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 The Ghost Town of Kirwin

High in the Absaroka Mountains lies the ghost town of Kirwin — a place built on promise, gold, and fear.

Once the most modern mining town in Wyoming, Kirwin boasted electricity, telephones, and two-story homes in the wilderness. But after a deadly avalanche struck in 1907, the people fled… leaving everything behind — furniture, tools, even their dreams.

Or did they?

Over a century later, visitors still claim to hear voices echoing through the empty saloon — laughter, music, even arguments — as if the town itself refuses to die.

The Pioneers of Outlaw Country. 

Cowboys, Lawmen and Outlaws… to the businessmen and women who all helped shape Wyoming. 

Here are their stories

The Ghost Town of Kirwin

They said the mining town of Kirwin died overnight.

A million dollars had been poured into the remote Wood River Valley by the time the snow buried it. Half a decade of backbreaking labor, investors from back East, a modern mill, a hotel, homes — all of it left behind as if the townsfolk had vanished mid-breath.

Some say it was the avalanche that finished Kirwin. That winter of 1907, nine days of snowfall ended with a thunderous roar as the mountains gave way. Three people died, buildings were flattened, and towering pine trees were swept away. 

But when the journalists interviewed survivors, their stories told of something stranger. They didn’t just write about the avalanche — they wrote about a feeling. A deadly premonition that had swept through the camp before the snow ever fell.

By the time the thaw came, the people were gone. Tools waiting for workers that never came, a piano no longer played and telephones silent on the walls.

 It wasn’t the avalanche alone that emptied Kirwin. It was something older, deeper — a whisper that the mountain wanted to be left alone.

And yet, one man didn’t listen.

Charles Tewksbury stayed behind when the others fled, his wife Sarah by his side. Each summer they returned, reopening their hotel, keeping watch over the ruins, still chasing the copper and gold that had once built a town.

Welcome to Pioneers of Outlaw Country, Wyoming History. I am your host, Jackie Dorothy. Join me as we travel to the remote region above Meeteetse, Wyoming. 

By the late 1880s, the upper Wood River Valley had become a destination for prospectors chasing the promise of gold and copper. It all began in 1885 when Harvey Adams and William Kirwin stumbled upon valuable ore in the high country, a discovery that would give both the valley and the town its name. 

Over the next several years, more claims were staked, and by 1891, the Wood River Mining District was officially formed. Nestled at 9,500 feet in elevation, Kirwin would eventually become the heart of that district, thirty-three miles south of Meeteetse, Wyoming.

The promise of wealth drew miners, investors, and a handful of ambitious entrepreneurs who were willing to brave the isolation and the harsh winters. Several mines sprang up quickly, including the Molly Logan, the Smuggler, and the Tumlum, the latter boasting a 250-foot-deep shaft, a steam-powered hoist, and a headframe three stories tall. Ore was hauled out of the mountains the hard way — on the backs of mules — but the work attracted men who believed the promise of fortune justified the effort.

At the center of Kirwin’s development was Charles Tewksbury, who managed the Wyoming Mining & Milling Company. Tewksbury had already made a name for himself in Wyoming mining circles, having served as superintendent for the short-lived Fortunatus Mining Company near Bald Mountain City. That venture, despite pouring half a million dollars into expensive mining machinery and labor, had proven commercially futile, and the site was abandoned. 

Tewksbury’s experience there, however, did not dampen his faith in the potential of Kirwin. Alongside his wife Sarah, he operated a store and a hotel in the fledgling town, providing essential goods and lodging to the growing community.

Kirwin itself was more than a collection of cabins and tents. By the early 1900s, it had become what newspapers called a “model mining camp.” Tewksbury’s sawmill had been built to supply timber for frame houses, many with cement chimneys and fancy wallpaper. 

Some homes even included bathrooms and modern conveniences for the time. The town boasted electricity supplied by a powerhouse two miles down the river, and telephone lines stretched forty miles to Meeteetse, connecting the isolated camp to the wider world. 

Social life was carefully managed, or so the company would have the outside world believe. The companies and town leaders opposed saloons but records show that Andrew J. Stone operated a saloon that even the journalists frequented when they toured the bustling mining camp.

By 1903, the Wyoming Stockgrower & Farmer reported that the town’s promoters, Tewksbury and his competitors, two Chicago investors, had spent over $300,000 on claims and property, securing more than 1,600 acres of mining land and control over the surrounding river valley. New discoveries continued to emerge.

One claim yielded a four-foot vein of ore assaying $600 per ton, while another, the White Dog claim, eventually produced a streak of free gold and native copper that had eluded prospectors for nearly a decade.

It’s the kind of misfortune that makes you shake your head at the absurdity of it all. Dave Flockhart had spent six long years tunneling through the mountain, chipping away at rock that seemed determined to mock him. He stopped—just four feet shy of striking the very vein of gold and copper he’d been chasing for a decade. 

Flockhart sold his claim and later that same week, it was Tewksbury who drove four through the earth just four more feet, and struck the treasure Flockhart had missed. 

A stark reminder that in mining, as in life, timing and persistence sometimes matter more than effort… or that the mountain has a wicked sense of humor.

Alongside this rich bonanza of mining, the promise of the railroad loomed large. Surveyors from the Burlington and Northwestern railroads worked their way up the Wood River, establishing lines and marking routes for a potential connection to Kirwin. 

Their progress indicated a serious intent to bring the rail to the camp, which would have transformed the valley’s economy by providing a reliable route to ship ore to smelters in the Black Hills and beyond. 

For investors and miners alike, the railroad represented both the future and the validation of Kirwin’s potential — a modern mining town poised to become a commercial hub.

By 1905, Kirwin was thriving. Reports from newspapers like The Sheridan Post and The Cheyenne Daily Leader described a town where men worked constantly, mills and tunnels produced rich ore, and optimism that a smelter and railway would soon solidify the camp’s standing. 

And yet, despite all this progress — the modern buildings, the machinery, the money, the planned railroad — Kirwin still sat in the shadow of the mountains, precariously perched in a valley that, though rich in promise, would soon prove unforgiving.

Even before the snow fell, Kirwin had a history of accidents and strange forebodings. In one of the earlier incidents, miners recalled that William Chubb, a shift boss, had a strange premonition that he was in danger. Despite this feeling of dread, he went to work in the Bryan Mines, one of the claims owned by Tewksbury.  

On July 17, 1905, Chubb was drilling into the rock when he hit a missed shot.

A catastrophic explosion ripped through the mine, instantly killing Chubb. miners The force of the blast left William Goss and James Miller clinging to life amid the wreckage, and sent shockwaves through the small mountain community. 

In a remarkable display of determination, Dr. Richards of Thermopolis was summoned, racing over rugged terrain with four relays of horses to reach the injured miners. Despite his heroic effort, he arrived too late to save the men, but his ride underscored the harsh realities and relentless dangers of life in Kirwin’s high-altitude mines.

The incident sent ripples through Kirwin and Wyoming. Miners whispered about the dangers of working under the mountain, about tunnels that seemed alive, and about a foreboding that hung over the camp like a low cloud. Some even claimed to have seen or felt warnings before disasters — subtle signs that only those who worked the mountain could interpret.

That sense of unease returned in February 1907. On the morning before the fateful avalanche, Mrs. Charles Brunell reportedly expressed a chilling premonition. She told those around her she had an omen that her husband, a miner of Kirwin, would be injured. As the newspapers would later recount, this warning she had received proved tragically accurate.

The avalanche struck on February 5, 1907, after days of relentless snow. In the preceding eight days, the town had been buried under more than fifty feet of snow. From the slopes above, the avalanche — referred to as the “White Death of the Rockies” — roared down onto the Tewksbury Store and residence. 

The force of the slide crushed the building “as easy as a man would crush an egg shell,” killing Charles Brunell, his wife and miner Jack Renolds. Her premonition had come true. 

The avalanche devastated the town. 

The Wyoming Tribune reported that the road from a distance of eight miles down the mountain was completely blockaded by mammoth banks of snow that were left along the trail. People of Meeteetse, Kirwin and the entire community turned out to lend any aid that they could.

In the aftermath, the scale of destruction was clear, but so too were the remarkable survivals. One Italian miner, managed to escape the destruction with his life. Joseph Manicuel, a young miner in the upper floor of the house, was thrown through the window and was knocked unconscience but recovered, according to the Wyoming Tribune on February 14, 1907. His survival was viewed as a miracle and he was only saved because he was sitting in the upstairs window.

Newspapers also highlighted objects that endured the avalanche intact. 

A Basin Republican article on noted that a typewriter, belonging to Tewksbury, whose home was swept away and reduced to a tangled mass of wreckage, was taken from the ruins in perfect condition, and did as good work as before the slide. Some dishes, several pieces of glassware and frail furniture had been dug from the snow, unbroken. 

Amid the collapse of buildings and the destruction of pine trees, these untouched items were seen as an almost uncanny testament to the randomness of survival.

The avalanche marked the beginning of the end for Kirwin as a fully inhabited town, yet the combination of premonitions, sudden death, and remarkable survivals contributed to the valley’s mystique. 

When spring arrived after the catastrophic snowslide of February 1907, the remaining residents of Kirwin abandoned the town in haste, leaving behind not only personal belongings but also valuable tools, machinery, and mining equipment that had cost tens of thousands of dollars to haul into the remote valley. 

Buildings still held the marks of careful construction, and heavy mining machinery, electrical appliances, and even office equipment were left exposed to the elements. The tragedy had cast such a long shadow over the camp that miners refused to return to work even the richest of the mines, fearing both the natural dangers of avalanches and the ominous sense of misfortune that had seemed to haunt the valley. 

As a result, some of the most promising claims, including those with veins of gold and copper, lay untouched, their potential unrealized, a stark testament to how fear and superstition had emptied one of Wyoming’s most modern and well-equipped mining towns.

In 1921, journalist Andrew O’Donoghue visited the abandoned mining camp of Kirwin and chronicled his impressions of the valley and the town that once thrived there. He described the location as “a deep, picturesque valley in that wild and romantic region around the head of Wood River, amid ‘The Wilds of Wyoming,’ where Alpine scenery abounds on all sides.” 

Despite the grand scale of the town’s former development, O’Donoghue noted that the place was now “practically deserted,” with only echoes of the past lingering among the ruins of buildings and mines.

O’Donoghue believed that the town’s abandonment was less about the physical dangers posed by the mountains and more about the superstitions and fears of those who once lived there. 

He wrote that the beginning of the end coincided with the tragic snowslide of February 1907, which killed three people and destroyed several buildings. 

Fearing a repetition of similar disasters, many left the place immediately, O’Donoghue said.

Yet, in his view, these fears of nature were magnified by the stories and premonitions surrounding Kirwin, which he felt “figured ill for the camp” in the minds of the former residents.

O’Donoghue felt that “the actual cause of the ultimate abandonment of the camp has always been somewhat shrouded in mystery,” but that superstition and the weight of past tragedies played a significant role in emptying the valley of its people.

He also took note of the lingering traces of the town’s past prosperity. Machinery, tools, and electrical appliances remained scattered around the ruins, and buildings still bore the marks of careful construction. In more recent years, ranchers had begun to scavenge the remnants which was better, according to O’Donoghue than leaving them behind to rot. 

O’Donoghue’s account paints a picture of a town that had been a model of ambition and modernity, yet one ultimately undone by fear and caution as much as by snow and rock. 

He observed the persistence of the natural landscape, noting that “elk, deer and mountain sheep are once more monarchs of their ancestral domain,” emphasizing that the mountains had reclaimed their solitude. In his telling, Kirwin’s story was a combination of human aspiration, natural danger, and the powerful hold of rumor and superstition on the human psyche.

Even as Kirwin faded into near-abandonment, one figure remained closely tied to its history: Charles L. Tewksbury. 

Tewksbury had been a central figure in Kirwin in the years leading up to the abandonment of the mining town. He managed the Wyoming Mining & Milling Company and operated the Kirwin hotel and store. 

Though the winter snows and avalanches drove most residents away, Tewksbury did not abandon the valley. He continued to file and prove mining claims, and over the years, his presence became a constant, seasonal return to the once-thriving town.

Tewksbury and his wife, Sarah, maintained a rhythm dictated by the seasons. They spent winters in New York and Pennsylvania but returned each summer to Kirwin to manage the remaining mining activities. 

A quarter of a century after the miners fled, the Tewskburys’ still ran their hotel during the summer, although in these later years, their guests were chiefly sheepmen and tourists.

Even decades after the town’s decline, the Tewksburys’ dedication kept a small thread of life in the abandoned valley. Both were described as persons of “considerable culture, and present, a striking contrast to their savage surroundings.” 

Charles Tewksbury was an amateur astronomer and O’Donoghue said he represented the United States Weather Bureau at Kirwin, while Sarah was an accomplished violinist. Their seasonal return symbolized resilience and a refusal to let Kirwin’s story be entirely erased, even as nature and time eventually reclaimed the town.

In recent years, visitors to the remote town of Kirwin claim that you can still feel the presence of the miners who once filled the streets and dreamt of their fortunes to be made in Wyoming. To O’Dononghue who knew the place during its roaring hey-day, the desolation of Kirwin was a tragedy brought on more from the fearful premonitions than nature’s destruction.

We will end this story of the ghost town with an excerpt of O’Donoghue’s ode to Kirwin’s memory.

Old Kirwin, fare thee well!

The cultured “Tewks” for aye is gone,

And pleasant Alec, too, 

With “Big Bill” Moore and “Soapy” Dale,

And all that jolly crew.

The wind, it roars; the rain it pours;

The thunder sounds a knell – 

A fond adieu, I bid to you,

Old Kirwin, fare thee well!

Thank you for joining me on this journey into the history—and the lingering mysteries—of Kirwin. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future stories from the Wild West, and share it with friends who love history, ghost towns, and the stories that shape our past.

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