Mother Featherlegs monument.

Mother Featherlegs - Prostitute Monument

Lusk, Wyoming

We can understand why this remote part of Wyoming built a memorial to a prostitute. They were grateful just to have one.

The grave of "Mother Featherlegs" Shepard is on all the maps, but no one in Lusk knows how to get to it. It's on the Old Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Road, a ten mile journey south of town. Although the road is graveled, it's still not one that we'd drive if it was threatening to snow. Or rain.

And there's not much of a payoff. No bawdy statuary or even a noble bas relief. Just a 3,500-pound pink granite slab, the weathered inscription blocked by a metal fence.

The inscription:

Her lies Mother Featherlegs. So called, as in her ruffled pantalettes she looked like
a feather-legged chicken in a high wind.
She was roadhouse ma'am.
An outlaw confederate, she was murdered by "Dangerous Dick Davis the Terrapin" in 1879.

If ominous weather convinces you not to visit Mother Featherlegs' grave, you can stay in Lusk and visit the Stagecoach Museum. It displays her pantalettes.