Johnson County Courthouse: Built for a Revolution

The Johnson County Courthouse in Buffalo, Wyoming went up in eighteen eighty-four, just eight years before the county became a battleground. When the Wyoming Stock Growers Association organized their invasion in the spring of eighteen ninety-two, the county sheriff, Red Angus, set out from this courthouse with a posse of about two hundred men to confront the invaders. It was a large citizen mobilization against a private army.

The invaders were backed by the railroad, the state governor, and the two United States Senators from Wyoming, who went to the White House to request Army intervention. The Army saved the cattlemen's hired gunmen from the posse. No one was ever convicted for the killings committed during the invasion.

The courthouse still functions as the seat of Johnson County government, and the county's defiant history against cattle baron power remains a central part of Buffalo's civic identity.