What Were They Thinking?

“Did you see that dilapidated old house on the hill?” I asked George while we were out for a drive one afternoon.

“I am not buying a fixer upper for you honey.”

“The only thing that would fix this one is gasoline and a match.” I watched the old house disappear in the mirror as we continued on our outing.  It was probably built in the late 1800s by a homesteader. But I was puzzled by the location.  It was situated on the top of a hill, with no stream for water in sight, and definitely no protection from the Wyoming winds Mother Nature loves to kick-up in winter. I thought about the journey this family made to come west. Did they travel all the way from the east coast, or maybe from St. Louis? Either way their journey was long, arduous and probably filled with days of diarrhea since early travelers had a habit of camping on the riverbank where they also ate, drank, peed, and then pooped their panties from dysentery.

Let’s imagine they began their wagon journey in St. Louis and traveled over a 1000 miles before stopping on the hill and the husband saying, “Look honey, we’re home.” I don’t get it. You travel all that way and that inaccessible hill with no water, and no protection from weather or marauders spoke to you? Sure, I know streams change course and dry-up, but geologically it was obvious this hill never had water flowing around it.  Maybe there was a hidden spring at one time. Good grief, I hope so. Otherwise, I’d be inclined to say the dude who built there was high on locoweed.

These homesteads literally in the middle of nowhere are a constant source of bemusement to me.  Or as George says, it’s just one more load of craziness rattling around in my brain.

“If you were an early homesteader would you have built there?” I asked George.

“Nope. I would build next door to the bar.”

“I mean, if you were here before towns and bars where would you build?”

“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t be here before bars.” George was being obtuse, but I get what he meant.  We may be considered modern day pioneers…which means we live more than 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store, have no idea what 4G cell service is, can travel by snow machine and horseback easier than cars, and could survive without ANY modern amenities if need be. But, we’re still grateful some “real” pioneer did all the hard work 150 years ago.

It’s easy to understand why many of these homesteads quickly fell to ruin, however it saddens me to find others that are equally as abandoned but with no reason they should be. Good location, viable water, land for grazing and growing. So why did people abandon it, and no one else ever move in? I’ve lost many nights sleep puzzling through what happened to the original owner and why the home fell to ruin instead of new people moving in. 

Did all the original family in the house die from Cholera, out of fear it was then considered uninhabitable? Did a minister own it and also ran a brothel at the house?  (There’s another awesome story, as some of the biggest and best houses in the west were brothels.) Maybe every night a ghost grizzly visited the homestead terrorizing everyone, and when little Tommy disappeared all the locals said it was the ghost grizzly who stole him away. Or the government bought up the land because it had oil and gas under it and they are still secretly mining it from hidden underground cities for their own nefarious purposes.

Or maybe I need to just learn to enjoy an afternoon drive for what it is.