Mines Shape a Community

The panel says most of the miners came from Poland, and the researcher Magda Gorska followed many of them to three neighbouring villages. She traced dozens of family links between Istebna, Koniaków and Jaworzynka, the Trójwieś in the Beskid highlands near the Czech and Slovak borders, and Sheridan County, and put the first arrivals at about 1903. She described a small highland people bringing its traditions, language and religion to a town of a few thousand in one of the least populous states in the country.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sheridan Inn — 4.7 mi
  A hunting-lodge hotel with sixty-nine gables, where Buffalo Bill is said to have auditioned Wild West acts from the porch.
• Trail End State Historic Site — 5.0 mi
  A Texas trail hand's Flemish Revival mansion, five years in the building, that he barely lived in once Wyoming sent him to the governor's office and the Senate.
• Connor Battlefield State Historic Site — 9.5 mi
  In 1865 General Connor's troops attacked Black Bear's Arapaho village here while many of its men were away; women and children died with the warriors.
• Rosebud Battlefield State Park — 25 mi
  The ridges where Crook's column was stopped eight days before the Little Bighorn, remembered by the Cheyenne for one woman's ride.

More markers nearby

• Mine Communities Supply Miner Needs — 2.6 mi
• The Black Diamonds of Wyoming — 4.8 mi
• Crook Monument — 4.9 mi
• Site of the First Cabin Built in Sheridan — 5.2 mi