Welcome to Bar Nunn, a former airfield humming with small town charm.
Despite its name , there are actually two bars inBar Nunn , and they ’ll recite you all you call for to get laid about the antelope - beset Great Plains enclave of 2,981 , just 10 min outside ofCasper . Choose the squatChatters , and be charmed by $ 2 pint specials and Sunday all - day breakfast . If you ’re short on time and ca n’t go in , that ’s okay — there ’s a drive - thru around back .
In a room with two consortium table , a dart board , and thick blanket of smoke ( “ We ’re the smoke measure , ” says a new supporter at the counter ) , gossipy local loyalist — some who have subsist in Bar Nunn since not too long after it was comprise in 1982 — will jump to inform you both that the John Wayne filmHellfighterswas shoot in good order here in township , and about the tourists that lingered too long after theKOAdown the street closed for the season last October . Inquire about what there is to do in the sphere and they ’ll hit you with , “ Have you seen the tumbleweeds in the car park ? ” ( they’renot joking ) . Ask if they ever go to the massive establishment next door , theotherbar - solidus - eating place , and you ’ll get a definitive “ No . Thisis our pip . ”
Butyouwill check out the massive establishment next door . crime syndicate - friendly , with bounce houses , a killer Warren E. Burger menu , gambling machine , and a bartender who will let you try fancy tequila , insistyou order the pie and then forget to charge you for it , there ’s plenty going in its favour . But you ’re there for the décor . And the history .
There’s nunn' ordinary about it.|Vanita Salisbury
A modest blue biplane knack from the arched ceiling ; the carte du jour will tell you it was once vanish by James C. Good , who used to fly for Amoco Oil in Casper . A large propellor separate seat areas , and a richness of air travel paraphernalia describe the walls . It let in but is not limited to photos of the building ’s past tense . Today , this bar - stroke - eating house is calledThe Hangar , and it turn out it ’s for a pretty good reason . It was once an existent airplane hangar . And the town of Bar Nunn ? Well , that was once a astray - exposed flying field .
Bar Nunn’s high-flying past
It ’s inevitable in this eld of aviation : The rise of expectant , shinier airports means their modest predecessors are often left by the roadside . Economic downturns , structural terms , or simply no longer being need after the end of a war also contribute to forsaking . The little guys never stood a hazard .
One website devoted toabandoned airfieldlists no less than 2,643 such lesson spanning 50 province and Puerto Rico . Some exist as lasting indentations of runway in grass ( did you roll in the hay anyone can justmake their own strip ? ) . And some , like Bar Nunn , have found raw purpose in their second lives . Denver’sStapleton International Airportis now a mixed - purpose urban residential area . Internationally , Hong Kong’sKai Takis now a cruise terminal , and Berlin ’s Tempelhof , nowTempelhofer Feld , is perhaps the best example of airfield adaptive reuse that preserves its past : It live on as a lavish , vast public common with 10 entering , constellate with both community of interests gardens and Cold War - epoch airplanes .
The 640 - acre former landing field now prognosticate Bar Nunn was gestate in 1927 as the embrasure for Wyoming ’s Natrona County . Two years by and by , it was officially christened Wardwell Field , after Major Doyen P. Wardwell , an aviation pioneer whose plane went into a tailspin in 1929 and crashed nearby . The field cost $ 125,000 to establish , featured a hardy brick and steel repair shed , and , harmonize to newsprint clippings , open up a unexampled airpost path from Billings , Montana to Denver , Colorado via Casper .
Go Pokes!|Vanita Salisbury
With three paved runways and an additional unpaved choice , it visualise some good sentence — like a dedication in 1934 , complete with an over - the - top air show attracting authorities officials and thousands of onlookers . And visits by aBoeing Monomail mail plane , one of only two ever built . Wardwell Field serve as the county ’s aerodrome until 1952 , when procedure were moved to the former Casper Army Airfield . And for the next two years , there it sat , unused .
A man, a plan, an abandoned airfield
It ’s here that the tale of Bar Nunn pivot man to one of a man with a dream . The man ? Cowboy businessman and jack of all trades ( let in , surprisingly , body of water divining ) , Romie Nunn , out of Casper . The dreaming : To take the empty Wardwell Field and metamorphose it into an internationally renowned “ horse cavalry center of the Rockies . ” In 1954 , Nunn , who already had a partial stake in Wardwell , paid $ 20,500 for the landed estate to fulfill his vision . In it , the already- build route would be lined with scores . Every lot would have a cattle ranch - panache home . And every spread - style home , its very own sawbuck .
But though the population rapidly grew , Nunn ’s cattle farm - flair dream never come up to realization . In 1972 , he sold off all but 10 lots . Later that decade , arena homeowners voted to contain as a municipality to improve services relate to C. P. Snow remotion and street repairs . And in 1982 , the town officially became Bar Nunn .
Plane and simple
Drive around modern - mean solar day Bar Nunn and you ’ll be view glimpses of its aeronautical past ( check out thisdrone footageto get the full ballad of the land ) . It begin with the town logo — what looks like an nonobjective scribble at its sum is actually a map of the field ’s former angular runway layout , stamped with its date of internalization . ( Another townspeople sign sport the part ’s ever - prominent pronghorn antelope , which even gets its own eponymous street in town ) .
And you ’ll experience the history in the streets , quite literally . Though now carve up , the former runways are still comically oversized for car dealings . One splatter up ( a feature of runways to allow for runoff ) , with a built - in atomic number 92 - turn . Another seems bent on launching you into the sundown , flank by Casper Mountain . And on another , the cinch is so wide and the icteric dividing demarcation so awkwardly off - center that a driver could have an existential crisis deciding whether to stick close to the phone line or roam luxuriously within the large-minded lane .
Wait, KOA Has Gone… Bougie?
The brand’s glamping glow-up looks good.
A sojourn would call for either staying overnight in Casper or reserving a bit at the KOA , which takes reservations begin April 1 . Or you couldbuy your own stain — as people flock to place like Jackson , there ’s still plenty of way in these part . And while there ’s not that much to do in Bar Nunn proper , Casper offer year - round activities . There are hiking trails and skiing at the Hogadon Basin Ski Area onCasper Mountain , copiousbreweries , contemporary art at theNicolaysen Art Museum , and even more chronicle — both prehistoric , with dinosaur bones at theTate Geological Museum at Casper College , and more recent , at theNational Historic Trails Interpretive Center , where you ’ll learn that Casper has the preeminence of being the only place the Oregon , California , Mormon , and Pony Express trails intersect .
But if you ’d rather just hang in Bar Nunn to hop back and forth between bars and zig zag your vehicle across the wide streets — on purpose not in that exact order — that could be entertaining as well . Just think to watch out for the Salsola kali tenuifolia .
This hangar has seen some things.|Vanita Salisbury
Don’t forget to look up when you’re in The Hangar.|Vanita Salisbury
Plenty of room for… whatever.|Vanita Salisbury
