Tuesday, OCTOBER 7, 2025 |
Photo – Announcement for Haunted Downtown Tours – Courtesy CC Museum
The Carbon County Museum is hosting a Halloween-themed walking tour of downtown Rawlins.
Carbon County Museum Director Tom Mensik said he was exploring ways to celebrate the Halloween season while expanding the museum’s public outreach. Mensik said, as a result, Museum Education Manager Kelia McCuddy gathered a collection of creepy and morbid stories about the city. The Museum Director said he and his staff decided to turn those stories into a haunted walking tour.
Tour attendees will meet in front of Victory Baptist Church, located at 302 West Cedar Street, before being led through downtown Rawlins. Mensik said the tour will include the location where notorious outlaw Big Nose George Parrott’s remains were discovered.
Parrott was lynched by a Rawlins mob in 1881 after a failed attempt to escape from jail. His body was dissected by local physicians, Dr. Thomas Maghee and Dr. John Osborne. Perhaps most famously, Dr. Osborne had skin from Parrott’s thighs and chest tanned and made into a pair of shoes, which he is said to have worn to his gubernatorial inauguration and are on display in the Carbon County Museum.
Dr. Thomas Maghee kept the remainder of the outlaw’s body in a whiskey barrel at his office on the corner of 4th and West Cedar Streets. Museum Director Tom Mensik said the barrel was discovered in the 1950s during renovations to Dr. Maghee’s former office. The remains were positively identified by matching the skull to a fragment being used as an ashtray by Lillian Heath, Wyoming’s first female doctor. Although the barrel and most of Big Nose George’s remains are presumed lost, Mensik said the Carbon County Museum still has the outlaw’s boots in its collection.
The Haunted Downtown Tour will also visit the Osborn Building, located at the corner of 5th and Cedar Streets. Museum Director Mensik said the location is tied to a 1912 murder, when Frank Hadsell fatally shot banker A.G. Rosser before committing suicide near the historic train depot.
Mensik said each Haunted Downtown Tour lasts approximately one hour, with two tours offered at 6:00 and 7:30 p.m. The first tour is scheduled for Saturday, October 11th, but tickets quickly sold out, prompting the Museum Director to add a second date on Saturday, October 18th. Tickets are $20 per person, with proceeds going to support the Carbon County Museum. Each tour is limited to 15 participants.
Mensik said he may add a third tour date if the October 18th event sells out as well. However, the Museum Director said he would schedule it for early November to avoid conflicting with the Wyoming Frontier Prison’s annual Halloween fundraiser.
In the meantime, the Carbon County Museum is offering guided cemetery tours. Mensik said the free tours focus more on historic Rawlins’ residents than on morbid events.
The next historic cemetery tours are scheduled for October 10th and 17th, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Attendees are asked to arrive at the Rawlins Cemetery, located at 915 3rd Street, by 6:00 p.m. on either date.
The Carbon County Museum’s Haunted Downtown Tour will take place on Saturday, October 18th, at 6:00 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 per person with a maximum of 15 tickets available for each of the two tours. Visit the Carbon County Museum Facebook page for more information about the event.
