News

Memories of destroyed Sweetwater Lodge strong

By Carole Cloudwalker

This document was published online on Wednesday, September 10, 2008

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An aerial view of the former Sweetwater Lodge property in the Shoshone Forest shows the remains of buildings that burned Aug. 3 during a seven-mile run of the Gunbarrel Fire. The main lodge and chalet residence are indicated. Sweetwater Creek flows past the property, which lies about four miles from Wapiti Campground on the North Fork. (USFS aerial photo)

A former owner of Brannon's Wilderness Lodge - which fell victim to the Gunbarrel Fire on Aug. 3 - last week recalled the place in happier times.

Dave Brannon, now 82 and living in Colorado Springs, Colo., feels the Forest Service “possibly deliberately” allowed the historic log lodge, its cabins and outbuildings to burn to the ground, despite the fact that the USFS owned the property.

The lodge was located four miles up a gravel road along a tributary of the North Fork of the Shoshone River, accessed by a bridge at Wapiti Campground and several smaller bridges over Sweetwater Creek.

Brannon said in a telephone interview that many years ago he chastised the Forest Service - in a letter published in the Enterprise - for failing to allow him to improve the bridges over Sweetwater Creek so lodge access would be more reliable.

The letter may have been prophetic, because the condemnation of bridges was a major issue in a later lawsuit the Forest Service lost to subsequent owners Jeff Mummery and partners.

“I took the Forest Service to task for not letting me improve the bridges and the road,” Brannon said. “There was politics involved” in loss of the lodge.

Had he been allowed to make bridge improvements years ago, it is more likely the subsequent owners would have been able to retain the property in working condition, Brannon said.

Then, there would have been no lawsuit against the Forest Service because reliable access likely would have been maintained.

And that way, when the Gunbarrel Fire roared through the area, firefighting equipment could have been moved in over the road and the buildings might have been saved.

“The Forest Service should have preserved the lodge, and they had the opportunity to do that,” Brannon said.

As it is, what was Brannon's Wilderness Lodge 1983-95 and then later Sweetwater Lodge was reduced by wildfire to piles of charred wood, standing chimneys, broken glass and twisted metal.

Good memories

When Brannon purchased the lodge in the early 1980s, his son Robert remembers the site as a “serene, quiet place ... with elk in the winter and bighorn sheep in the canyon across the creek and next to the buildings.”

Robert and his wife occasionally took over management of the property for a weekend or few days while his father and second wife Nancy were away.

“It took patience and ingenuity to make the place work,” Robert remembers.

He said his father and stepmother had that in spades.

One innovation they came up with was offering sleigh rides to and from the lodge from the Wapiti Campground parking lot along the North Fork Highway.

The arrangement was aimed at drawing people from both near and far to Cody to enjoy a weekend package including the sleigh ride, dinner and overnight stay before a second sleigh ride back to their vehicles.

This endeavor was described in the book “Feasting in the Forest” written by Nancy and Dave Brannon.

Brannon himself remembers “going close to South Dakota” to learn from a genuine teamster - not a union member, but a man who knew horses and how to drive them.

“He taught me how to handle a team of horses, how to harness them properly and how to drive them,” Brannon said.

With this training, he was ready to undertake the sleigh ride package, the highlight of which was to be a fine Italian dinner prepared by his gourmet chef and cookbook author wife.

“He did that only once,” Robert said of the sleigh rides. “Not one winter. One time.”

As the Brannons' book describes it, the first/last sleigh ride was fraught with perils even before it began.

First, the trailer hauling the sleigh, sporting rubber tires for summer, proved too wide for the main Sweetwater Bridge, so Brannons had to pull it to the lodge with their Suburban.

Temperatures dropped to minus 10 degrees the night of the first sleigh ride. By that time the sleigh had been fitted with runners for the winter and Dave was well-practiced in driving the team.

So many people had signed up for the sleigh ride feast that the two Belgian horses, Bonnie and Clyde, could not pull the conveyance up some of the hills along the gravel road. Guests had to walk in several spots.

When feasters reached the lodge, they found that the fires all had gone out and the place was frigid.

All was satisfactorily remedied, but from that trip onward the winter was so dry that the sleigh could not be used, the book states.

Flowers blazed

In summer Nancy “was quite a horticulturist,” and planted beds of bright flowers that blazed with color around the old log lodge and its accompanying guest cabins, Brannon said.

She also applied her special touches to the interiors, drawing out the Western flavor with furniture and decorations just as she drew the Italian flavors of the foods she prepared for the lodge's multi-course feasts.

While Nancy was cooking delicacies for her next course, Brannon would tell tales of the area's history for guests who came “from all 50 states and 20-some countries” to enjoy the ambience of the lodge on the border of the North Absaroka Wilderness Area, Brannon said.

Robert's sister, Jennifer Pierson Brannon, also has fond memories of the North Fork and the lodge.

“I am truly grateful to all the people who have fought this Gunbarrel Fire,” she writes.

“While I realize the fire was caused by a lightning strike just over the ridge from Absaroka Mountain Lodge, and that it spread due to beetle-killed trees, I feel that enough (firefighting) effort has been put in.”

Her father Dave's best memories of his former lodge involve time with his wife Nancy, who is no longer living.

“I'm so grateful Nancy and I had that wilderness experience,” Brannon said.

“My heart is broken (by loss of the lodge),” he added. “That's where Nancy and I got it together. That was really my life.

“It breaks my heart because of all the time and all the guests we had up there through the years. It tears my heart out.”

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