Rawlins, Wyoming

The Old West is alive in the county seat and its neigboring towns of Carbon County.

- PETER CORBETT

Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch were well known around Carbon County in south central Wyoming in the 1890s.

After a heist, the outlaw gang would flee to Little Snake River country to elude capture, the Idaho Statesman reported in 1909.

"They would clatter into the little town of Baggs...whooping and yelling and shooting out all the panes of window glass they had missed on previous visits," the article said.

Leslie Jefferson, Carbon County Visitor's Council CEO, said the gang stayed in the Baggs roadhouse of Pearl Mathews Gaddis. "The Mathews Gaddis House was the bar of choice, she said. "They would wake up the town and have a party for a few days." Reports say local fiddler Tom Vernon would jam with Cassidy on harmonica and turn the place into a rowdy dancehall.

The Baggs roadhouse is one of many historic sites, museums, guest ranches, vintage hotels and other attractions in Carbon County's 10 small towns-Baggs, Dixon, Elk Mountain, Encampment, Hanna, Medicine Bow, Riverside, Saratoga, Savery and Rawlins, the county seat.

Rawlins is named for Gen. John Rawlins, a member of the 1867 surveying party that established a Union Pacific Railroad route across Wyoming.