Homestead Fever: Celebrating the Early Settlers of the High Plains

Homestead Fever: Celebrating the Early Settlers of the High Plains brings an exploration of homestead architecture and ranching heritage that highlights and illustrates those “Old West roots” celebrated in the annual festival of Cheyenne Frontier Days itself. Just as the “Daddy of ‘em All” seeks to celebrate those hardy individuals and bygone historic elements that comprise what we think of as the Frontier, few other elements remain so iconic to travelers today as the bygone relics of homesteads they pass on the range.

Homestead Fever offers our guests the chance to travel back in time by viewing the architectural and ranching heritage elements that literally built the Frontier and were lived in, and shaped by, the people who chose to brave the Frontier. It was these very people that created the foundations of Frontier Spirit we find in the legacy of events like Cheyenne Frontier Days today.

This special show is a project of Mr. Lee Silliman. A many-talented man who has served as a high school physics, chemistry, and mathematics instructor, photo archivist, and photographer, he now resides in Missoula, Montana.

Blending his own photography, purchased historic artwork, and historic photographs of the Smith-Hartley-Thompson Collection from the Powell County Museum in Montana, Lee has created and exhibited his productions in over ten states and at a host of institutions. Keenly interested in the legacy of the American West Lee has a number of exhibitions ranging from celebrations of cowboys to explorations of Yellowstone.

 Funded by the Wyoming Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wyoming Legislature.