Elk lodge big horn mountains11/8/2023 The locals scoffed at these "remittance men," who lived on monthly checks from their London bursars. In the 1880s, in fact, when cowboy mania swept the British upper class, dozens of daring young men just out of Oxford and Cambridge forsook the pleasures of the Victorian parlor for the perils of ranching along the base of the Big Horn range. There's nothing particularly unusual about British nobility visiting this remote region of rock and ranch just below the Montana border. It was harder to fit a vacation into the queen's crowded schedule, but this year, after her tour of Canada, the monarch set two weeks of private repose in the United States - first in the Kentucky bluegrass country and now in the tall yellow prairie of rural Wyoming. The queen's husband, Prince Philip, was the first to come, on a five-day fishing and hunting trip in 1969. Lady Porchester described Big Horn in such glowing terms that nothing would do but a royal inspection. The reason for the queen's visit here goes back to 1955, when Jean Wallop, after a trip to England, fell in love with and married Lord Porchester, a close friend of the royal family who is manager of the Royal Stables. 335: "Big Horn School Welcomes Queen Elizabeth." The issue was resolved by the students at the town school, who took matters into their own capable hands and stretched a big yellow banner across Rte. "As my wife said," Skip Israel notes, "what do you say to a queen?" There was also a protocol problem involved in the banner question. Big Horn is not big on political protest. There was some discussion around the wooden bench in front of the Mercantile as to whether the town ought to hang out a welcoming banner.Ĭhristina Mulkerrin, a spunky immigrant from County Galway, proposed hanging an Irish flag from the porch of the Bozeman Trail Inn, but this plan was rejected. In any case, the people of Big Horn are determined to see to it that the visitor gets the privacy she is seeking. They asked county Sheriff Bill Johnson if the start of the season might be postponed. The thought of all those armed men and women traipsing around sent a shiver up the spines of the advance people when they came here this spring to plan the queen's vacation. For the first day of the hunt, schools are closed, offices are deserted, and the pickup trucks heading for the woods crowd together into the area's annual traffic jam. 15 is the opening day of deer and elk season. 15 - and that day, Monday, is every bit as important to Wyoming as Election Day is to Washington. Mack Bryant, head of the Chamber of Commerce, has called the royal vacation here "the most public private event I've ever heard of."īut even in Sheridan people have their minds on other things, because the queen's visit will last until Oct. There seems to be a little more excitement six miles up the road in Sheridan, the county seat, where the Queen's Anglo-American entourage of media, security and other retainers has taken over the Holiday Inn. "But this was advertised private, a private vacation, and okay - if folks want to be left alone, we might just as well leave them alone." "Well now, yes, sure, we're glad the queen is coming," says Skip Israel, the easy-going proprietor of the Big Horn Mercantile, a 102-year-old enterprise that serves as the town's gas station, grocery, post office and rumor central. Her majesty will spend four days there, at the apron of the ruggedly beautiful Big Horn mountains, with her dear friend Lady Porchester, nee Jean Margaret Wallop, a Big Horn native and sister of another prominent Big Hornian, Sen. That history may explain why people here say they will be somewhat underwhelmed Friday afternoon when a long limousine carrying Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, Sovereign Head of the British Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith, is due to arrive in this tiny town and pull up to the white frame house at 56 Canyon Ranch Rd. Cary Grant once strolled both blocks of the main street. Ernest Hemingway wrote "Wine of Wyoming" in a cabin outside this petite prairie pit stop, which has a population of 217 humans and about the same number of horses. Teddy Roosevelt himself shot bull elk on the black-lava mountain ridge nearby. Never let it be said that Big Horn is unaccustomed to big shots.
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