Hepburn's Mesa

The museum the panel mentions ran on the wind. The Hepburn place stood far from any power line, so John Hepburn and his son Ralph put up a windmill and a generator, and Hepburn built a wind-driven polisher to finish the specimens he sold to visitors. The half-log house, made in the mid-1930s to look like pioneer work, held fossils from the mesa, a petrified turtle, Native artifacts and Yellowstone photographs. After his death in 1959 the family gave the collections to other area museums. The electric windmill is one of the last intact systems of its kind.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chico Hot Springs — 7.5 mi
  A miners' wash pool turned hotel, turned hospital, turned the valley's favorite place to soak.
• Roosevelt Arch — 19 mi
  Half of a railroad's front door; the station it faced came down in 1954.

More markers nearby

• The Absaroka - Beartooth Wilderness — steps away
• Emigrant Gulch — 4.2 mi
• Lone Mountain — 20 mi