Hulett, WY

Hulett sits in a narrow Belle Fourche River valley in Crook County, with red rimrock closing in the view and the river running through the middle of town. The local service list is compact but useful: a K–12 school, library, grocery, cafes, clinics, bank, post office, motels, and small visitor businesses all serve the surrounding country. Devils Tower is nine miles away, so monument visitors share the town’s roads with the people who use Hulett as their everyday stop. Motorcyclists arrive in August, and hunters bring a different season in fall.

The town took its name from Louis and Mrs. Hulett, the first family to settle here in 1881. That origin story fits the geography: the Belle Fourche made a natural corridor, while the surrounding rimrock gives Hulett a strong sense of enclosure. Devils Tower, proclaimed the nation’s first national monument in 1906, is a major nearby landmark and a place of continuing significance for more than 20 Indigenous nations. Hulett lives with that larger landscape every day, handling the practical work of a town whose map extends from the river valley to the monument and the ranch country beyond.

Hulett Museum & Art Gallery, at 115 Highway 24, opened in 2010 to preserve the history and culture of northeastern Wyoming and to display local artifacts. The town also has an airport, additional museums, and a private 18-hole golf course, giving visitors several reasons to spend time in the valley. The school and library keep a year-round rhythm in town, while the calendar picks up around the Old West Invitational Turkey Shoot in spring, the August motorcycle traffic, and fall hunting. Those seasons show how Hulett’s economy is layered: schools, county and town services, small businesses, and visitor traffic all meet around a community that remains recognizable from its river, rimrock, and straight road through the valley.