In 1900, Lorenzo Snow, prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, sent settlers to northern Wyoming under direction of Apostle Abraham Owen Woodruff to establish the communities of Byron and Cowley and build the Sidon Canal to bring water from the Shoshone River to them. In 1909, the Big Horn LDS Stake Presidency—President Byron Sessions and counselors Jesse W. Crosby and Charles A. Welch—chose a main street location in Cowley for a building to serve church administration and tithing offices. Built of native sandstone with single-piece double columns, it reflected the ingenuity and strength of the early pioneers, who hauled the stone from hills five miles north of Cowley, shaped it on site, and set it in place without power equipment. After the LDS Stake office was moved to Lovell, the building was used for many years by the Cowley Ward, Cowley School District, and the community for various purposes, and by 1997 it had been extensively remodeled as the office of Cowley and the Pioneer Museum/History Center.