Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site

Listed on National Register of Historic Places, the Wyoming Territorial Prison incarcerated vicious thieves and murderers (including the notorious outlaw “Butch Cassidy”) during the dramatic times of Wyoming’s Territorial days and early Statehood. The “Big House across the river” was dedicated to “evil doers of all classes and kinds.” This Prison is significant as one of only three federally constructed territorial penitentiaries still existing in the western United States and the only one in which most of the original structure is preserved. The Prison’s establishment and operation had a vital impact on the social development of Wyoming during its early years. Now a museum, located on 197 acres, visitors can walk into the strap iron cells where convicts were locked up, worked and lived during the 30 years the prison operated. The buildings now house convict photographs; displays relating to their confinement and working “volunteer” convicts manufacturing brooms just like they did in the 1890s. Site offers Visitor Center, restored historic buildings, museum exhibits as well as diverse natural and cultural landscape features. The history of ranching in Territorial Wyoming is a story all to itself. Romanticized by Hollywood, yet oftentimes, stark and full of daily drudgery, the westward bound pioneers carved out their living in meek and meager ways. The ranch exhibit pays tribute to these pioneers through a display of historic log structures move from the Chimney Rock Ranch, Albany County, Wyoming.