in Douglas.
The menu offers ice cream cones, shakes, malts, floats, sundaes and banana splits with a variety of ice cream flavors and syrups to choose from.
The complex includes the 47-room motel that incorporated a building from the Douglas camp built in the early 1940s for Italian and German prisoners. Valerie Hegglund said the Plains complex was hopping in years past when it served as the local Douglas bus stop.
As the project was being launched in the 1970s, Valerie Hegglund said Goodrich advised Wanda Hegglund that the area was going to grow, and workers would need meals and housing.
“He told my mother-in-law in the ’70s that the coal and uranium and the oil is going to boom, and we need to build someplace where the people can come in and eat 24 hours a day,” she said. “And there is only one day that we closed, and that is when the architect died. We had his funeral, we closed the place down. But when my mother-in-law passed away, she said, ‘If you don’t keep the doors open after I pass away, I am going to come and haunt you.’”
The ice cream parlor, restaurant and lounge remains open 24 hours a day year-round.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
