Creepy Abandoned Complex In Wyoming’s Red Desert Could Be Out Of A Horror Movie

There’s an eeriness to the vast, empty beauty of the Red Desert in southern Wyoming. 

The abundance of abandoned places in the pristine, yet inhospitable, wilderness that’s earned a reputation as being the loneliest place in the loneliest state adds a layer of intrigue for photographers and adventurers who are already drawn to its sometimes-otherworldly landscapes and wildlife.

Each abandoned home, ranch or vehicle in Wyoming has a story behind it. But one unexpected encounter on an abandoned property in the Red Desert left a lasting impression on photographer Kenneth Driese.

“I’ve seen a lot of abandoned places, but God knows what goes on in places like this one,” he said.

Always Abandoned

Driese is a retired University of Wyoming professor who taught ecology and geospatial science. He’s traversed Wyoming and seen plenty of places that would give most people the heebie-jeebies, especially in the vast Red Desert.

“There's a lot of abandoned houses in the Red Desert, even just right along I-80,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “You can get off the interstate and follow dirt roads to places people have abandoned. You expect it. People move on, and places get abandoned.”

Driese is used to finding and photographing abandoned properties in the more remote regions of Wyoming. The former occupants range from some of the territory's earliest settlers to much more recent residents, who left bad times and many of their belongings behind.

“I don't think it's unusual to find abandoned places that aren't a hundred years old,” he said. “Old log cabins are kind of normal in the Red Desert. And you actually find a lot of abandoned mobile homes when you’re out and about, sometimes with people's stuff still in them.

But an abandoned encounter he had in October 2013 left him with more questions than answers. What he saw and photographed there gave him a lingering sense of unease, and anyone who’s seen his photos might feel the same.

Red Flags And Scavenged Siding

That fall, Driese and fellow photographer Ed Sherline had spent the weekend exploring the landscapes of the Red Desert, south of Interstate 80 between Baggs and Wamsutter.

“We’d been over by the Haystack Mountains towards Adobe Town,” he said. “We were on our way back to the interstate, heading home to Laramie, and happened to see this place north of the dirt road we were driving on.”

Driese and Sherline stopped to take in what appeared to be another run-of-the-mill abandoned structure. As they approached, they realized it was anything but.

The first odd thing was the structure itself. It was a house, fully roofed and on a semblance of a foundation, with walls of dismantled billboards.

“The house itself raised the first red flags, even from a distance,” Driese wrote in his blog, The Booby Hatcher. “Sheathed in stolen (or scavenged) billboards advertising McDonald's, the Ptarmigan Hotel, and a Ramada Inn, the place suggested a struggle for survival far off the grid.”

The photographers entered the house using a staircase assembled from discarded palettes. At the foot of the stairs, they encountered an ominous sight.

“It was a partially bleached skeleton of a raven in front of the stairs going up to the house,” he said. “It added a creepy vibe when we were walking up.” 

They discovered piles of clothing inside the house, and the walls were lined with tattered blankets as a makeshift form of insulation. Driese and Sherline started poking around the rest of the property, and there was plenty to see.

Get Photos, Then Get The Hell Out

The entire property resembled something out of a post-apocalypse movie. Driese had seen similar things on other abandoned properties, but this one had clues suggesting a strange and unsettling story that he still hasn’t deciphered.

“There was a car in the yard that wasn't just abandoned; it was flipped upside down and riddled with bullet holes,” he said. “There was an old school bus, windows shattered, filled with old clothes, a mattress, and a 1997 calendar taped to the window.”

The creepiest discovery inside the school bus was a Bible, open to the “Word of God” on the final pages of the index.

“God’s eternal cannot pass away,” a passage on the open pages read. “We have received the word of God and need no more.”

A shed, also sided with partial billboards, was nearly buried near a pile of wooden pallets and spools that Driese interpreted as “a makeshift animal pen.” But the sight that affected him the most was a teddy bear lying face down in the dirt, with an anti-theft security button clamped to its back.

“That suggested that there were kids involved in a place like that, which is kind of creepy,” he said. “You wonder what happens to kids in that kind of a situation.”

By that point, Driese and Sherline had to get back on the road. They didn’t feel an urge to linger where they were.

“We snapped photos, eager to document the place, and get the hell out of there,” Driese wrote.

Where Imagination Goes

Driese hasn’t returned to that abandoned property since he and Sherline left it in the dust. As he reminisced on the experience, he still felt a sense of unease.

“This place suggested a life gone off the rails,” he said. “It wasn’t very far off a pretty well-used dirt road, so it wasn't completely out in the middle of nowhere. But there weren't any close neighbors, that's for sure.”

Other abandoned places Driese had visited told definite stories, like the farmhouses left behind when families gave up on their rural lifestyle or businesses that rose and fell during troubled times. However, try as he might, he couldn’t deduce what happened at this Red Desert dwelling.

“You can come up with all kinds of interpretations when you let your imagination go,” he said. “Is it some kind of weird religious cult or a place where somebody was making meth? Who were these people?  What happened to them? God knows what goes on in places like that.”

Eye Of The Beholder

Paul Ng is another photographer who’s spent decades exploring the Red Desert. His book “Twenty-five Years of Exploration in Wyoming's Red Desert” was released in 2014.

Ng said he expects to encounter abandoned places whenever he’s exploring the Red Desert. Some, like the Cow Creek Ranch, have become destinations for intrepid photographers.

“The Cow Creek Ranch operated into the 1980s, I think, but now it’s abandoned,” he said. “They have old houses with furniture and a couple of outhouses. There was even a sofa in the main building.”

The Cow Creek Ranch is the “most prominent” of the abandoned structures Ng knows about or has visited in the Red Desert. He’s seen so many it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Ng doesn’t try to decipher the stories of these abandoned places. He focuses on the stories he can capture through his images.

“I don't dig in the history of these old buildings and ranches,” he said. “I see those structures in the sense of photography. I may take a picture here and there, but I don’t look into who owned what or what those structures were for.”

Ng included a photo of the torn-up sofa at the Cow Creek Ranch in his 2014 book. The story behind the destroyed furniture is up to each viewer’s interpretation.

Unnatural Beauty

Creepy vibes aside, many people would see the strange, abandoned property he encountered near Wamsutter as an eyesore in the Red Desert. For Driese and Ng, abandoned properties add a unique element of beauty to the immense emptiness of the region.

“The Red Desert is a fantastic natural area,” Driese said. “There's enormous wildlife diversity, archeology, and beautiful landscapes. But I’ve also spent a lot of time exploring and photographing abandoned places because I find them interesting. The abandoned human stuff is certainly not the dominant theme of the Red Desert, but it’s another layer of interest.”

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.