Estate Of Legendary Wyoming Spaghetti Westerner Gap Pucci To Be Bought By Nuns

The coyote with a snowshoe hare in its mouth and the ermine that didn’t get away with his chicken both have a forever home by the fireplace in the Gap Pucci’s cabin. 

That’s because the legendary spaghetti Westerner’s estate has just been bought by two of his dear friends. 

A pair of nuns who met Pucci nearly 25 years ago have decided to buy the cabin to keep it as the legendary late Jackson Hole-area rancher and guide wanted it to remain.

Mother Marie Wendy McMenamy and Sister Mary Augustine told Cowboy State Daily their decision to buy the estate through their foundation came after months of prayer and reflection.

In the end, it came down to the sense that the world would lose something special if bulldozers came for Pucci’s historic cabin and replaced it with a mansion.

“Teresa (Pucci-Haas) and I were in contact over the winter months from like January to March,” McMenamy told Cowboy State Daily. “And so, we both decided that we just wanted her father’s legacy to live on. 

“I just couldn’t imagine his ranch not being there anymore, not being a memory for the people in Jackson and all the people he touched from other states.”

Haas is Pucci’s daughter, who told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday that she’s been wrestling with the fate of the estate since her father died last October at the age of 89. 

“We just couldn’t afford to keep Dad’s place,” she said. “We have 20 acres up here (in Montana) of our own. So, out of the blue, Mother Wendy is like, ‘We would love to buy your dad’s property.’”

The moment is bittersweet, Haas said, but the outcome is perfect — exactly as her father would have wished.

“I had been just heartbroken to think of someone coming in and bulldozing it to build some huge house, like most of them are in Jackson,” she said. “But Mother Wendy’s like, ‘No, we’re going to keep it like it is, and she has bought all the mounts, too.

“So, it really is just — I mean, I know Dad absolutely had a hand in this. It couldn’t be better.”

A ‘God Moment’

Pucci became a legend for the mountain man life he lived on his 5-acre ranchette 17 miles south of Jackson. 

The property lies between a state elk feeding ground and National Forest land in an area that’s still remote and can only be accessed in winter by snowmobile.

The story of how he met and befriended two nuns from Ohio is also legendary, even if no bears or wolves were involved, and no horses fell off a cliff, plunging into an icy river below.

The story begins at a rather tame family dinner that both Pucci and McMenamy had been invited to. When the two discovered their Sicilian connections, the conversation took off. 

After dinner, Pucci invited McMenamy and the other nuns she was with to come and see the lighted crosses he had raised at his ranch. It was inJanuary and the hour was late.

“It was like 10 o’clock at night,” McMenamy recalled. “And we were like, in sandals. It’s part of our habit. We’re from the East, so we just wear simple sandals.”

But Pucci wanted her to come anyway, no matter the lateness, no matter the cold, no matter the shoes.

Suddenly, somehow, it seemed important. McMenamy has learned to pay attention whenever that happens. 

“You just don’t meet too many people like Gap,” McMenamy said.

So, sandals and all, she and her sisters went with Pucci to see his lighted crosses, which often led hunters home after breaking camp.

“We climbed up this hill in knee-deep snow at 11 o’clock at night,” she said. “And it was a clear night. There were no lights outside, just the light of the full moon, so we could see where we were going.”

It was cold and slow-going for women clad in a habit and sandals with no socks. Yet, no one got frost-bitten feet. Their way seemed clear, in spite of all difficulty. 

“It was beautiful,” McMenamy said. “The air was so crisp and so clean, and you could see the moon and all these lit-up crosses. It was like a God moment. It was really a God moment. 

“I don’t regret going up that hill with bare feet. It really was special, even though our feet did get red and cold walking in the snow.”

Sicilian Pasta And Cheesecake

Pucci’s strong faith so impressed McMenamy, she made a point of visiting him from time to time when she was back in the area.

McMenamy and Augustine are stationed out of Ohio, with the Sisters of Reparation, but McMenamy has Italian roots and family in Sicily.

“When I saw his Sicilian faith and his love for the Lord, and we just kind of bonded right there,” she said. “Because typically, I might not see him ever again because we just met at a friend’s house. But then Gap just started sending me Christmas cards, and so, if I ever came back into the area, we’d go see him.”

About five years ago, McMenamy’s work started bringing her to the area more often, so she would bring the octogenarian Sunday dinner — the Sicilian pastas of his youth and his favorite cheesecake. She would also bring him groceries sometimes, milk and things like that, if he was running low.

When Pucci died, McMenamy was in Italy, Haas told Cowboy State Daily. She came home right away so she could attend the funeral. After, she visited Pucci’s cabin.

“I found he’d kept every letter, and every Christmas card I ever sent him,” McMenamy said. “He was very sentimental. And whenever he’d ask me for something, I always obliged, because he was in his 80s, and he’s someone where you just want to do everything you can for him.”

Any time she and her sisters visited, McMenamy said Pucci had stories to tell them. Unforgettable, legendary stories that could entertain guests for hours at a time.

“We’re on the East Coast, so we’ve only seen the West on television,” McMenamy said. “But he was a guy who embodied the West. He lived it. And he had such a memory. He could name every name; he could remember every individual. All these facts, places and people. He was amazing. His mind was amazing.”

Among her last memories of Pucci was when he read her the introduction for his third book. He’d incorporated some of a newsletter McMenamy had written about him. 

“I had written about how he reminded me of John Wayne,” McMenamy said. “It was a couple of months before he died, and I was in his living room, and he opened up the book and says, ‘I want to read you this.’”

McMenamy was in tears before Pucci finished the introduction.

“It’s something I’ll never forget,” McMenamy said. “That introduction touched him so much that he just wanted to read it to me.”

The Voice Of Gap Pucci

Reading Pucci’s books is like hearing him speak again, McMenamy added. 

“He wrote just as he spoke,” she said. “And he was very funny and just entertaining.”

It wasn’t until he was in his 80s that Pucci decided to start writing down all of his memories and his stories. He started with “We Married Adventure,” about the adventures he and his wife had as newlyweds in a remote, drafty, 1900s cabin. Pucci and his wife married in 1965 but lived more like it was 1865. 

They had no running water, no phone and no television. Their source of heat was an old wood stove, and the nearest grocery store was a 10-mile hike out on snowshoes followed by a 25-mile drive on snow and ice in an old beat-up pickup. 

Their neighbors weren’t people. They were the swift-footed and elusive spirits of the forest — elk, moose and other wildlife that wandered in from the Gros Ventre Wilderness nearby. There was a badger named Tuffy, for example, who became adept at sneaking into the cabin. 

Pucci found work managing the nearby hot springs for the Forest Service. He charged a grand $1 per soak and was the first to keep the hot springs open in winter, according to a 2024 interview Pucci gave Cowboy State Daily.

After he left, he tried to convince the Forest Service to buy his cabin for $500. It wouldn’t, so Pucci took it apart one log, one board at a time, and took it with him. There’s no free lunch in life, and Pucci wasn’t going to just let them keep his cabin for nothing.

He started his guide business in 1975 with that cabin, buying out Red Buescher and setting up a base camp in Granite Creek, along with a series of isolated hunting camps scattered in the Gros Ventre Wilderness. 

These were remote camps far from any hospital or help, far from convenience stores and modern amenities, hidden in a tangle of thick, dark wood.

They were so remote that when Gap’s first daughter, Catherine, was born, they had to let him know by dropping him a note from a bush plane flying overhead.

The scrap of yellow legal paper said simply, “Gap, you are the proud papa of a baby girl, 7#, born on Friday, 10-13-78. Mother and daughter are doing fine.”

Growing Up Pucci

Growing up Pucci was legendary, too, Haas told Cowboy State Daily.

In his 2024 interview, Pucci told Cowboy State Daily his daughters grew up playing “outfitter barbie” with dolls they attached to horses by rubber band and sent into the forest on imaginary elk and bear hunts. 

By the time they were 3, the girls were pulling themselves up on the more docile of the Morgan herd of horses that Pucci kept, riding them around the property.

“Wild animals were the first sights the girls saw as we held them up to the windows of the small log cabin,” Pucci said. “Our ranch horses and other animals would look right back into those windows, watching the little girls grow up.”

The girls weren’t afraid to play with any wild animal that would play with them, Pucci added. That included a coyote that liked to race up and down the fence line showing off his speed, as well as a big horn ram they named Amigo.

Pucci was taking the girls hunting by the time they were 7 for 10 days at a time. One girl would stay home to help mom with chores, while the other went hunting. Then they’d switch roles.

Haas wants to keep the stories of her dad alive, she told Cowboy State Daily.

“We’re losing our history of Jackson Hole,” she said. “There’s so many. Old folks and timers that have just been passing, and the kids don’t know what to do with their stuff, so they chuck it.”

Haas has allowed museum representatives to come look over Pucci’s belongings to see if there are any they want to display. 

“They’re going to display, like, I gave her a pack saddle and equipment, horse hobbles and bells,” she said. “So just like early outfitting days, and the man that he was, and I’m packing all this historic stuff home, making sure the history is not lost.”

Every week, Haas also posts photos and little stories about her father to plug his books and spread his stories as far and wide as she can.

“He’s got a little fan base, which is kind of cute,” Haas said. “And I have sold, gosh, about $5,000 worth of his books.”

Having someone who would preserve her father’s cabin was beyond her wildest hopes.

“As soon as (McMenamy) made an offer and we settled on a price, there was just this sense of peace and warmth that settled over me,” she said. “It felt like it’s just the right thing to do, and I have no question that God and Dad just worked this out perfect.”

McMenamy plans to hang Pucci’s cowboy hat up in the living room along with his jacket and boots. It’s not just a memorial to him, it’s a sure conversation starter for guests. An opportunity to tell the story of Pucci again and again and again.

Haas said she believes the cabin will become a retreat for nuns and priests, a place for them to go and become closer to God. 

Pucci would have approved, Haas said. 

“You have no idea how happy I’m sure he is,” she said. “I’m sure he’s dancing on, yeah, his spirit is so alive and happy now.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.