Medicine Bow is located in the eastern part of Carbon County. It is situated in the irrigation district of the Medicine Bow Valley. The name of Medicine Bow is derived from the Indians. A tradition says that the northern tribes traveled annually to the foot of the Medicine Bow Mountains for the purpose of procuring a variety of ash timber from which they made their bows. With the Indians, anything that is excellent for the purpose for which it is intended is called Good Medicine. The locality was known as the place where they could procure good medicine bows, hence Medicine Bow Mountains, Medicine Bow River, and the town of Medicine Bow naturally follows. (WPA) Indians came a great distance to obtain the unusually straight timber of that part of the region from which to fashion their bows and arrows. It was considered good medicine to use that timber for the making of their weaponsthey said, "Good medicine bows." (Annals of Wyoming 14:3) The little town of Medicine Bow is well known to readers of Owen Wister's "Virginian" as one of the places where the cowboys played their laughable pranks, and the name of the novel has been taken by the hotel near the station. The name Medicine Bow is of Indian derivation, but how it came to be applied to the mountains from which the town takes its name is not certainly known. It is known, however, that some of the tribes annually visited the mountains that now bear this name to procure a certain kind of wood for their bows. In Indian talk anything that serves its purpose well is "good medicine," and according to reports the mountains and streams where this timber was found became known as places where "good-medicine bows" were obtained. (Guidebook of the Western United States)
County:
Carbon
Feature Category:
Manmade Features
More Reading:
Medicine Bow Valley pioneers : closing the Overland Trail, opening the Union Pacific Railroad : biographies, genealogies, myths, legends and tales, Carbon County, Wyoming, 1846-1950. Strayer-Hanson, Frances E. (Frances Elizabeth) New York : iUniverse, c2009.
