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The Town of "Basin City" was founded
in 1896 by Winfield S. Collins expressly to be the county seat of newly
created Big Horn County. The Town of Otto on the Greybull River to
the west of the site of Basin was a well established village and first
was considered by Collins, but he could not come to terms with Frank Woods
the owner of most of the lots, so Collins selected a site for his town
on the bluffs west of the Big Horn River, a sagebrush flat covered with
ant hills and prairie dog holes. When the election was held in the
vast county (the entire Big Horn Basin) in November of 1896, Basin won
the race by 44 votes. There were only 33 voters living on the townsite,
most of whom were living in dugouts. One of the first houses in Basin
was that of Collins, which was moved from Bonanza.
The town's first building housed the "Basin City Herald" a newspaper run by Tom Gebhart and Tom Magill and they used much imagination and later admitted that they told many lies in describing the new townsite. Zane and Richardson started a general store, there was a building known as a hotel and restaurant, a barn and a building west of the courthouse square which was used for the county offices. In January of 1899, after an open winter, a blizzard roared in from the north and the only thermometer in town dropped to 50 below zero and remained there for several weeks. By the time the supply wagons were able to make it to Billings, Montana (north 130 miles) and back, through the snowdrifts, the residents of Basin were almost out of food. They no longer wrote their friends in the east about living in the "banana belt" of Wyoming.
The editor of Volume I of the "Basin City Herald" wrote on August 26, 1896
the following! "Basin City - founded by the people and for the people."
Basin was known as "the Gem of the Plains, a charming location with glorious
scenery with beautiful surroundings, queen city of the state nearest the
center of population, easiest approach, accessible at all times, the center
of a rich farming section. The townsite being on the eastern slope,
is bathed in
The Town grew fast in its first years. It was incorporated in 1902 and the "City" was dropped from the name by the government. Basin's first Mayor was W.S. Collins. The year of 1910 was one of much building in Basin: the Basin Hospital was built in the north part of town, the Markham Hotel, the Catholic Church, a brick building used for county offices and jail along with a Carnegie Library was built on the county square, a large two story brick grade school in the west part of town was built with bricks made at a kiln site north of Basin, canals were being dug and a number of elegant two story houses were built around this time.
In 1909 a newspaper correspondent from the Denver Post wrote; "The
Town of Basin is an anomaly in the otherwise wild setting of Big Horn County.
It has a population of about 1,000 and in no place in the west, and in
few places in the east of its size, are seen so many evidences of civic
development. The Town has splendid water and sewage systems,
Oil and natural gas had been discovered a year or so earlier in what is known as the "torchlight" field in the barren hills east of town. Basin was always a town of many lodges and clubs with a large percentage of very well educated people. It never went through the stage of being a "wild cow town" as did the towns closer to the cattle ranches at the foot of the mountains. By 1906, the citizens had built a two story building on fourth street where lodges met, the Militia held its meetings, court and dances were held. The raid on the jail in 1903, in which two prisoners and a deputy sheriff were killed, was one of the most sensational occurances, but no one was indicted during a Grand Jury hearing although everyone in the county knew who the perpetrators were. |