Wandering Amylessly: Traveling to Amelia Earhart’s place in Kirwin, WY

September 4, 2022

By Amy Larsen
Wyo4News feature writer

Recently I had the opportunity to take an adventure on a Razor into the ghost town of Kirwin, WY, with a company that provides all you need for a Kirwin ghost town tour. I am sure the first question many of you are asking is the one I asked, Where the heck is Kirwin, Wyoming?

Turns out Kirwin is located about 34 miles southwest of Meeteetse, Wyoming, in the Shoshone National Forest on the Wood River. Like many of the ghost towns in Wyoming, it was founded in the late 1800s when prospectors found gold in the hills and mountains of Wyoming. While old mining towns fascinate me, the main reason I wanted to go up there was that in 1934 Amelia Earhart visited the Double D Dude Ranch (formerly the town and surrounding area of Kirwin) and fell in love with the area. So much so that she had asked the ranch owner to build her a cabin up by Kirwin. Unfortunately, it was never finished, as in 1937, she disappeared, and her husband called off the project. You can still hike up to the cabin site, about a mile from Kirwin, and see the bit of progress that was made and why she had fallen in love with that area.

As I was making my way to Kirwin on the dirt roads, I couldn’t help but think of what it must have been like to travel there in 1904 when Kirwin was established. There were over 200 people, buildings, a hotel, a boarding house, and general stores. Basically, a community nestled against the mountain range.

It was a unique mining town as well, as families lived there, a real community, not a camp. However, it had no saloons or brothels! While lots of money was dumped into the exploration and development of mines in the area, not much ever came out of Kirwin. By 1907, after a particularly harsh winter that produced a massive avalanche that took the lives of three people, most of the residents moved out.

The mining claims switched hands several times, and more attempts were made to make a go of it, especially in 1962, when a rich deposit of copper was found. However, the price of copper was low, and the price for the startup was too high to make a go of it. By 1992 Kirwin was donated to the public, and the Shoshone National Forest manages the area. 

As I was driving, the owner of the tour company Thom often would say things like, “can you imagine coming from back east and just seeing these views, experiencing the outdoors!” He has so much excitement and genuine love for the area; it’s contagious. We talked a lot about how Kirwin was the destination, but the journey to get there was the experience as you drove through forests, crossed rivers, and just breathed in the fresh mountain air. I agreed with him, but my thoughts wandered in a different direction; it went back to what those early settlers must have been thinking as they made their way to an unknown place that only held a promise. It had to have been an adventure they hoped would lead to a better life.

I kept thinking there was no way people would go by stagecoach or horse and wagon along these roads, with all their belongings, if they were not people full of hopes and dreams. They wanted something more, something I think we all still, in our own ways, search for, and it is different for all of us.

I thought about Amelia Earhart, who had already flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean and yet found something in Kirwin she didn’t find any place else she had been on earth, something that held a promise. While the road we were on was called Wood River Road, it really was a road of hopes and dreams.

It reminded me in many ways what travel has become for me. Sure, most of my travel is related to work, and most of the travel on the early days of Wood River Road was related to work as well, but there always seems to be something to discover, something to explore, something that encompasses hopes and dreams. It becomes a part of who you are, and in many ways, you become a part of its story as well. Something in you changes, and even if you were only there for three minutes, three years, or a lifetime, you experienced life in a new way.

I did take the hike into Amelia Earhart’s cabin site and even sat down and had a drink (of water) with her on what I suspect would have been her front porch. I thanked her for opening the doors for me to be a modern adventurer, to be the example of taking chances, exploring the world, even if it’s just around me, and taking a moment to just find peace. For just a moment, I got to sit in a moment with her, which was amazing. I finished by thanking her, the earlier prospectors, and everyone else that has paved many roads for us with hopes and dreams. My thoughts kept going back to hoping, in my own way, I am leaving a bit of a path for another person wandering through life as well.  

As J.R.R Tolkien once wrote, “Not all who wander are lost.” I think I would like to add to that, “many are just out searching for something more.”

May you and your families have a safe and wonderful Labor Day weekend!