A few miles up Meeteetse Creek stood Arland, one of the toughest settlements of Wyoming frontier history. Founded in the spring of 1884 by French businessman Victor Arland and buffalo hunter John Corbett, it grew from the partners’ earlier trading-post ventures on Trail Creek and Cottonwood Creek north of Cody, Wyoming, after they moved to Meeteetse Creek to be in the center of cattle country and the development ranches. Arland soon had a store, saloon, restaurant, U.S. Post Office, two-story hotel, blacksmith shop, red light district, coal mine, livery stables, residential cabins, and corrals. A weekly mail and passenger stage helped make it a trade center for area ranches and a mecca for cowboys and other tough characters, while the nearest law was 150 miles away in Lander, Wyoming. On February 22, 1888, Vic Arland shot and killed Broken Nose Jackson in self-defense at a dance there, and Jackson’s friend Bill Landon later killed Vic Arland in revenge at Dunivan’s Saloon in Red Lodge, Montana, on April 24, 1890. After Vic Arland’s death, the town degenerated into a hangout for outlaws including Black Jack Miller, John Bliss, Al Durant, Butch Cassidy, W.A. Gallagher, Blind Bill Hoolihan, Ed Nye, Rose Williams, Sage Brush Nancy, and Belle Drewry, known as the Woman in Blue. Most of them, along with others, died entangled in lawlessness, romance, intrigue, and murder. By 1896 nearby Meeteetse had sprung up, and by 1897 Arland was gone, leaving only stories and ghosts of its past.