Cowboy Carnival

The main gate at the Hyattville Community Center, 308 South Main Street, opens at 8:30 on the morning of the Cowboy Carnival, held each year on the Sunday before Memorial Day. The building behind the gate was once the Hyattville Grade School, and many of the town’s residents studied there and some taught there. At the last published gate, adults paid $15, children 12 and under $5, and an immediate family $35. Each paid admission came with a raffle ticket.

The money keeps the center running for a calendar year: operation, insurance and maintenance. “We know every non-profit has to request donations at some level,” the center’s auction page says; “we try to minimize that to once a year, and use that as a good reason to throw a big party!”

The 2026 carnival, billed as the 22nd, fell on Sunday, May 24. The organizers reported a sunny day and a crowd of 375, in a town whose own website puts the population at 75. A morning worship service organized by Todd Jones and Frank Ley opened the day.

Hyattville sits just above the confluence of Paintrock and Medicine Lodge Creeks. The center describes the town as “happily at the end of the road---if you are here you either planned well, or you’re very, very lost!” The nearest gas is 25 miles south in Ten Sleep, and the nearest groceries are about 45 miles off in Basin or Worland. Cellular coverage is thin. The center has free Wi-Fi, and a little signal can usually be had at the Post Office.

Quilts, colts, and the airstrip range

At 10 the building fills. The quilt show hangs in the main building: dozens of handmade quilts from across the Big Horn Basin, more of them, the organizers write, than the total population of Hyattville. Lin and Marylou Doyle drive across northern Wyoming collecting entries, then hang and display them. Visitors pick People’s Choice winners in each category, and some quilts are for sale. In 2026 the first-place large quilt was “Whispering Pine” by Tori Dietz of Worland. Caro Throntveit, also of Worland, placed second among medium quilts with “Tarnished Wind Mill.” Vendor tables, a book store and plant sales open at the same hour.

The History room is the work of Denise Herman, Gay Thomas, Kelly Darling, Brian Dunlop and the Hyattville History Committee. In 2026 it held:

• Harry Deveraux’s miniature Hyattville houses
• pictures of early Hyattville businesses
• a display on heritage cooking
• the Paintrock Creek Fish Hatchery, with information on fish spawning and distribution

A military museum, “continuously updated and enhanced,” stays open all day.

Outside at 10, Levi Klemm of 9K Ranch Horses presents “From the Ground Up Colt Starting.” He works horses from yearlings to three-year-olds and shows owners how to bring along their own colts or prepare them for a trainer.

At the same hour, south of town, the shooting begins at the old airstrip on the gravel road to Ten Sleep, just past the cattle guard. Every event is bring-your-own-gun. In the sharpshooter match, a $10 entry buys three shots in 30 seconds at a target 200 yards off. The smallest group takes half the jackpot, and the other half goes to the community center. Other events include high-caliber long distance, .22 caliber flipper and progression rounds, and youth target shooting for 18 and under. In 2026 at least 13 adults and 13 youths shot. Dan Holloway of Emblem won at 600 yards, Peter Smith of Worland was overall champion, and every youth entrant received a prize.

The 5K run and walk also starts at 10, from the center’s gate. Brian Dunlop organizes it. The course runs out and back on improved gravel roads:

• east toward the Bighorn Mountains on a ranch road through the trees along Paintrock Creek
• up to a ridge with a view of the valley
• just past the corrals, then back to town

The race page gives the total climb as 163.75 feet and the high point as 4,608.53 feet. In 2026 Madison Phillips of Hyattville won the women’s race. Quentin Kurtz of Princeton, Minnesota, won the men’s, with Tim Kurtz of Hyattville second. At 11 the Kids K makes a loop around town on gravel roads.

Three meats and pie in the cafeteria

Also at 11, cornhole players gather in front of the Fire Hall for a tournament that Ranchlands and Refuge organized new for 2026. The results sheet records “Lots of participants, no results.” Inside, Kyle and Jessica Tharp host a cribbage tournament in the cafeteria and ask players to bring their own boards. Joe Bain of Hyattville won in 2026.

Outside the main building, Kate Richardson gives “Outdoor Cooking on the Trail.” The program says she has packed camp food in “to interesting places and under interesting situations.”

American National Bank sponsors music at noon on the lawn. The 2026 performer was Quinlan Valdez of Casper, who plays banjo and guitar, composes and records. He has performed on PBS radio and across Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Lunch is served at 12:30: beef, lamb and pork, with side dishes that always include corn on the cob. In 2026 the meat came from Hamilton Ranch, Todd and Nancy Jones, and the Tharp family, and Paintrock Processing handled the processing. Diners sat in one of two places:

• under the tents and at the tables on the upper lawn, where Sandi and Larry Anderson had brought tables and tents for a new senior seating area outside the Quilt Show entrance
• at the shaded picnic tables down by the swings and merry-go-round

Medicine Lodge Archaeological State Park sells water and Pepsi.

Pie goes out at 1:30 in the cafeteria, topped with ice cream. The pies come from kitchens around Hyattville. Cream and meringue pies are not accepted, and Kris Robertson works each year to see that there are enough. The 2026 page announced, again, no judged contest. In 2019, when there was judging, 42 pies came in, and Lisa Stephens’s lattice-top apple won the double-crust fruit class. A photograph on the center’s site shows Phyllis Tharp and Eleanor Hamilton, captioned “Two of Hyattville’s Living Legends,” serving the entries.

Pack strings, a petting zoo, and the three o’clock auction

At 1, Todd Jones gives “Getting Prepared for your Packhorse Adventure.” He is a hunting and fishing outfitter who teaches the course at Casper College. He covers basic knots and selecting gear, while Keith Hamilton and Bobby Herman pack the horses.

Children have the old playground all day. It has a sandbox, cutouts for pictures, the original swing set, merry-go-round and monkey bars, and Carl Jones’s petting zoo by the fence, with baby animals, pony rides and a donkey ride. Cayleigh Gerstner and Maddy Philips organized the 2026 activities. At 2 the Kids BB Gun Shoot opens in the enclosed area by the Fire Hall.

The live auction and raffle drawings close the day at 3. Bob Herman and other residents solicit the items across the region and drive the miles to collect them. The 2026 list included:

• puzzles of the Wickwire horse drive from Hyattville to the Yukon gold rush, from Glen George
• a Diamond D horse halter by Audrey Pryor
• a sourdough starter kit
• bricks of .22 shells
• ten yards of gravel road base
• six cubic yards of manure compost

Vernon Ross of Ten Sleep won the Yeti cooler. Misty Hibbert of Ten Sleep drew both the shoot and dinner for eight at Twisted Tippet Ranch and the meat bundle.

Some events come and go. The Chauncy McMillan Memorial Sheep Dog Competition was canceled for 2026. For years before that, Guy and Jill McMillan Tharp, Kyle and Jessica Tharp and their families ran it. Hamilton Ranch furnished the sheep and portable corrals, and Alm Ranch and Ranchlands Ranch lent pasture. The 2019 program set the competition at 1 p.m., with dogs from across Wyoming and Montana in two classes, one of them for ranch dogs that had never entered a sanctioned trial.

There was no photo show in 2026. The 2019 program also opened with horse races at the south end of town: 220s and 440s with jackpots, and a Calcutta. Spectators backed their vehicles up to the track to tailgate. The races were free, and the carnival gate that year was $10.

A grade school for an unincorporated town

The center dates its establishment to June 16, 2003. It says the carnival began that year as a fundraising rally to organize the center and bring it to life. The same About page tells a longer story.

As the town’s population dropped below 100 and children grew few, the grade school, a State of Wyoming asset, was closed for many years and fell into disrepair. Around 2010, townspeople began meeting to discuss turning it into a community center. The State would transfer a school only to an official entity, and Hyattville is unincorporated. The one official entity the town had was the Hyattville Cemetery District, a few miles out of town, supported by a very small mill levy.

The Hyattville Community Services Association, also called the center’s Board of Directors, formed in 2013. Its purpose was to request the school for the cemetery district and then manage it. Members wrote grant requests, raised funds and held work days. A grant and matching loan from the Wyoming Business Council and the State Lands and Investment Board paid for the work:

• replacing windows more than 50 years old and a leaky roof
• rebuilding a commercial kitchen
• updating the gymnasium, boiler and bathrooms
• making the whole building fire-protected and ADA compliant

The cemetery district owns the building, and the volunteer board runs it, with positions rotating every two years. By the center’s count it is one of only two community centers in Wyoming supported entirely by community and volunteers, “that we’re aware of”; the other is the Shack in Greybull. Carnival proceeds pay for maintenance, supplies, repairs and occasional upgrades. Some is saved, in the board’s words, “for the future – for when we may not have the Cowboy Carnival any longer.”

In 2014 the Hyattville Volunteer Fire Department made the old school bus barn its home, and the barn is now filled with donated fire trucks. Any morning between 8 and 10, the Coffee Gang meets in the cafeteria at the back of the building, where the pies are served each May.