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Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

The name of Ephraim Ashburn has not come down through history like that of another Battle of Platte Bridge Station casualty — Lt. Caspar Collins.

Collins has a fort, city, and museum named after him. But now both men have their names honored at Fort Caspar Museum in a commemorative cemetery.

The final resting place of 61 soldiers who gave their lives while serving at Platte Bridge Station, which became Fort Caspar from 1862 to 1867, remain mostly unknown.

But a four-year project by Casper historian Johanna Wickman to determine a complete list of those killed in action or from disease while serving in what is now central Wyoming and providing each a commemorative marble headstone at Fort Caspar is nearing the finish line.

Wickman’s “Lest We Forget” volunteer effort began in July 2022 after being spurred on by the 11 headstones placed on the grounds in 1970 by former museum director Bill Judge. 

Those tombstones recognized 11 fallen soldiers from the 11th Ohio Cavalry as well as Collins, who died in the Battle of Platte Bridge and for whom the military post and later the present-day city was named.

“We kind of think what (Judge) was doing was 11 soldiers from the 11th Ohio as kind of symbolic sort of thing,” Wickman said.

A member of the Fort Caspar Museum Association board in 2022, Wickman said she knew the casualty list exceeded those 11 graves. 

Her research showed that the first headstone installed in 1970 was for David Umphlet, who served in the 11th Ohio Cavalry and died on March 22, 1866. It was installed because his family obtained a headstone from the Veterans Administration and wanted it placed at Fort Caspar.

Wickman found Judge had applications to the VA for more headstones that were never approved.

“It could be he was trying to get more and just stopped at 11,” she said.

Her initial research dug into all the various state and national military units sent to the region while Platte Bridge Station troops operated to protect telegraph lines connecting the coasts as well as settlers heading west on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. 

In addition to the 11th Ohio Cavalry, Wickman found soldiers representing the 11th Kansas Cavalry, Sixth West Virginia Cavalry, Sixth Michigan Cavalry, Seventh Iowa Cavalry and U.S. Army infantry soldiers from the Sixth and 18th U.S. Infantry all had boots on the ground in the five-year period on which she was focusing.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Headstones"}]

Wickman said she approached former Fort Caspar Museum Director Rick Young about getting more headstones for the other soldiers. He gave her the green light to raise funds for the headstones.

“I thought I was looking at maybe another 15 or 20 headstones,” she said.

Instead, four years and thousands of hours later she has the total number needed at 61, 50 more than the original 11 set in place by Judge. When Wickman started the project there was no casualty list for those who served in the region during that era.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"She has now created one."}]

Among them was Ashburn, a member of the Sixth West Virginia Cavalry and who as a Union soldier was captured April 8, 1964, in Winchester, Virginia, and sent to the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. Records show Ashburn was released in a prisoner swap in December 1864.

In a letter home written on July 1, 1865, as his unit arrived in Leavenworth, Kansas, he spoke of a riverboat trip where the ship got caught on a snag and horses were tossed off. He also mentioned a train accident that killed four or five soldiers and wounded others.

“We will not stay here long, we are going out on the plans to fight the Indians this side of California,” he wrote.

Most Civil War enlistments were for three years or for the duration of the war, Wickman said. But men like Ashburn, though the war ended, still found themselves subject to the whims of the government and subject to court martial, losing a pension or worse if they tried to go home.

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“Why did Ephraim Ashburn die out here in December 1865?" Wickman said. “(He) should have been home … it became a situation where the government was like, ‘Well, we still need you,’ so (they’re) out here and they really didn’t have a choice about it.”

Instead of dying in battle, Ashburn, like many in the severe winter of 1865 when 66 developed scurvy, and died of the disease. Scurvy is caused by a lack of Vitamin C in the diet and typically leads to gum disease and death from bleeding or infection.

“There were a lot of guys who were sick with scurvy, struggling to get supplied and that kind of thing,” she said.

Another name on a headstone is Sebastian Nehring, who was in the 11th Kansas Cavalry and died on July 26, 1865, at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station with Caspar Collins and others.

Wickman said Nehring was a German immigrant and in his 40s, much older than most troops. He had served in the Prussian Army and after immigrating to Kansas and struggling to provide for his family on a farm, so he joined the army.

“When Caspar Collins gave the order to retreat and they are calling ‘retreat’ from the bridge for the guys to come back … he didn’t hear it,” Wickman said. “I think because his primary language is German, it didn’t register. And so one of his dear friends, Henry Grimm, who is also 11th Kansas and also from Germany, hollered at him in German and when Henry did that he was hit in the back with three arrows.”

Somehow Grimm survived the arrows. But Grimm family members told Wickman  the story he passed down was that his friend Nehring was hung up trying to do something with his horse and because of that delay was killed.

Wickman said her research showed some of the fatalities involved former Confederate soldiers who were in prison camps in the north and given the opportunity to swear an oath of allegiance and join a U.S. Army unit being sent to the West.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Confederate Soldiers"}]

She also found a couple of former Confederate soldiers who died in the region but who gave fake names, enlisted in the U.S. Army infantry and once on site started planning mutinies.

“They were actually executed,” she said. “So those guys did not get a headstone.”

Most of the 50 additional headstones have been installed this summer by Casper Monument. The remaining will go in soon. Funds have been raised through a couple of foundations as well as individual donations at the museum.

Wickman said a ceremony is planned for June 19, 2027, to honor all 61 men and will include a full military honors service and folded flag presentations for any descendants at the ceremony.

In May, the museum association received a grant from the Natrona County Recreation Joint Powers Board to fund outdoor color signs that will be placed on the museum ground. They will provide visitor information on the various units that served the Platte Bridge Station and beyond.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Book Planned"}]

The grant is also providing funds for a book Wickman is writing that will provide a short biography on all of the soldiers on the headstones. She hopes to connect with other descendants to learn more about their story before the ceremony next year and include the information in the book.

Wickman said her efforts to uncover the names involved searches through regimental records to find out where the soldiers were, who died at what location, when they died and any other additional information.

Inconsistency with how soldiers' names were spelled and conflicting death dates meant digging deeper to uncover the truth. Names on the headstones will reflect the spelling the men had on regimental records.

The fact that many of the soldiers were immigrants made the research more difficult because they might have joined the military shortly after arriving on American shores without any family ties or previous home address or location.

Among the soldiers who are getting headstones is one who died in the Red Buttes fight July 26, 1965, the same day as the Battle of Platte Bridge.

Wickman said when commemorative headstones were placed on state land outside of Casper for those involved in the Red Buttes battle in 1920, Edwin Summers was left out. He will get a headstone at the fort.

The Red Buttes cemetery is not accessible to the public and is on state land, Wickman said. 

“They didn’t want to put the headstones where the battle happened, and so they deliberately put it out in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “Which is unfortunate because it is still in the middle of nowhere.”

A list of the casualty list can be found at the Fort Casper Museum Association's website 

The headstone project also involves a walkway to the commemorative cemetery. Bricks are available to purchase and help cover costs of that project.

Wickman said her reward for the project has been making connections with a few of the soldiers’ descendants and witnessing their appreciation for the headstones and effort to remember those who served the region.

“If we don’t honor these guys from the Civil War era, what does that mean for our World War II vets 75 years from now or our Global War on Terror vets 150 years from now?” Wickman said. “Will they get neglected, or will people say the same thing? I think it’s reassuring for them, too.”

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Never Forgotten: Names Of 50 More Men Put On Fort Caspar Headstone | Cowboy State Daily</title>

About 160 years after they died serving at Platte Bridge Station and Fort Caspar, 50 more names have been added to a commemorative headstone at the historic fort. When the “Lest We Forget” project began, there was no casualty list. Now there is.

Never Forgotten: Names Of 50 More Men Put On Fort Caspar Headstone

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Raymond Felix brought a brand-new bike to Sturgis this year. New to him, that is.

“We bought it about two weeks ago,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I traded my Sporty in. I said, ‘We’re going to Sturgis, so I want a better bike.’”

The bike is a 2017 Softail Slim FLS with 5,000 miles on it, “practically new” for what was Felix’s first trip to Sturgis. He went with his family — his mom and dad, Leon and Alisa, and his girlfriend, Yessenia Marenco. 

The four were among hordes of bikers — literally thousands — riding the Devils Tower loop for a Sturgis Rally tradition called Wyoming Wednesday. 

Sundance’s claim to fame on Wyoming Wednesday is a burnout contest that’s been going on for more than half a century in front of the historic Dime Horseshoe Bar.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Legend Of The Burnout"}]

Local legends say the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s burnout actually started inside the establishment, which takes its name from a horseshoe pattern inlaid into the bar top with dimes.

The story goes that a bar patron decided to do a burnout inside the bar and the owner chased him out.

Other riders joined the fun, putting on their own spontaneous burnout event on the street in front of the bar.

It started a tradition that has continued ever since, though these days it’s more of a planned thing, complete with bike mechanics who swap used tires for new, saving the bikers’ good tires for their return trip to either the Sturgis Rally or home. 

The bar has since also built a stage for the bikes, elevating them above the crowd so everyone can see. That also helps keep the smoke over everyone’s heads. 

A set of fans blows the clouds of acrid, billowing smoke away from the bikers. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Big Father-Son Moment"}]

Felix had a dream for his first Sturgis, and watching the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s Burnout in Sundance was it.

But he didn’t just watch the burnout as he’d planned.

Jess Jones, owner of the Dime Horseshoe Bar along with her husband, Casey, is persuasive that way. 

She kept calling for entries, and Felix’s dad, Leon, kept urging Raymond to enter.

“They talked me into it,” he said. “I was like, ‘All right, let’s do it. I’m down for it.’”

Felix’s parents have been coming to Sturgis — and to Sundance’s burnout — since 2011. But until this year, Raymond couldn’t join them. All four work for the same delivery-driving business, which makes planning time off together tricky.

“It’s hard for all of us to take vacation at the same time,” Leon said. “This is the first year we got to do it.”

A friend showed Leon and Alisa all the cool places to go, including Sundance. 

“We love it,” Alisa said. “It’s amazing. Seriously, every year we look forward to coming.”

For Leon, finally sharing Sundance with his son — and seeing him compete so well in the burnout — was not just a great memory. It is a father-son milestone he cherishes. 

“It’s like a father’s dream to have your kid come ride with you,” he said. 

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Felix had been told he probably wouldn’t be able to cycle his engine past fourth gear. 

But when he hit four without signs of strain, he kicked it up to five and then six. 

Smoke, he explained, is the whole point of a burnout. 

“The bigger the cloud of smoke is, the better,” he said. “So you go through first, second, third. You want to keep the gears shifting. But so it handled six just fine.”

Family and friends replayed the moment he hit sixth gear, and Raymond’s eyes lit up.

“Check this out,” he exclaimed. “The sixth-gear pin! I was in sixth gear!”

That ultimately earned him enough crowd appreciation that he took third place, along with a $250 cash prize. 

First place, and the $750 in prize money, went to Bill Snider, a regular from Michigan who said he will put the money back into his bike.

Snider was in Sundance hanging out with his daughter, Erica Goble, and her fiancé.

Goble drove to Sundance from Colorado to be with her dad, and said she thought the event was “pretty cool.”

Snider told Cowboy State Daily he spends little time at the Sturgis Rally itself, preferring to spend his rally time in tiny Sundance and Hulett in Wyoming.

“We go over there, but we go over there once, buy a T-shirt and leave,” he said.

In Wyoming, he said, he has found people are welcoming and treat you like family — and that’s what keeps him coming back.

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<title>Why Sturgis Riders Have Packed Sundance, Wyoming, For 50 Years Of Its Annual Burnout | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally riders have packed Sundance, Wyoming, for its annual burnout for more than 50 years. Legend has it the burnout started inside the Dime Horseshoe Bar. “The bigger the cloud of smoke is, the better,” says one rider.

Why Sturgis Riders Have Packed Sundance, Wyoming, For 50 Years Of Its Annual Burnout

High on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, a decaying log cabin that once anchored one of Wyoming’s old range-sheep operations was in danger of being lost after the Niland family’s long-held Forest Service arrangement ended.

Instead, the Little Snake River Museum, is working to turn it into a public window into the state’s historic sheep industry, which once moved thousands of animals — and dozens of wagons — through the high country every summer.

Lela Emmons is director of the Little Snake River Museum. The Divide Sheep Camp cabin she is working to save sits on a 40-acre permit area on the Medicine Bow-Routt. 

It served as the summer headquarters for the Divide Sheep Company, a mid-sized sheep operation owned by the Niland family and established in 1909, four years after the Forest Service itself was created. 

Emmons described the arrangement as a “100-year lease” and said the family’s ability to maintain the cabin was tied to continuous operation of the site. 

After Tom Niland’s death, the family was required to decide whether to remove, relocate, or donate the structure to an entity such as the Little Snake River Museum for preservation.

They chose the latter, to keep the cabin’s history intact.

“This is one of the few remaining summer cabins for the sheep industry,” Emmons said. “This infrastructure of corrals and cabins and even the sheepherder art on the trees is all going away. There will be nothing left if we don’t preserve this cabin.”

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The Niland cabin served as a collaborative hub for more than just the Niland family, which adds to the site’s historic significance.

“There would be like 50 wagons parked up there in the summer,” Emmons told Cowboy State Daily. “They would park all the wagons and then from this point on they would pack with horses. They’d have two or three pack horses and then they’d trail those up in the mountains and then they’d use little teepee tents.”

The tents had just enough room for a dry place to sleep, as well as little stoves to keep warm or cook food at night.

“They had little kitchen boxes, and they would spend the summer that way,” Emmons said. “They didn’t have wagons up in the mountains because it was too hard to get around in them.”

Many different operations used the Niland camp as a staging point. The camp had a centralized supply depot, as well as corrals and other workspaces where different operations could separate, count, brand, and dip their sheep for ticks.

“They didn’t have the spray-on stuff we have now, one shot gets rid of ticks,” Emmons said. “So they’d have to dip them. And before they’d come out, they had this tool where they’d dunk their head under and then pull them back up with the other.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Just In The Nick Of Time"}]

The Niland cabin looks, at first glance, like a hundred other weather-beaten log buildings in Wyoming’s high country. 

But many signs of its deeper history are still there, written on the walls and on the aspen trees that surround this little cabin in Carbon County.

Saving the cabin and all of its history has come just in the nick of time, too.

“This wall,” Emmons said, gesturing toward a newly built wall with pine logs on its face, “Wade (Golden) shored it up with things to hold the roof and then he gave (the wall) just one pound, and the whole thing just fell over. It was so rotten.”

Golden is part of a core restoration crew that also includes Mathias Kneeland and Rick Beck. 

Because of that, Emmons is sure that the cabin wouldn’t have survived one more winter without falling apart. 

The cabin’s restoration will remain true to its history, Emmons said, though a few changes are being made to help ensure it survives.

“We built this deck with removable panels here so that as the snow comes off in the winter, it can drop down there and won’t just sit and be heavy,” Emmons explained.

But they left the front room’s roof pitch the same as it ever was, deeming that too big a change for the preservation of history.

Inside the cabin, there’s treasure of another sort. Guests of the cabin, through the years, have written little messages on the wall. It was part of a tradition at the cabin, talking who had been there and what had taken place when at the cabin.

“We went swimming at the second (illegible). Got leeches and we caught fish,” reads one message written by someone named Teagan. 

“Marvelous Dinner + Company even better! Love Kate,” Reads another dated June 28, 1987. 

“First time 12 yrs, I’ll be back,” is signed 9-19-96 by Bill Niland. Below that is another message from Bill that says, “I’m back for good! 5-25-03.”

Emmons has been told some of the signatures on the wall may belong to former Los Angeles Dodgers players. She’s still trying to verify which signatures belong to them, and where they might be located.

“I’m kind of hoping people don’t keep doing that,” she added. 

While the older ones are a piece of history and part of tradition at the cabin, she said newer ones would no longer be adding to that tradition, given that the cabin’s use is changing and it is no longer a sheep operation.

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Emmons has taken photographs of life at the cabin and had them placed on metal signs. She plans to place the metal images strategically around the cabin. They’ll be a window into what might have been seen from that location during Wyoming’s sheep herding heyday.

While cattle ranching dominates Wyoming’s popular western image, Wyoming’s sheep herds and wool helped build the economies of communities across Carbon County and the state.

By 1910, the Cowboy State was grazing more than 5.5 million sheep, making it one of the leading wool and mutton producers in the United States. Carbon County, meanwhile, was once the top lamb-and-wool county in the nation. 

Wyoming is also where sheep wagons were invented in the 1880s. The covered wagons had a bed, a stove, a table, and a kitchen sink, as well as some storage. They acted as tiny mobile homes for sheep herders, especially during the winter.

The industry also brought a unique mix of cultures to Wyoming, including Basque, Scottish, and Irish herders. Many of their descendants still live in Wyoming.

The Niland cabin is surrounded by an aging aspen forest. Many of the trees have names and dates or other messages carved on them.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The landscape, though, is changing."}]

“All these trees are going to die,” Emmons said. “And then all the little ones will grow up again. So, all of a sudden, you’ll have these vistas through the trees you didn’t even know you had.”

It will be a scenic spot for a public access cabin, once completed. 

Emmons hopes the cabin will prove useful for Wyoming students, whether high school or college, to learn about the forest and a little of Wyoming’s sheep herding history. 

This fall, she’s hoping to finish installing a solar powered water system for the property, as well as a functioning toilet and fire-suppression capacity, thanks to a grant from the Wyoming Community Foundation. 

“I love it up here,” Emmons said. “I would get up here about 7 o’clock in the morning or 6:30. The sun is just rising and the kids wouldn’t have shown up yet, and it’s just so peaceful up here. It’s amazing.”

The cabin’s restoration will take a few years, Emmons said, but once it’s ready there will be a picnic or a party to celebrate.

“We don’t get anything done in a hurry,” she said with a chuckle, looking around at the new fence around the property built by youths with the Wyoming Conservation Corps and the new front for the cabin that’s recently been installed. “But we do get it done eventually.”

Niland Cabin 20260809 161551 8 15 26

<title>Leeches, Lambs And Log Walls: Race Is On To Save Medicine-Bow’s Niland Cabin | Cowboy State Daily</title>

High up in the Medicine Bow National Forest, a log cabin that once anchored one of Wyoming’s old range-sheep operations was in danger of being lost forever until the Little Snake River Museum stepped up. "There will be nothing left if we don’t preserve this cabin," they say.

Leeches, Lambs And Log Walls: Race Is On To Save Medicine-Bow’s Niland Cabin

There is just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel that inspires devotion.

Peter Thieriot, for example, was warned that the Elk Mountain Hotel was nothing more than a money pit. 

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Locals joked that the hotel required a tetanus shot before walking in.

No one was laughing once Thieriot finished restoring it. 

He took the hotel back to its studs, then rebuilt it room by room by room.

Nine layers of wallpaper were stripped from the dining room. Samples of each layer still decorate a wall just outside the dining room, even though Thieriot no longer owns the hotel.

Christine Neel is the hotel’s present-day owner. 

She did what a lot of small-town Wyoming kids wind up doing — leaving Wyoming. 

Her folks packed up and moved to Texas before Neel graduated from high school. She went to Texas A&M, becoming an “Aggie,” with a major in nursing and business.

But when the 120-year-old Elk Mountain Hotel went up for sale in January 2020, she leapt at the chance to take over the tiny boutique hotel in little Elk Mountain, where the elevation of 7,264 feet far exceeds its population of 146 people. 

“I’ve been in love with the hotel since childhood,” Neel told Cowboy State Daily. “I grew up not too far from there on a ranch … I remember going to brunches over there, attending weddings over there, before and after the renovation.”

When she heard the owners had decided to get out of the hotel business, something clicked. 

She suddenly knew she wanted to own that hotel.

“I think it just has a charm like no place else has,” she said. “I’ve always just loved it. So I couldn’t say no when the opportunity came up.”

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Neel says many travelers find the Elk Mountain Hotel by surprise when they’re traveling to Yellowstone National Park along Interstate 80. 

It’s a pleasant surprise for most. Tripadvisor shows a 4.8 out of 5-bubble rating, and it’s easy to see why.

At first sight, it’s like gazing into another time and place, and then melting into it with each step toward the hotel. None of the rooms have televisions, which deepens the effect.

There are no air conditioners humming, either.  

Tiny refrigerators and microwaves are the only nod to the modern world — and they do not bother. They’re quiet.

The hotel sits at the base of Elk Mountain, in the same spot where the Overland Trail once had its stage stop, just east of the Medicine Bow River.

The establishment was then known as The Crossing. 

After Union Pacific finished the Transcontinental Railroad, The Crossing fell into disrepair and burned down in 1905.

A man from Wales named John Evans built a new hotel on top of the ashes, naming it Mountain View Hotel. It was white with green trim then, and it’s white with green trim now.

No one knows exactly how or why Evans came to Wyoming. What is known about him is that he was adopted by the Jones family and worked for a time at the Evan's Bro’s Store in Carbon, now an abandoned coal town southwest of Medicine Bow.

Eventually, Evans married his adoptive sister, Mary Ann Jones.

The couple had 10 children, seven of whom died very young. Some of those children are buried at the old Carbon Cemetery.

When the couple moved from Carbon to Elk Mountain to work for J.S. Jones, they had two living children, Joseph and Aubrey. John ran the bar and Mary was the cook. 

They bought The Crossing from Jones in 1903. Two years later, after their son William was born, The Crossing burned down.

The couple borrowed money from Mary’s sister Catherine to rebuild the hotel. 

They had 16 bedrooms upstairs and a bar and dance hall downstairs. It had indoor plumbing and Elk Mountain’s first power plant. In addition to itself, the hotel’s coal-fired plant supplied power to neighbors as well. 

The dance hall quickly became a community gathering spot for dances, parties, political rallies and town meetings.

In the 1920s, John Evans and his boys built an open-air dance pavilion.

Many famous people would come to play at the Garden Spot Pavilion, including Lawrence Welk and Louis Armstrong.

The hotel’s 12 rooms echo some of that history. 

Two are named for both Welk and Armstrong. Others are devoted to famous Wyoming figures Jim Bridger, Esther Hobart Morris and Eliza Swain. 

Another honors someone infamous: “Big Nose” George Parrot.

Each room leans into its historic namesake, with relevant photographs, artwork, and history hanging on the walls. 

The hotel is framed by mature trees and a profusion of pink hollyhocks — perfect for the Victorian architecture.

Inside, the vintage charm continues with a warm mixture of leather, wood, and posh upholstery alongside photos of historical Elk Mountain figures that help tell the hotel’s unique story. 

The restaurant serves steaks and pasta, along with homemade desserts and cocktails. Reservations are required.

Stay there once, and it’s easy to understand why people keep coming back. Because there’s just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel. 

Built 120 years ago when an Overland Trail stage stop burned down, many warned its previous owner it would be a money pit to restore. He did it anyway, and now the Elk Mountain Hotel has become a showplace on the National Register of Historic Places.

Dixie Lynn Blaney, 70