Local legends about rowdy saloons and brothels, possible rustling at the train depot, memories from the region’s longtime residents, and a collection of photos and memorabilia are the puzzle pieces that remain for the once-bustling town of Garland.

When those pieces are connected together it forms a vivid picture of a boom town that transformed Park County into an agricultural hotspot with one of the most advanced irrigation systems in the country — an engineering feat some say would be impossible to accomplish today due to the high cost, high risk and even higher demand for physical labor.

But, it was more than just building dams and digging ditches. Communities sprung up across the Big Horn Basin and each has a story to tell. On Saturday, a busload of 41 people, four of which grew up in Garland, took a trip down memory lane as local historians, longtime residents and representatives from the Homesteader Museum toured the Garland and Penrose area while swapping stories.

“My favorite part of this job is doing these tours,” Rowene Weems, director and curator of the Homesteader Museum,  said. “It went really well, the weather held out, there was no mud and we didn’t get stuck.”

Some of the tour’s spots were located behind fields, requiring the packed bus to take some narrow dirt roads. On top of the 41 guests, there were an additional 10 people on the waiting list to take the tour, she said.

The high level of interest was likely fueled by curiosity about the rural history and the local legends — some of which turned out to be true, Weems said.

Digging into it

Burchell Hopkin kicked off the tour by showing guests some of the tools used to build the gravity-fed canal system that brings water from the Buffalo Bill Dam down to the rest of the Big Horn Basin.

On display at the museum are a four-horse fresno and a two-horse slip scraper, essentially heavy metal scrapers used to dig up and move dirt.

“It was pretty labor intensive,” Hopkin said. “Scrapers weren’t for the weak.”

Because the work was so difficult, it was important to get it done right the first time around — and that meant getting the water to flow fast enough to reach all the fields but not so fast that it caused damaging erosion.

Ideally, the ditches needed to drop 2 inches every 100 feet and building drops controlled the grade. There are 20 drops in the canal from Ralston to Garland and most are located at the canal crossings, Hopkin said.

The terrain didn’t always make a straight shot ditch possible, so water had to be run underground in a siphon or flumed over gaps.

“I would call a flume a ditch in the sky,” Hopkin said.

A project of this magnitude required a concerted effort between four districts and 98,000 acres: Garland, Frannie, Heart Mountain and Powell.

The Garland and Heart Mountain districts each covered 35,000 acres, and the Frannie and Willwood districts each covered 14,000 acres.

Like many homesteading areas, getting the crews of men to behave meant separating them from alcohol so Powell was dry until the mid-1930s while Garland provided the recreation that their employers were trying to limit.

But unlike today, it took about 45 minutes to get to Garland from Powell unless a train happened to pass through. 

New experiences

The Garland and Penrose area is packed with historical sites that can be difficult or even impossible to find without someone to guide the way. Even some of the tour guide guests visited places they’d heard about but had never seen before.

“It is hard to pinpoint things unless someone tells you,” Christy Fleming said.

Among those new experiences was the Mormon Dam near Road 6. That waterway pumps out 17,000 cubic-feet of water per second, Beryl Churchill said.

Sunnybrook Farm’s owner, Ray Green, lived on the farm near the dam from 1941-1971 then moved 7 miles toward Willwood. While on the tour, it was his first time at the Mormon Dam.

His family moved to the area in 1932 where they grew everything from sugar beets and malt barley to beans, corn and hay, he said.

“Garland was dead by the time Shoshone opened up,” Green said.

Not too far from the dam there used to be a swinging bridge that shortened the walk to school considerably, Hopkin said.

In addition to fighting the elements, homesteaders were up against illness as well. All of Penrose was quarantined in 1913 for diphtheria and typhoid fever due to bad drinking water, Churchill said.

Although there aren’t many residents in the area now, the Penrose church had more than 100 members in 1914 and its cemetery is still maintained, Hopkin said.

Springs were dug out in the area to provide safe drinking water and Hopkin recalled drinking straight out of one on his family’s property not too far from the Mormon Dam and Sunnybrook Farm.

Piecing together the Garland puzzle

Current and former residents of Garland shared their stories with Fleming as the display at the museum was gathered and preparations for the tour were underway.

“Garland was just a giant community,” Fleming said.

Some remnants of the once thriving community remain, either in their original condition like the Sunnybrook Farm sign, or with a new purpose such as the post office being used as a house.

The Garland Church, formerly known as the Garland Community Club, still stands and is used today.

“I consider the church and former community hall the heart of Garland,” Fleming said.

Residents spoke about the building with “high respect” and recalled gatherings where everyone brought meals for dances, card games and other events, she said.

The large two-story building was completed in 1913 and used as a school for 10 years before Garland combined with the Powell schools, Weems said.

Among the tour participants was Eric Mortenson from Burlington, who was taking notes on the history of the area for his neighbor, Jerry George, a high school teacher in Burlington.

“He loves local history a lot, but had a funeral to go to — he wanted to know who settled Garland,” Mortenson said.

Unfortunately, that’s a question that’s not so easily answered

Mysteries remain

There are several theories on how Garland got its name, Weems said.

Garland started in 1901 when Fred and Charles Garland started a freight station. Meanwhile an employee of the U.S. Forest Service was also named Garland and there is a stove from the area that also has Garland on it, she said.

“It seems logical to name it after the brothers,” Weems said.

Remnants of the original town remain along Lane 7 and Road 4 where there used to be hotels, saloons, a bank and a post office. The post office’s flagpole remains intact and the mill is still in operation near the railroad tracks, but for different crops than 100 years ago.

“For as long as I’ve known it, this has been a bean mill,” Fleming said.

In the past, it was used for alfalfa and potatoes then shipped down the adjacent railroad. She also recalled bringing grain there as a child.

The original depot stood about a quarter-mile away from the current crossing, Fleming said. The structure is no longer there and the original tracks were moved since getting through the Pryor Gap was not an easy route to Billings, Montana.

The Garland brothers had a warehouse near the tracks where crops and livestock were shipped out and newcomers arrived.

The business section of Garland faced the railroad along with the hotels where newcomers would stay until housing arrangements were finalized. Meanwhile, the livestock pens were across the tracks and some local stories tell of people starting their own sheep flocks by picking out “sick” ones, Fleming said.

Nearby was a store on the old Main Street where bread could be purchased for 25 cents, tour participant Joyce Green recalled.

On the same street there was a bank that closed 15 years after it opened in 1905, causing Garland families to lose their entire savings — valued at nearly $1,000, Fleming said.

In the same neighborhood were a mercantile, newspaper, butcher shop, drug store and car dealership, she said.

“Believe it or not — he had a couple of cars at a time,” Fleming said.

A car dealership wasn’t the only unexpected service in the Garland area.

“There used to be brothels or ‘happy houses,’” Fleming said. “There were bars and saloons so it made sense those were there.”

Although it no longer exists, Fleming said she was told a pole in a nearby field is about where the brothel once stood.

Connecting with the world and each other

Garland didn’t have electricity for decades after it was founded, but it had a phone at the mercantile by 1901, Fleming said.

Much like modern mail, the post office would get backed up during the holidays and the Garland post office stayed open through Christmas Eve so local kids could get their presents, Fleming said.

Joyce Green lived just down the road from Garland at Sunnybrook, but their mailing address wasn’t labeled as Garland, she said. But, their neighbors were part of the Garland system.