Sundance, Wyoming

It is said that the Sundance Kid (of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie fame) got his name in Sundance. He had stolen a horse, saddle and gun from Western Ranches Ltd., owner of the Three V's Ranch near Sundance. When he was arrested, he pled guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in the Sundance Jail. He was pardoned by the governor in February 1889, and he then drifted over to Belle Fourche, South Dakota. As a result of his bravado in the Belle Fourche watering holes about the time he spent in Sundance, he was given the name and it stuck. (This was all several years before he became a regular with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.) When Robert Redford played Harry Longabaugh in the movie, he enjoyed the name so much that he named his ski resort near Provo, Utah, Sundance Ski Resort, and the name spilled over onto the Sundance Film Festival.

The Town of Sundance is located in eastern Crook County in the Wyoming Black Hills. In the Bear Lodge Mountains and the Black Hills National Forest near Devils Tower National Monument, Sundance sees a lot of tourist traffic. Sundance is a retail and supply center for the surrounding cattle and sheep country that turns out energy and timber products, too.