Hole-in-the-Wall (Wyoming)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Hole-in-the-Wall is a remote pass in the Big Horn Mountains of Johnson County, northern Wyoming. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, outlaw gangs such as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, Black Jack Ketchum, and Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch used the area as a meeting and hiding place. They gathered at a log cabin built in 1883 by Alexander Ghent, which is now preserved at the Old Trail Town museum in Cody, Wyoming.

The pass is narrow and secluded, making it easy to defend and hard for lawmen to approach. From the 1860s to about 1910, it was used frequently by various outlaw groups. At its height, the site had several cabins for wintering, a livery stable, a corral, livestock, and supplies, with each gang helping to maintain it.

Robert Redford described Hole-in-the-Wall as an outlaw stronghold named for a notch in the nearby Great Red Wall of cliffs. The Wild Bunch used one of their three headquarters there in 1896, though the area had long been a favorite hiding place. Hole-in-the-Wall was one of three main outlaw strongholds in the region, along with Brown’s Park in Colorado and Robbers Roost in Utah.