Audio Tour:
The Peryam Cabin represents a pioneer rancher’s house and is the oldest homesteader’s cabin at the museum. The cabin was built about 1877 by Guy Nichols and Ezra Nichols from Boulder, Colorado and was located one mile north of Riverside, Wyoming, in the bottomland of the Encampment River. The Reich Brothers purchased the ranch and ran it as a dairy farm from 1900 to 1912 when it was then sold to WT Peryam and his sons, George and Joe.
The Peryams were the fourth family to settle in the Grand Encampment region when they arrived in 1879. It remained in the Peryam family until it was donated to the museum in the 1970s.
During the late 1880s, Euro-American settlers in this area feared raids by local Indian tribes. During the aftermath of the Ute rising in 1879, also known as the Meeker Massacre which occurred in northwest Colorado, fear of the Utes spread fast. As a result, several families in the area gathered at this cabin to hold up and wait until the situation settled.
The heating stove displayed in this building was one of two used to heat the Encampment City Hall!