A friend of the late Wyoming wilderness explorer Lorraine Bonney recently donated two unique items of Bonney’s to the Draper Natural History Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West in Cody.
Kent Houston wrote to friends of Bonney that he didn’t feel right keeping the two moose paddles that the Kelly resident had given him. One was painted with an arrow pointing to Enos Lake and included a U.S. Forest Service logo. The other points to the trail to Two Ocean Pass. Both sites are deep in the Teton Wilderness of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
The two paddles now hang in the naturalist cabin at the museum, Houston said in an email. The cabin is a tribute to conservationists in the Olaus and Mardy Murie family, the biologist brothers Frank and John Craighead, the archeologist George Frison, and geologist David Love, all whom worked in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. “I figured it was appropriate because she was friends of all them,” Houston wrote.
Bonney died Feb. 9 in Chase, British Columbia at 93. She was an intrepid mountain explorer and, with husband Orin, wrote guidebooks to Wyoming wilderness areas and mountain ranges.