Trip to Powell, WY

Since we were going to take a long trip today to the Bighorn Canyon which is a 2 hour drive, we decided to stay closer to home yesterday and visit Powell, a city that is about 20 miles east of Cody. We will do Billings, MT,  another time. There were 2 very interesting attractions on our trip yesterday. The first stop was at the Homesteaders Museum which is, as the name implies, a collection of machinery, documents, pictures, stories and other paraphernalia of the original Homesteaders to this area:

We saw, among other things in the museum, an area containing volumes of homesteading claims for the area that revealed purchases of land in the area that averaged $.10 an acre. We saw several 200 acre parcels that were purchased for $20. There was another building adjacent to the main log building above that contained many of the old machinery that was used to develop the land:

After a lunch stop at McDonald's, we headed to a very touching visit to a place just off the main highway between Cody and Powell called The Heart Mountain Relocation Center. This is one of the areas that housed about 10,000 Japanese people during WW II. The whole story of this center was portrayed in a walking tour of the area where these buildings were once standing between 1942 - 1945:

The only buildings that remained from that time were a few remnants of the hospital facility:

The real story and irony of this whole experience was the story of the more than 750 Japanese men from this encampment that served in the US armed forces, defending our country. There were 15 of these soldiers that gave their lives for our country as portrayed in this memorial:

It was certainly a happy day in 1945 when they were all loaded onto trains and given free travel back to their real homes.

Today is our trip to the Bighorn Canyon with Karen and George, her husband. We will leave around 11:30 for our scheduled boat tour at 2 PM. It should be another fun day...