I Brake For The Brown Signs

Anyone who rides with me while we're out exploring or on a daycation knows that I brake for the brown signs.  The brown signs signify that something of historical importance is about to come up shortly.  I love the brown signs.  It's amazing the things you can learn and the things I would never have known.  These are examples of some of those signs...

Established in the 1890’s by Tom Lanchberry to accommodate passengers and horses on the Red Lodge to Fort Washakie run, Eagle’s Nest Station, one-half mile north, operated until early in the century when railway expansion limited it’s usefulness. Stout four and six-horse teams, under salty drivers, pulling tough, coach-type wagons, were changed every 15 to 20 miles. Stages traveled 60 to 80 miles a day, tying together cattle ranches and army posts. One dollar a night for supper, bed and breakfast was the usual charge to dust-covered passengers on the long rough route from Montana’s Northern Pacific to the Union Pacific railroad in southern Wyoming.

On September 10th 1880, Victor Arland and John F. Corbett set up the first mercantile establishment in the Big Horn Basin on the Indian Trace that follows Trail Creek. Looking to the cattlemen for business, they moved to Cottonwood Creek in1883, then to Meeteetse Creek in 1884 where Arland, their final trading post, was established.

Corbett, doing the freighting from Billings for company enterprises, set up a way station in the river bottom where the freight road crossed the Stinking Water River—later renamed the Shoshone. A bridge, the first of five to span the river at this point, was constructed in 1883 at a cost of $5,000 raised by subscription from cattlemen, the Northern Pacific Railroad and Billings merchants.

Accommodations provided were a small store, a saloon and overnight lodging. The post office was established in 1885 with Corbett the postmaster. It was a gathering place and social center long before Cody came into existence twelve years later.

Corbett died in bed at his Meeteetse home December 15, 1910. His partner, Arland, went to his reward in more traditional style—dying with his boots on. In December, 1889, a shot fired through a saloon window in Red Lodge, Montana, killed him while he is playing poker.

The name of Corbett lingers on but the need for “Corbett’s Shebang” in the river bottom ended with the arrival of the railroad in November 1901.