Wyoming History: Digging Up The Bones Of A Notorious Old West Prostitute

In the lawless town of Arland, Wyoming, Belle Drewry was shot to death in a revenge killing in 1897. Known as a petite red-headed beauty who wore a beautiful blue dress, she earned the nickname “Lady in Blue.” Arland, located about 25 miles south of present-day Cody, was the first settlement in northwest Wyoming and had a reputation for unrestrained violence. Nearly 90 years after her murder, two historians were determined to honor her memory by exhuming her body and moving it to Old Trail Town in Cody.

Drewry had arrived in Arland around 1890 and knew the area’s notorious outlaws well. She was involved in a love triangle with two cowboys, W.A. Gallagher and Bill Wheaton. Wheaton shot and killed Gallagher, and Drewry favored Wheaton. Both were charged with premeditated murder, but charges against Drewry were dismissed. Wheaton was sentenced to eight years in prison. In early 1897, Drewry shot and killed a cowboy who was “raising all sorts of hell” at a party. An unknown assassin returned and murdered her in apparent revenge. She was 30 years old.

Drewry was given a respectable burial on a hill overlooking Arland, laid to rest in a redwood coffin wearing a cobalt blue silk dress with a black sash. Three rifle rounds were fired over her grave, and the shells were thrown onto it. A tombstone was placed reading, “Belle Drewry, 1867 to 1897, Woman in Blue, with heart so true.”

After her death, the town of Arland dried up. When the ranch where she was buried was about to be turned over to creditors, historian Clay Gibbons knew he had to act fast. He and fellow historian Bob Edgar obtained permission to exhume the grave. On October 12, 1986, a small group gathered to dig. “It was rough digging,” Gibbons recalled. “It was a rocky son of a buck on that hill.” Seventy-two inches down, they reached her skeletal remains.

Edgar lifted Drewry’s skull in both hands out of her grave. “You can’t get any closer to history than this,” he said. Her dress, which first appeared black, proved to be the cobalt blue she was known for—at the nape of the neck, a half-inch-wide, four-inch-long streak of blue remained. The dress had turned black after nearly 90 years in the ground. They also found three shells from a .45-70 rifle, confirming the three-gun salute.

The men placed Drewry’s bones in a hand-made pine coffin and transported it to Old Trail Town. On April 9, 1987, a snowstorm blew through as she was reburied next to Gallagher and Blind Bill. A three-shot salute was fired over her grave, and the shells were thrown into her final resting spot—where she remains, remembered by all who visit Old Trail Town.