Longmire Days Rolls Into Buffalo, Known This Weekend As Durant, Wyo.

DURANT, Wyo. -- The pomp, the circumstance, the parade, the dancers, the author, the actors, the Indians, and the Ranier Beer are here.

For its fourth year, Buffalo this weekend morphs into author Craig Johnson's fictional alter ego of Durant, Wyo., which is the county seat of the fictional Absaroka County where Sheriff Walt Longmire and his deputies and staff enforce the law, try to keep their own lives in order, and work through modern issues of the West such as who really owns a recently discovered T-Rex dinosaur.

The books gave rise to the A&E "Longmire" television series starring Australian actor Robert Taylor as the complex sheriff, which the network suddenly canceled after its third season last year. A groundswell of Internet outrage lead to Netflix picking up the show for a fourth season beginning this fall.

Fans of the books and the show hail from across America and around the world, and also from Casper.

"I was a fan of the books before the TV show," Dob Wallace of Casper said after Friday morning's parade.

"I grew up on a Wyoming cattle ranch," Wallace said. "The Wyoming that Craig Johnson writes about is the Wyoming I grew up in. It's very faithful to the culture.

Last year, about 8,000 descended on Buffalo, and that number is expected to rise to about 10,000 this weekend.

This is the schedule for the weekend, according to the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce: