The O.P. Hanna Cabin Tour with SCLT and Big Horn City Historical Society

Sundial and signage at the O.P. Hanna Cabin Site

On September 13, the SCLT Explore History program, in conjunction with the Hub on Smith and the Big Horn City Historical Society, presented a tour of the Big Horn Museum and the O.P. Hanna Cabin site. 

The tour stated in Big Horn at the Bozeman Trail Museum. The Museum is housed in a building constructed in 1879 by the Rock Creek Stage Line and was the local blacksmith shop.

Today, items of interest in the museum are dental tools, a pump organ, old mailboxes from the 1881 Big Horn post office, old coal stoves, polo mallets and saddle, Indian artifacts, artwork and a diorama of old Big Horn City, as well as a photo enlarger used by Elsa Spear Bryon

Judy Slack, of the Big Horn City Historical Society, presented the program at the site the Hanna cabin.  The cabin today is on private land outside of Big Horn, and anyone wishing to tour the site should contact Judy Slack at the Big Horn City Historical society.  Email:  blacksmithshop2019@gmail.com

The Hanna cabin was built by Oliver Perry, (O.P.) Hanna, in August of 1878, the first homesteader in what is now Big Horn, and the first permanent settler in what would later become Sheridan County.  Hanna married Dora Myers in June of 1885, and they lived in the cabin on this location until 1891.

According to Slack,

He built his cabin near a clear stream with a view of the Big Horn Mountains. The stream, which runs through the property and into Little Goose Creek, is now called Hanna Creek. He dedicated years as a founding father of business and local government.

Although the log cabin has succumbed to time and weathering and is no longer on the site, and the land where the cabin once set is privately owned, in August of 1935 the Big Horn Women’s Club dedicated a sundial at the site to commemorate the location of his cabin. 

Although the wording is weathering off over the years, it once said, “This old sun dial marks the site of the first cabin in Big Horn on the O.P. Hanna place in 1878.”

Before settling near Big Horn, Hanna had been an Indian fighter, buffalo hunter, Army scout, miner and trapper, who explored the Yellowstone country. 

The frontier was still wild at that time, and Slack told some tales of Hanna and his neighbors having to deal with several outlaws.  Butch Cassity often passed through the area, and Slack tells this story about one of Hanna’s outlaw encounters.

As things on the frontier began to get more settled, Hanna went into farming. The fields around the cabin was used for growing corn, hay, and strawberries. 

While in Big Horn City, Hanna started the Oriental Hotel, and a dry goods store.  When the railroad by- passed Big Horn City in favor of Sheridan, most of the pioneers, including Hanna, moved to Sheridan.  There, he built a house on Coffeen Avenue, and he had the Hanna department store where Hospital Pharmacy now stands.

Carri Edinger, of the Sheridan Community Land Trust, felt that the Sheridan County Historic Preservation committee could help with funding to further preserve the site, and Slack said she wasn’t sure if they could go on the National register, but that would be goal.

She said the Historical Society would at least like to preserve it as a significant site in Wyoming’s history.