By Day

During the day, speed across alpine meadows on a snowmobile, take a leisurely snowshoe trek on mountain trails, or try a bit of ice fishing with a local outfitter. Just outside of town, the majestic Bighorn Mountains offer endless snow adventures during the winter months.

Name your winter sport in Sheridan where the majestic Big Horn Mountains set the scene and offer a winter wonderland of trails and vast open meadows.

Here winter sports enthusiasts find an abundance of opportunities for invigorating outdoor recreation including boon docking, alpine and cross-country skiing, and snowboarding in an ideal mountain setting. It’s a beautiful place to enjoy snow sports and activities, as well as to revel in the magnificent scenery.

Sheridan, nestled in the foothills of the majestic Big Horn Mountains, is home base, while the Big Horns provide the winter wonderland!  Sled heads ride the range by snowmobile on 218 miles of Top 15 rated trails in the Big Horn Mountain Trail System.  Springtime provides excellent snow conditions with fresh powder, deep snow, warm days, and riding into April. The nearest trailhead is located just 15 miles south of Sheridan, with 100% “real” dry powdery snow. Cross-country trails are abundant in wide-open meadows and on telemark hillsides.

Deep snows, spectacular scenery and the vastness of the West are why people ride the Big Horns. Riding opportunities are both challenging and endless in these rugged and inviting mountains, offering some of the most enticing snowmobiling in the world. During the winter it’s easy to find fresh untracked powder and steep rolling hills to explore, with a diverse trail system that provides easy access.

Within nearly one million acres of national forest, the Big Horns also provide almost 50 miles of ungroomed trails, countless miles of cross-country exploring, and exciting off-trail opportunities. Limited commercial development keeps the crowds down both on and off the trails, while first-class lodging is available just a short drive away in Sheridan.  In the historic downtown, dining runs the gamut from down-home to gourmet, and specialty shopping ranges from antiques and cowboy memorabilia to intriguing boutiques and galleries.

For cross country enthusiasts, the area offers fantastic skiing with untouched powder.  Groomed and ungroomed trails criss-cross the Big Horns.  Here skiers may hit the trails and escape into the inviting quiet of the forest.

In addition, Sheridan and the Big Horn Mountains offer a bevy of outdoor recreation opportunities including ice-skating and snowshoeing. Children and adults both enjoy skating at Whitney Community Ice Rink. The area also offers other winter outdoor activities including ice fishing and wildlife viewing. Wildlife is as abundant as the snow, with large animals such as moose, elk, and deer viewed throughout the winter months.

HOWDY  PARTNER,

An outdoor paradise, the Bighorn Mountains and Bighorn National Forest are filled with recreational opportunities including hunting, fishing, camping, hiking and backpacking, horseback riding, mountain biking, picnicking, sightseeing,photography, and in winter snowmobiling, skiing, and sledding.

Whether you’re looking for an exciting ATV trail or a stroll through quiet pines, the Bighorn National Forest offers a wide variety of recreational opportunities. Explore Medicine Wheel, the sacred Native American treasure, and Shell Falls the thundering heartbeat of the magnificent Bighorns! Montana.

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Penny L. Becker, Executive Director

Sheridan Travel and Tourism

Sheridan, Wyoming – Voted #1 Western Town in America!

307-673-7120 -stt@sheridanwyoming.org

www.sheridanwyoming.org

Exciting does not get much better than the tourism public relations work over the past 5 weeks, bringing special visitors from three different countries and the U.S. to the ‘King of Cowboy Towns’!

Along with our outstanding area partners and the Wyoming Office of Tourism, Sheridan Travel and Tourism (STT) hosted Sheridan’s segment of the tour for the Australian film crew of six! This tour will result in bike tour documentaries for 2013’s programming on the Discovery Channel – the #1 international channel in the Asian-Pacific market. Sheridan will be showcased in one of 8 segments in their upcoming second season, and enjoyed by 132 million monthly viewers!

Then this week, STT and our partners hosted journalists for the development of three Primo magazine feature stories on Wyoming, reaching 260,000 people in Belgium and the Netherlands. This promotional trip also will result in avid bicyclists traveling the newly-created tour throuAlso that same week in August, a seasoned writer for Fox News and several guide books came to explore our tourism offerings! It was a pleasure to have my counterpart in Cody direct Gerrie to visit us in Sheridan for further feature opps. Partnerships are crucial, and my 14 years with STT has been all about building partnerships locally, state-wide, regionally and, as you see, also internationally!one of 8 segments in their upcoming second season, and enjoyed by 132 million monthly viewers! upcoming second season, and enjoyed by 132 million monthly viewers!

Then this week, STT and our partners hosted journalists for the development of three Primo magazine feature stories on Wyoming, reaching 260,000 people in Belgium and the Netherlands. This promotional trip also will result in avid bicyclists traveling the newly-created tour through Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota – mimicking the Tour de France. The trip’s two-fold purpose of the travel articles and bike tour escalates our ultimate goal of bringing in even more international paying guests.

And yet to come in September, is a familiarization trip from a Japanese tour representative who actively promotes U.S. “Fly & Drive” destinations.This connection will directly benefit us in the Asian markets and thus grow our tourism destination.

As the air turns cool and the trees show their colors, it’s a reminder that autumn is the perfect time to visit one of American Cowboy’s “Best Places to Live in the West.” In northern Wyoming, the historic town of Sheridan has an adventure for every taste.

Lovers of history and western culture will enjoy a trolley tour through the Historic Main Street District. There are 46 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places including the Sheridan Inn, which was once co-owned by Buffalo Bill.

Just outside of town, the majestic Big Horn Mountains call to campers, hikers, hang gliders, horseback riders,photographers, and outdoorsmen. A multi-time winner in Outdoor Life’s “Top 200 Towns for Sportsmen.”

Patrons of the arts will have plenty to see between Vaudeville-style shows at the WYO Theater, 30 sites of public art on the self-guided ‘Art on Display’ tour, and the paintings from famous American artists at the Bradford Brinton Memorial Museum. Of course the beauty of the area during the fall may inspire travelers to pickup paintbrushes and cameras themselves.

Autumn kicks off with the final third Thursday street festival September 20^th. This fall take a trip to this historic, adventurous, artistic, and award-winning destination. Sheridan offers a variety of accommodations for quaint cottages and rustic camp sites to larger hotels and cozy B and Bs.

 

Sheridan’s downtown in recent years has become as popular a draw for art lovers as it has traditionally been for shoppers.
From a reflection of the city’s historic roots to the purely whimsical — from the “Bozeman Trail Scout” at the corner of Main Street and Grinnell Plaza to the bronze rhino just a few blocks away — artwork abounds.

And not just downtown. “Art on Display,” a brochure published by the Sheridan Public Art Committee, provides a convenient guide to nearly 30 sites where visitors can view artwork ranging from sculpture to paintings to the stained-glass windows in several churches.

The brochure is available at the Fifth Street Visitors Center, local motels and restaurants, and downtown businesses.

Literature, art and culture have been part of Sheridan’s foundation from the days, more than a century ago, when an opera house flourished on the third floor of the Cady Building on the corner of Main Street and Alger Avenue.

The Cady’s third floor is gone, destroyed by a fire in the early 1900s, but the legacy remains. Art galleries may be found along Main Street and in Sheridan County’s outlying communities.

In recent years, the city’s wealth of sculpture and stained glass has gained attention thanks to the Sheridan Public Art Committee, an organization of volunteers whose goal is to promote the area’s visual arts.

Among works highlighted in the brochure are the pair of cast-iron Civil War cannons that guard the Grand Army of the Republic graves in Sheridan Municipal Cemetery and the pair of bronze lion-dogs that greet visitors to Kendrick Park.

Also included are the sculptures, both publicly and privately owned, that line Main Street and both sides of Grinnell Plaza just off downtown Main Street, the paintings and bronzes outside and inside Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library on Alger Avenue, the nine “Resurrection windows” at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, “Joyful” at the YMCA, and exceptional murals in several Sheridan banks and businesses.

Additional paintings and sculptures are found at Sheridan College and Sheridan High School, in Whitney Commons park, at the Sheridan County Historical Museum, in the small museum at the Visitors Center itself, and at the Sheridan Senior Citizens Center, 211 Smith St.

All of the art is on display at no cost to the public, and the brochure, which includes a map for a self-guided tour of the locations, also is free.

By Janet Donoho, The Sheridan Press 2010 Tour Guide