Henry and May Devoe

Henry (Hank) W. Devoe and May Orr Devoe came to Wyoming in 1878 with freight to Fort McKinney. In 1881 they moved to the Bar C Ranch. Henry worked as foreman at the ranch and got the mail contract from the Bar C to the Powder River crossing. May worked as the postmistress. During those early years, large groups of Indians would camp near their house in the winter, and May was asked to attend to a sick Indian woman, who later recovered. Other Devoes later came to the area, and some of their descendants still ranch in the Kaycee area.

 

Along the top of this white ridge is a trail known as "Dead Man's Trail." The route was a detour from the Barnum Road used by travelers when the creek was up to avoid crossing the Middle Fork of the Powder River twice.
In the late spring of 1886, Charlie Devoe and his wife were traveling this route back to Barnum by wagon when they heard a shot and came across a man who had been shot. It was a man known only as Pushroot Jim.
According T.F. Carr, Pushroot had beat up the foreman of the LX Ranch roundup crew, who the next morning followed him and killed him.
The Devoes returned to Buffalo for the sheriff and the coroner, but by the time they arrived on scene the body was badly deteriorated, so they placed it in a depression and covered it with some pine boughs and rocks.
Legend has it that outlaw Flatnose George Currie and some other outlaws came across it almost a decade later and properly buried Pushroot.

 

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