Rawlins was a railroad town born in 1868, and by the 1870's was the departure point for those headed to the gold fields in South Pass.   The town was also, and still is, a center for sheep ranching -- it was here that the sheepherder's wagon was invented.  Rawlins has hosted Wyoming's state prison since 1901, and the original building is now open for tours.

Big Nose George Parrot was Rawlins’ most famous outlaw.  In 1878 he and an accomplice tried to rob a payroll train just east of Rawlins.  The robbery was a failure, but they managed to elude capture, killing two of the pursuing posse.  When the law finally caught up with Parrot several years later, he was returned to Rawlins, tried and sentenced to hang.  His attempt to break out of jail before his sentence was carried out just shortened the process -- a Rawlins mob lynched him.  Up to this point, his story is fairly normal for Wyoming, but what happened next is bizarre.

Rawlins physician Dr. John E. Osborne took possession of the body, made a death mask of Parrot's famous profile, sawed open his skull to see how an outlaw's brains looked, and then presented the skull cap to his female assistant who used it for years as a door stop.  Then Osborne skinned poor Parrot, tanned his hide, and made shoes and other items from the leather.  Finally, he pickled what was left in a whiskey barrel.  If you have trouble believing this story, you can see the shoes, the death mask, and the whiskey barrel at Rawlins' Carbon County Museum.

Evocative of the territorial Wyoming mind set is the fact that Dr. Osborne's macabre experiments had no noticeable impact on his public standing.  A decade later he was governor of the state, and he served a stint as senator, as well!

While on the topic of local politicians, we should mention Senator Chatterton of Rawlins who represented this region when Wyoming first achieved statehood.  He was chairman of the Senate Enrolling and Engrossing Committee, and as such, had possession of the original bill and drawing for the Wyoming State Seal in the hours after legislative approval, but before the governor signed it into law.  Chatterton exchanged the original seal's gracefully draped woman for a poorly drawn nude, and the governor didn't notice until after he'd signed.

According to a Cheyenne newspaper, the "great unwashed" masses in Rawlins responded to the news with broad smiles and cries of "Great is the Republican legislator! Selah!"  The Rawlins Journal protested tongue in cheek that Chatterton was "too modest to even think of a female nude, much less to desire her to be brought before the public as part of the great seal of our state."  Outside Wyoming, it was seen as more scandalous than funny.  The editorial pages of major newspapers throughout the U.S. devoted many column inches to stern condemnation, but since the switch was discovered before the design was struck, no permanent damage was done.  Two years passed, however, before the legislature got around to approving the current seal.

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