Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

MEETEETSE — Miss V, the Gypsy Cowbelle, will perform an outdoor concert at Meeteetse Museums starting at 6 p.m. next Friday, July 20. Miss V will perform original songs and cowbilly favorites that relate to homesteading and the heritage of Wyoming.

Teaming with the Cowbelle this year is Clay Gibbons of Worland, who will present his popular “Story of the Ghost Town of Arland.” Admission is free.

Delicious chili by the Meeteetse Senior Center will be available for purchase during the event, so come hungry! All sales proceeds will go to help the Senior Center, according to musuems director David Cunningham.

Miss V has been performing her brand of “genuine cowbilly music” around the country and Wyoming for years. In addition to musical performances in 25 states, “V” hosts workshops nationwide and in 2013 completed her debut documentary, “The Modern Day Homesteader.” She has produced five CDs, performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, is endorsed by the Wyoming Arts Council, and has been featured in books, magazines, videos, television shows, newspapers, and radio interviews coast to coast since 1995.

Much of her life experience came from spending fourteen years on a remote Wyoming ranch where she picked up homesteader skills, such as haying and logging with horses, sewing clothes on treadle machines, building tack and banjos with hand tools, hunting, canning, brewing herbal medicine, trailing cattle and leading pack strings through the mountains.

Her homesteader lifestyle is very apparent in her music.

The Cowbelle’s musical performance is supported in part by an award from the Wyoming Arts Council through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

ARLAND PRESENTATION

Joining the Cowbelle this year is Clay Gibbons. For years, Gibbons presented his history of Arland on location for the Meeteetse Museums but will now tell its story on stage as part of the outdoor concert. His interest in history reaches well beyond Arland. He was instrumental in the placement of five historical markers, which designate key Wyoming places and events. He also recently played the sheriff in the film “Absaroka.”

Gibbons’ presentation focuses on Arland, a rough frontier settlement formerly located up Meeteetse Creek. It was founded in 1884 by Victor Arland, a French businessman, and John Corbett, a buffalo hunter. At its zenith, the town of Arland had a store, saloons, a post office, a two story hotel, blacksmith shop, and a red light district. A mail and passenger stage ran through Arland every week, which helped the town become a trade center for the area ranches and a draw for cowboys and other tough characters, Cunningham said. Unfortunately, with the nearest law 150 miles away in Lander, there was no one to keep the peace and violence soon reared its head. On February 22, 1888, Vic Arland shot and killed Broken Nose Jackson in self-defense at a dance in Arland. In revenge, Jackson’s friend, Bill Landon, shot and killed Vic Arland at Dunivan’s Saloon in Red Lodge, Montana. After Victor Arland’s death, the town of Arland devolved into a hangout for outlaws. Black Jack Miller, Butch Cassidy, W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill Hoolihan, Rose Williams, Sage Brush Nancy, and Belle Drewry (aka the “Lady in Blue”) were just some of the characters who hung out there. When all was said and done, a number of the above (and some others) ended up dead, all part of a web of lawlessness, romance, and murder.

Today, nothing remains of Arland but the stories, many of which will be told by Gibbons on July 20.

For additional information about this event, call 307-868-2423 or email [email protected].