Cabin Fever: couple relocates and restores historic Ten Sleep buildings

Dan and Maureen (Tolman) Flannery weren't expecting to begin a new adventure in Wyoming at this stage in life, but three historic wooden buildings later they don't seem to regret their decision.

Now based in Illinois, the home state of her actor and English teacher husband Dan, Maureen works as a poet, often drawing inspiration from her upbringing in Worland and her family's sheep ranch in Ten Sleep. She is an award-winning poet, having written 10 books of poetry including over 500 poems published.

When Maureen and Dan returned to Worland for her 50-year class reunion in 2015, they heard gossip that some old cabins in Ten Sleep were fated for demolition, they decided that they would step in.

Maureen said that she missed having a physical connection to her childhood days spent in Ten Sleep. "My great-grandfather came from Otto and he had bought property at the base of the canyon and ran sheep over there. And then my grandfather homesteaded up on Onion Gulch. I grew up in Worland, but the ranch was in Ten Sleep up Nowood. I went to school in Worland, and graduated from the high school. We always lived in town, but Ten Sleep was like second home," she said.

The pair initially reached out to the new owner of the cabin, a Mr. Bosley, who said that he was interested in keeping the cabin at that time. The Flannerys received a call from Bosley in November of that year, though, saying that he planned now to get rid of the cabin, and he asked them if they would like to purchase it. Furthermore, he asked if they'd like to buy a smaller cabin on the property that he also planned to demolish. The pair bought the properties, and had them relocated from downtown Ten Sleep to Deer Trail, a sparse, quiet neighborhood eight miles northeast of town.

Since acquiring the two cabins in 2015, Dan and Maureen have been visiting Ten Sleep often from their home in Chicago to make renovations, bring furniture and spend time in the little haven they've created.

The larger of the two, the "Alexander Cabin," is situated just off the road on a bluff overlooking Old Maid Gulch below.

"It was right behind the Pony Express in Ten Sleep. It was owned by a man Mr. Alexander who built it and had left it to his daughter, and then she sold it. And so there would have been two families in there since then. And later on, the gentleman died who had been living here, and Mr. Bosley was right next door. And so Mr. Bosley must have made an arrangement to buy that property before and he wanted to just have a big lawn."

The Alexander Cabin serves as the main living quarters on the property. Built in the 1920s, it was relocated atop a pre-dug basement, itself having two stories, and features a cistern fed by a neighboring spring. The building is powered with electricity via a gas generator. According to Maureen, it has plenty of room for all of her grandkids, too.

Just over the hill now lies the "Padilla Cabin," a little cabin built in the 1890s, with two rooms and now a breathtaking view of Ten Sleep Canyon. "This cabin was owned by a man named Mauricio Padilla, and he was a sheepherder. And he must have saved and saved to buy that cabin. But his wife died in it, and he couldn't stay here after that," said Maureen.

She continued, "This is my pride and joy. It makes me feel very much like a child again. It's very much like the sheep cabin that was in my family when I was growing up. This is where we've done most of the work."

Maureen showed how she and her husband had painstakingly cleaned the logs and have redone the chinking sealing the walls in the cabin, at a rate of about one wall a summer.

In discussing renovations to their cabins, the Flannerys said that many local carpenters and artisans have had a hand in the process. They showed as an example an ornate banister made of intertwined willow branches that protects the staircase in the Alexander Cabin.

A third cabin is the most recent addition to the little row of log buildings on Deer Trail, and according to the Flannerys it's in the most need of attention. Two stories, also a building original to the town of Ten Sleep, their plans for the summer primarily involve replacing the roof, for which they have enlisted the help of Dustin Fettig.

Maureen said, "This one is Emerson Park's, who was a geologist and came to Ten Sleep to try to find oil and was working with the U.S. Geological Survey. He was always something of an outsider. He never really fit in at town. He wasn't a cowboy, and he didn't really connect deeply with a lot of people. He had some very close friends and people respected him a lot. Very intelligent, but he built the cabin for his wife and she came in, spent a few weeks and never liked it, and went back to California. So that was very sad that he had that cabin, but it never had a family life."

Maureen stated that their journey restoring the cabins has been a crucial lifeline to her artistically, owing her connectedness to home to this endeavor. She said, "this was like a whole new chapter in connecting. My father sold his share of the ranch when I was in high school, so in my adult life there was no physical anchor to the land for me."

"The most important thing that I think about the cabins for me is a return to my roots," said Maureen.

The Flannerys' work on the cabins and other facets of western life are featured in Maureen's book of poetry "Already Part of the Sky," available for sale on wyomingincolor.com, and she stated that she will continue to write poetry inspired by her adventures restoring the cabins.