Hemingway in Wyoming

Sponsored by WY Humanities Council

• Location: Wyoming
• Travel Type: Driving
• Trip Time: 1 hour
• Language:

This web only version of Hemingway Highways combines the two location based audio tours that are available on the TravelStorys app. Please feel free to “play all” to listen to all of the stories, podcast style, or you can click on any of the stories to listen to them individually.

Narrated by Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, Hemingway in Wyoming explores Ernest Hemingway’s enduring connection to the state of Wyoming. This tour chronicles parts of Hemingway's life that are less well known and documented in popular literature, with a focus on time he spent in Cody, Yellowstone National Park, Casper, Cheyenne, and Laramie in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Visit the hotels and ranches he stayed at, the wildernesses he fished and hunted in, and the bars and speakeasies he frequented. You will hear stories about his time writing in Wyoming, the friendships he enjoyed during that time, and the women he married.
 
Hemingway’s visits to Wyoming typically included his four favorite past times: writing, drinking, fishing and hunting. Hemingway's original idea was to hole up at the Inn to finish his World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms. However, Sheridan, a happening place for Wyoming in 1928, had too many distractions for the author.
 
One such distraction was just around the corner from the hotel. Hemingway is said to have frequented the Mint Bar on North Main Street. At the saloon, he would drink and play poker. When Hemingway wasn't out drinking at the Mint Bar, he may have been down the street at Sheridan's Lotus Theater, now the WYO theater. The theater held movie screenings and vaudeville acts, actually for which it was famous.
 
There Hemingway could catch a film without being recognized or bothered by strangers. His first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926, and the young author was somewhat of a celebrity, especially in cities.
 
If the walls, streets, and bartenders' ghosts of this "cowboy town" near the Montana border could talk, these are the tales they would tell.
 
We hope you will get a sense of his desire to explore wild, rugged places and how the untamed scenery he visited shaped his life and writing. "When you like to shoot and fish, you have to move often, and always further out," he wrote in a 1934 Esquire magazine letter.
 
Tour Sponsors
This audio tour is presented by the Wyoming Humanities Council and Sheridan College, with support from the National Endowment of the Humanities.
 
Find More Tours Near You
If you have the opportunity to drive through Wyoming, please
consider taking the Hemingway Highways tours in person using the TravelStorys app. You can also find them here:
Hemingway Highways – Cody
Hemingway Highways – Sheridan
 
Other tours you might enjoy are the Sheridan Downton walking tour or Historic Downtown Cody. You can find many other tours in Wyoming or wherever your travels may take you at TravelStorys.com. Every place has a story.