19.- Wyoming and Montana

19.1 ETCHEPARE AND WYOMING
In Wyoming, Paul/John Etchepare's Warren Livestock Co. was the biggest sheep operation in the state for years. There are two concentrations of Basques, namely in Buffalo, to the north, and in Rock Springs, to the southwest. Like Idaho, Wyoming also celebrated the first centenary of its admission to the Union in 1990.

19.2 IN BUFFALO SINCE 1902
Buffalo, the capital of Johnson County, is a small town of somewhat fewer than three thousand five hundred inhabitants, among them several hundred Basques. There were Basques there as early as 1902, with the arrival of Jean Esponda, from Baigorri, already weather-beaten from his life in the sheep business, in which he had worked in California since 1888. It would appear that in 1919 Esponda, a man with initiative, already had one of the biggest sheep operations in Wyoming, at one time with as many as 25,000 head.

19.3 HOTELS AND KBBS BASQUE PROGRAM
In Buffalo there were a few Basque hotels. The building of one of them, the Idlewild, wich was run by Simon "Barbon" and Madeline Harriet, is still found on Main Street today. Next to the Idlewild is a building that in its day housed another Basque establishment, the 21 Club. The Big Horn Basque Club, today comprised of seventy-two families, was formed in 1983. From 1956 to 2000, the local radio station KBBS broadcasted a weekly program of news and information in the Basque language.

19.4 NO CLUB IN MONTANA
At the other end of the state, Rock Springs is the site of the Alkartasuna South Western Basque Club, formed in 1990 with members from all over southwestern Wyoming. It boasts dance classes, a choir, classes in Euskara, and a bertsolari. In the early decades of the 20th century there were at least three Basque hotels there. In Montana, Basque presence is associated, as in the entire Great Basin, with shepherding. Miles City is one of the towns that in its day had an ostatua. Major ranches were operated in Montana by Basques, among them that of John Etchart in Glasgow. Although Montana does not have an official Basque club, Basques there have organized an annual get together since the early 1990's.