Lovell, Wyoming

In the 1920's, a Dr. William Watts Horsley came to Lovell. Horsley came to Lovell because he thought the climate here was exceptional for the growing of roses. As one of the foremost American experts on roses (at the time), he spent the next 50 years working in the Lovell area to prove he was right. Lovell today prides itself as being Wyoming's "Rose City" with extensive public and private rose gardens everywhere.

Lovell is named for Henry Clay Lovell, a man who brought 2 large herds of cattle into the area in 1879. Lovell and his partner, Anthony Mason, established a ranch on the No Wood Creek in 1883 but the town of Lovell itself didn't really get off the ground until a group of Mormon pioneers led by Byron Sessions and Charles A. Welch arrived in the spring of 1900. Some of these pioneers stayed in Lovell but some went on to found the nearby communities of Byron and Cowley, and to dig the Sidon Canal, a project that supplied the irrigation water to turn thousands of acres in the Bighorn Basin into fertile farmland.