News
Greetings From PK Lane Art Exhibit
Through the month of January, artist Carrie Edinger will be displaying her artwork at the Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library. There will be an artist’s reception on Thursday, January 16th from 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. All are welcome.
On display will be several drawings and prints she has created after several years of working on this artwork while observing the landscape and birdhouses along PK Lane.
She explained how the exhibit came to be. “On my first hike along PK Lane, an old Sheridan County Road to the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, I quickly noticed the weathered birdhouses placed on some of the rustic fence posts. With my interest in everyday transitions, the weathered wood of the birdhouses is what first drew my curiosity to sketch them along the roadside.
“In the 1890s, PK Lane was a route to the Bighorn Mountains then known as Soldier Creek Trail Road. The road still has its dirt two-track features that was first used for horse drawn supply wagons. This was a convenient way to get to the locations of the mines and other resources on the mountain. While hiking in this open space, it is interesting to think about who previously traveled this route and also enjoyed the broad view of the mountain range.
“For my beginning observations, I utilized various fieldwork to document the weathered birdhouses and the surrounding landscape. I took many seasonal visits to PK Lane to capture my observations with sketching, still photography and documenting the views of the mountains from many of the birdhouse locations.
“Since the Elk Fire that started in the fall of 2024, there have been great changes in the landscape neighboring PK Lane. I was able to visit PK Lane in mid-November when the area reopened to the public. To be expected, the fire altered all three years of my documentation of the landscape and the birdhouses. I will admit my very recent visits to PK Lane have distracted me in my thought process while finalizing this exhibit. In organizing my exhibit, it seemed relevant to include some of my photos from my November hikes from these recent changes and display them next to similar represented sites in my drawings and prints.”
Observing transitions of objects, which is the bird houses and their surrounding environment has been a component in the three-year process of fieldwork. The culmination of this body of work comes from considering my observations and research of the surrounding landscape, details and the disappearance of individual birdhouses, as well as considering the birdhouses viewpoint along PK Lane.
Artwork courtesy of Edinger.
mack cook
January 3, 2025 at 11:57 am
A guy named Gary put a lot of those in the past years, made from scrap wood, bluebirds seem to like them.!
Dan Biebel
January 7, 2025 at 5:51 pm
The pK Lane Trail, as it was called in this article, was built by a group of businessmen in the 1890’s as a toll road known as the Sheridan to Bald Mountain Toll Road. Its purpose was to provide passage for miners to get to the Bald Mountain area as it was thought that there was a large deposit of gold in that area. The road was developed up to Walker Prairie where it joined the Quartz Creek trail, sometimes called the Sawmill Trail which traveled west to the Sawmill divide. The trail was also used as a mail route which extended over the mountain to Meeteetse. There is a historical marker about this trail on the Red Grade Roqd in the Sawmill Divide qrea. In the early 1890’s the group building the road went to the county commissioners to get permission to set a toll schedule for people who would use the trail, based on what they were hauling, which was set despite the anger it caused in another group who fought the fee schedule thinking it was exorbitant and unfair. This information and the related drama can be found in the Minutes of a County Commissioner’s meeting in the early 1890’s and the local newspapers of the time. These are available in the SC Library.
The trail was used freely by the public, including hunters, hikers, and cattlemen who had grazing leases on the national forest until the early 2000’s when the Beckton Stock Farm closed the trail to the public at the end of pK Lane where it crosses a small piece of their private property. There was a very public lawsuit between the Beckton Stock Farm and a small group of 4 outdoorsmen (supported by a large group of the public), who were accused of trespassing (by the Beckton Stock Farm), while they were using the trail. The lawsuit went to the Wyoming Supreme Court where the Ranch prevailed in 2003. Public use of the trail is no longer an option without permission.
Since then the Ranch received permission from the Big Horn National Forest to use motorized vehicles on the trail to travel through national forest property to get to 4 sections of their private property they own on and near Walker Mountain and SheBear Mountain and got in a bit of trouble with the BHNF when they got a little carried away when they used heavy equipment to improve the trail on sections that they didn’t own.
bald Mountain