Kaycee is a town in Johnson County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 247 at the 2020 census. It is home to a museum that preserves the cattle ranching heritage of the area, especially the history of the Johnson County War.
Kaycee was incorporated in 1906 after the establishment of a small post office and general store. The town was named after the brand "KC" used by its earliest homesteader, John Nolan. The government required the name to be spelled out resulting in "Kaycee". The town is now home to three churches, two bars, two restaurants, one store, one museum, one K-12 school, and zero stoplights.
Western music star and rodeo champion Chris LeDoux resided on a ranch near Kaycee, although he was born in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Kaycee is home to former NCAA Division II track and field athlete Dakotah Winsor.
Former NCAA Division III track and field athlete Noah Elm was born and raised in Kaycee.
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon grew up on the Gordon Ranch near Kaycee. Gordon is owner of the Merlin Ranch east of Buffalo and is affiliated with the 48 Ranch Partnership in Kaycee.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
History
The Portuguese Fort
In 1834 a band of trappers and traders led by Antonio Montero from Portugal built a trading post east of Kaycee. It became known as the “Portuguese Fort.” A unique site, what little remains from the area have been donated to the Hoofprints of the Past Museum and includes artefacts including a sword, beads, and clay pipes.
The Bozeman Trail
The 1860s brought new attention from both whites and Native Americans to the northeast corner of what soon would become Wyoming Territory. First, a gold frenzy in Montana Territory drew miners north from the emigrant road that followed the North Platte River. Mountain man Jim Bridger warned against establishing a trail through the Arapaho and Lakota hunting grounds, urging that another path west of the Bighorns be used instead. But the Powder River Basin route was the most direct and, in 1863, John Bozeman following ancient routes long used by Indians, blazed the Bozeman Trail through the middle of the basin.
The Bozeman Trail ran within four miles of Kaycee, overlaying previous Indian, trader and exploration routes and connecting the Oregon Trail to the gold rush territory in Montana. Its most important period was 1863–1868, and its most significant consequence was the Indian Wars of the Northern Plains. The Hoofprints of the Past Museum displays items relating to this period.
Fort Reno and Cantonment Reno
During the Indian Wars of the late 1800s, two military posts were built miles apart near the Bozeman Trail crossing of the Powder River: Fort Reno in the 1860s and Cantonment Reno in the 1870s. Historical markers presently mark the spots.
Items donated from the Fort Reno site are on display at the Hoofprints of the Past Museum, as well as a diorama of the fort created by Robert Wilson, an expert in local military forts.
Moreton Frewen
The Frewen Ranch was located east of present-day Kaycee at the confluence of the North Fork and the Middle Fork of the Powder River. Moreton Frewen was the fifth son of Thomas Frewen, MP for South Leicestershire, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in 1877. He emigrated to Wyoming during the cattle boom in the 1870s and 1880s. A charming if financially incompetent adventurer from an English landed gentry family known for reckless financial and political schemes, he managed to marry Clarita "Clara" Jerome (1851–1935) in 1881, daughter of the New York City financier Leonard Jerome, and sister to Lord Randolph Churchill's wife Jennie. They settled together on a huge Wyoming ranch, The Prince of Wales Ranch, where Frewen built an enormous log lodge/castle later destroyed by fire and ran up ever increasing debt, earning the sobriquets "Mortal Ruin" and "the splendid pauper". His laterally descended family, the Martins formerly of Charley Hall, Leicestershire, refer to him to this day however not as "Mortal Ruin" but as "Immortal Ruin", as he ran through two family fortunes before being granted a remittance and "encouraged" by family to emigrate to America.