Est. 1913 · Wyoming State Historic Site · John B. Kendrick Family Estate · Flemish Revival Architecture
John Benjamin Kendrick was born in Cherokee County, Texas, and arrived in Wyoming in 1879 with a trail herd of Texas cattle. He settled near Sheridan in 1889 and founded the Kendrick Cattle Company, marrying Eula Wulfjen of Greeley, Colorado, in 1891. The couple had two children, Rosa-Maye and Manville. By 1908 Kendrick had accumulated the means to commission a permanent family residence. Construction began that year on a 39-room Flemish Revival house at the western edge of Sheridan and was completed in 1913 at a final cost of approximately $164,000. The architect was Glenn Charles McAlister.
Kendrick had limited time to enjoy the new house. In 1914 he was elected Governor of Wyoming, and two years later he resigned the governorship to take a seat in the United States Senate, where he served until his death in 1933. The family used Trail End primarily as a summer home, traveling between Washington and Sheridan.
The estate remained in private hands for several decades after Senator Kendrick's death. By 1968 the property was scheduled for demolition; the Sheridan County Historical Society purchased the building and began a long restoration. In 1982 ownership transferred to the State of Wyoming, which completed the renovation and opened the property to the public. The house is now operated as Trail End State Historic Site by Wyoming State Parks, with on-site programming organized by the Trail End Guilds, Inc.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_End
- https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/trail-end-state-historic-site
- https://trailend.org/
- https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/235
ApparitionsShadow figures
Sheridan-area paranormal compilations cite a recurring story tied to night surveillance of Trail End by local police. According to the most frequently retold version, a camera feed showed a figure standing in one of the upper-floor rooms; the responding officer entered the building and reported the room empty. A separate variant of the same account describes a figure appearing to walk alongside the officer on the camera feed during a routine sweep, with the officer reporting on the radio that he was alone in the building. The mansion's substantial scale, with four floors and many narrow corridors, gives the story its distinctive setting.
The paranormal record at Trail End is otherwise modest. The site does not host overnight paranormal investigations; the staff and the Trail End Guilds program the building primarily as a Wyoming political and ranching history museum. Periodic ticketed evening events have included a murder mystery dinner staged in the mansion's main rooms, drawing on the building's atmosphere rather than on documented hauntings.
Visitors who tour the upper floors often note the resonant quality of the corridor acoustics and the way late-afternoon light moves through the leaded windows of the main staircase, conditions that may contribute to the persistence of the surveillance lore in local circulation.
