The first weekend of August just wasn't the same this year in the tiny town of Medicine Bow, Wyo. The annual Battle of Old Wyoming punk rock festival was called off because the historic Virginian Hotel, which has hosted the party for the past decade, ran out of rooms.

"Carbon County was awarded a huge wind turbine deal and the Virginian is booked for the entire summer," event organizers posted on Facebook. "We decided we just couldn’t pull it off the way it deserves and keep our people healthy and safe. We also agreed that the Battle can never be anywhere but Medicine Bow."

The festival began in 2008 when Brandon Shulte and his friend Thomas French were driving through Medicine Bow and stopped for lunch at the Virginian Hotel. Named after Owen Wisler's famous novel, the three-story Renaissance Revival building has been a local landmark for over a century.

French thought it was a perfect place to throw a party, so he booked a block of rooms and invited all of his friends to a free concert. The two-day festival has grown over the years, attracting dozens of bands and several hundred fans from around the country. It is also the biggest event of the summer for merchants in the town of 284.

"This is basically the one gathering in Wyoming where all of the weirdos are the ones that come to center-stage," Shulte told Oil City News last summer. Although the Battle of Old Wyoming won't happen this year, the punk rockers are already plotting their return in 2020.

"Cheers to the Virginian for their well deserved constant flow of cash this summer season," they said on Facebook. "Number 11 is going to happen, just not this year."

 

 

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