Wyoming History: Copman’s Tomb Named For Man Who Wanted To Fly Off It In 1880s

Wolfgang Robert Copman was one of those guys who could probably make or fix anything his mind could wrap itself around.

A German from Pennsylvania, a young Copman — “Jack” to his friends — was given a farm from his father and initially aspired to be a surgeon. Copman would tell stories of going to medical school, doing his studies, and then at one point as the clinical work began, decided it was not his calling.

“I balked. The doors to the room were locked, but I escaped through a window having decided I didn’t want to be a surgeon,” he had said, according to his 1907 obituary.

He sold his little farm, and like many in the 1870s, headed west. Hi first stop was Kansas, where he reportedly hunted and trapped, and then to Colorado, Arizona and California, where he prospected for precious metals.

In 1878, he arrived in the Bighorn Basin in northern Wyoming as part of a huge cattle drive from Oregon organized by Wyoming homesteader Henry Clay Lovell. His role was a repairman and assistant cook.

He expressed a desire to be a trapper, and in 1879, an assistant on the Lovell ranch named Clay Anderson showed him a tributary on Shell Creek. It became known as Trapper Creek.

Wyoming historian Paul Frison, who met Copman when he was young, wrote an article about Copman that was published in the Casper Star-Tribune. He said Anderson would stop and check on Copman from time to time, who built a dugout home and trapped.

Bird Man

Copman made friends with birds, taming them with food. Some he killed and dissected with an engineer’s eye.

Why? Because he thought man could fly.

During a reported visit by Anderson one day in the early 1880s, Copman went into his dugout and came out with a model of a flying machine. According to Anderson, it was about 2 feet long and not quite as wide, had wings and a “tail-like affair.”

“It soared up into the air, traveled about 100 feet, circled and came back to earth,” Anderson said.

Copman’s plan as told to Anderson was that he was going to build a flying machine that would allow him to take off from a high location. He planned to trade the furs he had trapped for materials needed to build the flying machine out of a machine shop in Butte, Montana.

The following spring he went to Butte, found a machine shop, fashioned his air valves and other parts for his flying machine and headed home, stopping in Billings, Montana, along the way. There in a store and met a young woman named Elizabeth “Betty” Yegen. She was born in Switzerland and would later become his wife.

Needing a job since he had spent his fur money on his new project, Copman went back to work for Lovell and also was reported to have worked for “Australia” Clark, a rancher from England in southern Montana.

While riding along Shell Creek one day he spotted the ideal place to launch his flying device: A huge rock formation that rose a few thousand feet above the canyon floor.

The Plan

Copman reportedly told friends that he planned to build the device so it would roll down the steep mountain slope on wooden wheels, jettison the undercarriage, and he would soar through the canyon.

“I haven’t the slightest doubt but what I can come down canyon and with my air valves have sufficient control of the machine to combat the various air currents that I will encounter,” he allegedly told a man named Billy Mead. “I will land my flying machine down in the valley. One thing I must do is make some kites and test the air currents …”

But his engagement to Betty Yegen led to other priorities. He filed to homestead land and turned to his experience as a farmer in Pennsylvania to start making a life that would support a wife and family.

Copman and Betty Yegen married Nov. 4, 1890. Three daughters would result from their union.

A Shell Creek rancher named Al Kershner, who was a former cowboy for Lovell, would later tell the historian Frison that Copman had built his undercarriage and had planned his test flight from the top of the mountain above the canyon, which dropped some 2,000 feet.

“He had almost everything ready to take off, but I think his wife was afraid that he would wind up down there under the cliff, and for my part, I believe he would have killed himself,” Kershner said. “The under carriage, as he called it, was up here for several years, but somebody pushed it over the cliff a long time ago, and the story was that his wife got someone to do that.”

Meanwhile, Copman’s work ethic and education allowed him to build up a farm and become a well-known and respected member of the community.

Good Farmer

His farm boasted an orchard, and he raised cattle, sheep and hay.

“W. R. Copman, proprietor of the famous Cloverly farm on Beaver Creek, was a visitor at the county seat last Saturday,” the Basin Republican reported April 19, 1906. “He brought down about 1,000 pounds of apples which were grown on his farm. Mr. Copman has one of the finest orchards in this part of the country, and was among the first to demonstrate that fruit growing could be made a success in Big Horn County.”

On July 19, 1906, Copman was among those appointed to be a representative of Basin, Wyoming, to the National Irrigation Congress to be held in Boise, Idaho.

While he was successful, daughter Elizabeth Leavitt told Frison he could sometimes show a strong German temper. Her mother referred to him as the “Saxony Tyrant” during those occasions.

As one that valued education, Copman sent his daughters to Switzerland, where his wife was from, for their education.

It was while they were there in late 1906 that Copman suffered paralysis on one side of his body from an apparent mini-stroke.

“Thinking it would soon pass away in a short time, Mr. Copman said nothing to his friends. His wife and three children were in Switzerland at the time, but in the course of a couple of weeks, Mrs. Copman and the youngest child returned, leaving the two older girls to attend School in their native land,” The Basin Republican reported on Feb. 22, 1907.

After his wife returned, Copman suffered another stroke and was taken to Basin for treatment, and later to Billings, where he died on Feb. 17, 1907.

“All that medical aid and science could do did not save him,” The Basin Republican reported.

Ashes Over The Cliff

Frison reported that Copman had told friends years earlier that if he ever died he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered “from a flying machine” over the cliff where he dreamed he would fly.

His family fulfilled his wish to be cremated by sending his body to a Denver crematorium. His daughter, Elizabeth, told Frison the ashes were never scattered.

“I suppose we should have done so, but we didn’t,” she is quoted by Frison in his Casper Star-Tribune article. “We had his ashes here in the house for several years and when mother died, we buried them side by side in the Greybull Cemetery.”

However, those who drive between Shell and Sheridan on Highway 14 will find a pull off spot that allows them to see three distinctive mountain peaks. One is called Elephant Head Rock, the second is Pyramid Peak and the third is Copman’s Tomb.

A story in the News Letter Journal in Newcastle, Wyo., on Feb. 22, 1940 gives its version of the reason for the name.

“Copman’s Tomb, a yellow cliff near the Shell-Sheridan highway in the Big Horns, bears the name of Jack Copman, who lived in a dugout in the vicinity and spent much time trying to make an airplane model,” the newspaper wrote. “He often said that when he had completed an airplane, he would take it to the top of the cliff and endeavor to make a flight. If he failed to fly, the cliff would be his tomb — hence the name.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.