Photo courtesy Peter Belmonte.

Photo courtesy Peter Belmonte.

Travel Directions:
From I-25 take WY Exit 254, “Kaycee” (approximately half way between Buffalo and Casper)
Turn East on WY-191 (Sussex Highway); go 0.1 mile.
Turn Right (S) on WY-196 (Nolan Avenue) and go 0.15 mile to 255 Nolan Avenue.

Remarks:
Wyoming has a Siesta Motel. You’ll find it in the 200 person town of Kaycee. If amenities are not important to you, bring someone you love, an equestrian perhaps, to this rustic refuge and check it out.

Interestingly, this area has another connection to Brokeback Mountain. Kaycee is in the heart of Johnson County, site of the notorious Johnson County War, a bloody conflict between small and large scale ranchers (generally sheep ranchers and cattle barons). Still a bit resentful, locals refer to this as “The Cattlemen’s Invasion of 1892.”

In the 1890s, homesteader John Nolan established a ranch here on the Powder River. The brand he used was “KC.” Two years later, powerful, moneyed “cattlemen” burned Nolan’s house and murdered two men, as part of a plot to scare away small ranchers and obtain access to thousands of square miles of valuable unfenced grazing land.

This mainstay conflict of western lore is depicted in the worthwhile 2002 oater, The Johnson County War, now a staple of cable movie channels. That film’s screenplay was also written by McMurtry and Ossana, it was made in Alberta (very near to where Brokeback’s ill fated Hippie Scene was shot), and much of its production crew also worked on Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee has said that what he saw in The Johnson County War, coupled with Ossana’s recommendation, opened his mind to the possibility of shooting in Alberta as he planned his Brokeback production in late 2003.

See:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280264/fullcredits#cast

Quotation:
“... Jack said, ‘Christ, it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback makes it so goddamn good. We got to talk about this.’” [1]

[1] Brokeback Mountain - Story to Screenplay by Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (Scribner) ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9416-4, page 12.