Boring Wyoming Town is JAM PACKED With History

When I first drove out to Medicine Bow, it was out of curiosity — I wanted to understand why anyone would choose to live in such a remote corner of the world. With all due respect to the locals, when I arrived, I was unimpressed. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would stay. Then I read the famous novel The Virginian and realized the opening lines capture the same sentiment: the main character steps off the train in the little Western town and sees it exactly as I did.

But Medicine Bow has a history that demands attention.

Long before settlers arrived, the area was an important gathering place for nomadic Native American tribes, including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux. They came for the high-quality mountain mahogany used to make bows and returned annually for spiritual ceremonies known as “making medicine.” Later, trappers and mountain men frequented the area for its abundant natural resources.

Today, the town sits in what is now Carbon County and takes its name from the valley where these tribes gathered to craft bows and hold their ceremonial rites. Medicine Bow may seem remote at first glance, but its story runs deep, echoing centuries of human presence and purpose.

The town of Medicine Bow owes its location to the first transcontinental rail line. The railroad needed coal and water along its route, and the area became a crucial hub for supplying timber — particularly lodgepole pine for railroad ties — a labor-intensive process known as tie hacking.

Medicine Bow later gained lasting fame as the setting for The Virginian, widely considered the first true Western novel. The town’s iconic Virginian Hotel, built in 1911 by founder August Grimm, stands as a monument to that literary legacy. Today, the Medicine Bow Museum preserves artifacts from this era, offering visitors a glimpse into the town’s storied past, according to www.medbowmuseum.org.

This unassuming little grass airstrip once helped shape America.

Medicine Bow has always been a humble town, but at one point it was far from insignificant. It served as a stop on the nation’s first coast-to-coast railway, its first transcontinental highway, and the country’s first air mail service. The town even earned literary fame as the setting of the best-selling novel The Virginian.

Then came the daredevils of the sky.

Long before commercial air travel, the United States Postal Service experimented with flying mail coast to coast. Pilots strapped themselves into old, sometimes barely reliable World War I surplus planes, risking their lives to shave weeks off cross-country delivery times. Medicine Bow’s airstrip was one of the key links in this bold, slightly foolhardy experiment that would eventually revolutionize communication across the country.

At the little Medicine Bow Airport, a cement arrow still points the way for pilots to their next stop. Across the country, these arrows guided early air mail flyers, helping them navigate before modern instruments existed.

To stay on course, pilots flew low, tracing the Union Pacific railroad tracks across Wyoming and beyond. Towns like Cheyenne, Medicine Bow, and Rock Springs served as essential refueling and repair points.

Flying mail wasn’t just risky — it was deadly. Many planes crashed for any number of reasons, and some pilots lost their lives. The men who survived became legends, celebrated in newspapers nationwide.

Their stories are captured in the book Wyoming Air Mail Pioneers, co-written by Starley Talbott and Michael E. Kassel, with a foreword by local Cheyenne flight school owner Doni Feltner of Wings of Wyoming. The book chronicles the heroes, the daredevils, and the early innovators who helped connect a nation by air.

You can find Wyoming Air Mail Pioneers at your local Wyoming bookstore or order it online.