One of Wyoming’s most famous cowboys, recently dubbed “Earl,” was plucked from his longtime, remote roadside home of Powder River and is undergoing a much-needed makeover 35 miles down the road in Casper.
The iconic Tumble Inn sign that had greeted passersby along Highway 26 since the early 1960s had grown worse for wear in recent decades, but it still outlived the establishment that once offered “Sizzlin Steaks.” Despite its deteriorating condition — wind-shattered neon glass, growing patches of rust and fading colors — the relic of Americana never lost its charm.
“Driving the road through Powder River from Colorado to Cody over many decades, Jonathan [Thorne] noticed that the sign was falling further and further into decay, and rescuing it became an obsession of sorts,” Thorne’s sister Sarah Mentock told WyoFile.
After years of sleuthing, Thorne finally located the owner and struck a deal that required him to buy the entire lot. The siblings then recruited the talents of neon-glass bender Connie Morgan and John Huff — a motorhead, metal craftsman and all-around tinkerer with a large shop in downtown Casper’s Yellowstone District.
In fact, both Morgan, who owns and operates GloW Neon Lights, and Huff had long shared an appreciation for the sign and worried it might waste away — or worse, suffer at the hands of vandals.
“These old signs, to me, they’re artwork,” Morgan said. “If you look at those old neon signs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, that’s not just a sign advertising a hotel or motel. It’s a piece of art.”
The restoration mission began with a good, eight-hour power washing. Huff had to remove decades of bird skeletons, bird poop and nesting material from Earl’s innards. With his hat removed, Earl was mounted on a large mechanical rotisserie so Huff and his crew could comfortably labor over the sign, carefully sanding multiple layers of paint, tracing lines and rewiring electrical connections.
“I’ve looked at this for days on end wondering, ‘What was this guy thinking when he came up with this idea and put it on this metal?'” Huff said, adding that the original artist remains a mystery. “I feel like I kind of know this guy. I don’t know who he was, but I got a pretty good idea of his style and the way he did things.
“It wasn’t precision like new digital artwork,” Huff added. “Some guy painted this by hand. He didn’t go render it on a computer. He visioned it and then he drew it on a big scale. That’s not how things are done these days.”
A few doors down, Morgan is recreating the neon lights — a task that requires careful forensics to determine the original colors. She was able to salvage some of the original glass that was still intact, while bending hundreds of feet of new neon tubing true to the original design.
“The fact that any of it is still intact is pretty amazing, so I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel making it all new,” Morgan said. “Whoever did the glass-bending on it was pretty phenomenal, so I want to keep it as an homage to the guy who made it originally.”
The restoration team plans to mount the Tumble Inn sign in front of the Yellowstone Garage Bar and Grill in downtown Casper, with an unveiling and celebration on Memorial Day weekend. Huff and his crew are designing an observation deck so people can take photos and enjoy the piece of Wyoming history.
“It’s not a sign,” Huff said. “This is art. This is nostalgia. We’re not doing a sign, we’re not trying to promote a business. But we’re preserving history and the old-school way of doing things.”
Visit this website to learn more about the Tumble Inn sign’s history and the restoration process.
I’ve always loved this old sign never since I was a kid my dad used to take us from Casper back to pavilion through powder River. I wrote one of my best poems and it included a stop right there.