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Hogg Chessman McDonald Bank - TravelStorys

WY Tour Meeteetse

Location Trip Time Travel Type
Wyoming 30 minutes

Hogg Chessman McDonald Bank

The Hogg, Cheeseman, MacDonald Bank built in 1903 from bricks made locally on Iron Creek. Now, remember these old Scottish families had the wealth, and always celebrated Bobby Burns Day. The building had meeting rooms upstairs where the Greybulll Club and City Council convened. Meeteetse was incorporated in 1901, after an anonymous letter was received by the famous cashier, Dean Hayes, detailing plans for some members of the Hole in the Wall Gang to rob this particular Meeteetse bank. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had gone to South America by this time, so the new town's first order of business was to hire a marshal, buy shackles, handcuffs and a marshal's badge, and to get to work on plans for a brick jail. The Hole in the Wall Gang then changed plans, and decided on a job out of state, where the town hadn't already been alerted and the pickings would be much easier. Area cattle and sheep men held meetings in the bank to decide what to do about a local rancher, A.A. Anderson and his unpopular views on a forest reserve and a game preservation area. In that time, it was unthinkable that some eastern artist, who had exhibited in the Paris Salon, would tell Meeteetse ranchers that they couldn't use the range around them in any way or hunt any animal they wanted to. Anderson won the day and set up the Yellowstone Forest Reserve in 1902, which is now the Shoshone National Forest, the first national forest in the United States. Sensible game laws then came into existence, which halted the extermination of wildlife. It is really quite remarkable that such farsighted early policies came out of this small frontier community.

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