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of Wyoming
MAIN STREET, NEWCASTLE. WYO.. 1903
Stimson Photo
Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department
^pr'111962
WYOMING STATE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND
HISTORICAL BOARD
Fred W. Marble, Chairman Cheyenne
E. A. Littleton Gillette
Henry Jones Laramie
Mrs. Dwight Wallace Evanston
E. W. Mass Casper
Mrs. Wilmot C. Hamm Rock Springs
Mrs. William Miller Lusk
Paul Stadius Thermopolis
Attorney-General Norman Gray. Ex-Officio
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
STAFF
Lola M. Homsher Director
Henryetta Berry Assistant Director
Mrs. Ruth J. Bradley Chief, Historical Division
Mrs. Bonnie Forsyth Chief, Archives & Records Division
ANNALS OF WYOMING
The Annals of Wyoming is published semi-annually in April and
October and is received by all members of the Wyoming State Historical
Society. Copies of current issues may be purchased for $1.00 each.
Available copies of earlier issues are also for sale. A price list may be
obtained by writing to the Editor.
Communications should be addressed to the Editor. The Editor does
not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by
contributors.
Copyright, 1962, by the Wyoming State Archives and
Historical Department.
Mnals of Wyoming
Volume 34
April 1962
Number 1
Lola M. Homsher
Editor
Ruth J. Bradley
Assistant Editor
Katherine Halverson
Assistant Edi tot-
Published Biannually by the
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
Official Publication
of the
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OFFICERS 1960-62
President, Mrs. Edness Kimball Wilkins Casper
First Vice President, Vernon K. Hurd Green River
Second Vice President, Charles Ritler Cheyenne
Secretary-Treasurer, Miss Maurine Carley Cheyenne
Executive Secretary, Miss Lola M. Homsher Cheyenne
Past Presidents:
Frank L. Bowron. Casper 1953-1955
Wiixlwi L. Marion, Lander 1955-1956
Dr. DeWitt Dominick, Cody 1956-1957
Dr. T. A. Larson, Laramie 1957-1958
A. H. MacDougall, Rawlins 1958-1959
Mrs. Thelma G. Conor, Buffalo 1959-1960
E. A. Littleton. Gillette 1960-1961
The Wyoming State Historical Society was organized in October 1953.
Membership is open to anyone interested in history. County Historical
Society Chapters have been organized in Albany, Big Horn, Campbell, Car-
bon, Fremont. Goshen. Johnson. Laramie, Natrona, Park, Platte. Sheridan,
Sweetwater. Washakie. Weston, and Uinta counties.
State Dues:
Life Membership $50.00
Joint Life Membership (Husband and wife) 75.00
Annual Membership 3.50
Joint Annual Membership (Two persons of same family at
same address.) 5.00
County dues are in addition to state dues and are set by county organ-
izations.
Send State membership dues to:
Wyoming State Historical Society
Executive Headquarters
State Office Building
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Zable of Contents
MAY NELSON DOW 5
Elizabeth J. Thorpe and Mable E. Brown
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET _ 32
Mary Olga Moore
FRONTIER LAWYER 43
Burton S. Hill
LANDER CUTOFF _ 50
J. K. Moore, Jr.
1852 ON THE OREGON TRAIL 52
Mae Urbanek
ALIAS DAN DAVIS - ALIAS DAN MORGAN 60
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 61
Elizabeth Keen
GIRLHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF LARAMIE IN 1870-1871 85
Nancy Fillmore Brown
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL. Part VIII. Section 4 95
Thelma Gatchell Condit
POEMS - Petroglyphs. Shelia Hart 59
Wyoming Memories. Dick J. Nelson 112
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 115
President's Message by Edness Kimball Wilkins
BOOK REVIEWS
Todd. Recollections of a Piney Creek Rancher 1 18
Van Nuys, The Family Band 119
Sandoz, These Were the Sioux 120
Eggenhofer, Wagons, Mules and Men 121
Atherton, The Cattle Kings 121
Bonney, Bonney's Guide 123
Severy, America's Historylands, Landmarks of Liberty 123
Johnson, Pioneer's Progress 124
Elston, Treasure Coach from Deadwood 125
Urbanek, Songs of the Sage; The Second Man 126, 129
Fitzpatrick, Nebraska Place Names 126
Adams. The Old-Time Cowhand 128
CONTRIBUTORS 131
ILLUSTRATIONS ACCOMPANYING ARTICLES
Main Street, Newcastle. Wyo.. 1903 Cover
May Nelson Dow 4, 14, 29
Frontier Lawyer _ 44, 47
The Hole-in-the-Wall 96, 98
Map: May Nelson Dow 19
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF WYOMINI
URAMiE 82071
A. M. Nelson (Alfred) 1913 Mary Caroline (Dalton) Nelson
Dick J. Nelson - May's younger Sarah Pettigrew - Mary Dalton
brother Nelson's sister
Courtesy Elizabeth J. Thorpe and Mabel E. Brown
May Nelson Dow
A FIRST LADY OF NEWCASTLE
By
Elizabeth J. Thorpe
Mable E. Brown
"I remember, I remember,
The house where 1 was born — "
This is May Nelson Dow's story taken from her treasury of
memories which extend into the past beyond the house where she
was born through the stories of her parents and grandparents
which cover three generations of westward wanderers.
We shall begin with Nancy Melinda Collier, May's grandmother,
who was, at the age of fourteen, trim, tiny, but very grown-up.
Nancy had a mind of her own. In addition, she was in love.
However, the Colliers thought fourteen a bit young for marriage
even in the 1840's in Louisville, Kentucky, when early marriages
were not too unusual. They opposed it firmly. They had no
objection to young Lloyd Nelson except that his feet were restless
and they considered Nancy still a child. They should have been
forewarned, having lived with Nancy's independence for fourteen
years, but they didn't realize how little they had understood the
depth of her feelings until it was too late.
One balmy southern night, with the help of an older sister,
Nancy climbed out of her second story window, slid down two
bed sheets the girls had tied together and seated herself accurately
behind Lloyd who was waiting nervously in the shadows on his
horse. Into the darkness they rode, leaving Nancy's home and
family far behind.
This was the beginning of a trek that took Nancy as far as
Glenwood, Iowa, where she and Lloyd settled down for many
years and raised their children. She must have been in touch
with her family and, we hope, forgiven, for later her sister, Dru-
cinda Collier, came to live with them. Drucinda never married
but stayed and helped Nancy the rest of her life.
It was not until Nancy and Lloyd were grandparents that Lloyd's
restless feet bothered him again. Two of their sons, Henry and
Alfred, had enlisted when the Civil War started. They were with
Company B of the 29th Iowa Infantry. At the time of enlist-
ment, Alfred had given his age as eighteen, but he was really only
seventeen. James, their youngest boy had been injured as a child
6 ANNALS OF WYOMING
and was lame. He was not accepted in the service but through in-
fluential friends he obtained a position and spent the war years
there in Washington. Although Henry spent some time in Ander-
sonville prison, both of the boys came home when the war ended
and both were soon married. Henry married a girl named Eliza.
Alfred met and courted Mary Caroline Dalton who had been born
in Illinois but had come with her family to Glen wood before the
war. They were married in 1867. Martha Nelson, the boys'
sister, married a man named Morton Noah.
So when Lloyd and Nancy decided to follow the trail west again
they were accompanied by the Henry Nelsons, the Morton Noahs,
the Alfred Nelsons and Charles and Sarah Pettigrew, Sarah being
Mary Nelson's sister. Alfred and Mary, or Molly, as he called
her, by this time had three children, Nancy Melinda, born in Mill
County, Iowa in 1864; Ida J. in 1869; and Frank Ellen, born in
Glenwood in 1871 .
As they set out from their homes in Iowa in the fall of 1871
their party consisted of six wagons. They journeyed toward Kan-
sas. Most of the time the families enjoyed traveling in spite of
the fact that the way was long, often uncomfortable and sometimes
dangerous. One time the Noah's wagon was the last to cross an
icebound stream. They were nearly across when the ice began to
give way. Martha, sitting in the back of the wagon, could hear
it snapping and cracking. She shouted at her husband, "Morton,
drive up quick before we are all drowned!" They made it safely,
but another time when fording a river the Alfred Nelson's wagon
was the last in the train. The far bank had become very muddy
and slippery by the time the other wagons had been pulled up.
As Alfred's oxen lurched out of the water, slipped and jerked
ahead again, the extra strain broke the king pin which held the
tongue in place. The oxen were plunged into the mud. The
wagon rolled back into the water, tipping over on its side. Mary
Nelson with the two little girls and the baby, Frank, were inside.
The men rushed back to help them out and set the wagon on its
wheels. As they dashed into the water one of the men on horse-
back noticed the baby's blanket floating downstream. Blankets
were precious. He prodded his horse and splashed after the bob-
bing thing, reached for it and gasped. Then he made a frantic
grab and caught it to him. The baby was still wrapped in it! He
was, however, unhurt and not even very wet. It had all happened
so quickly.
They went into Kansas as far as southwestern Cloud County
where they took up land under the "Timber Claim" law on the
Solomon River about eight miles south of Beloit.
Four of the families, the Lloyd Nelsons, the Henry Nelsons,
the Noahs and the Pettigrews built one large cabin located where
the four corners of their four plots of land met. Each family had
MAY NELSON DOW 7
its own corner of the cabin and lived there. As grandmother of
the group, Nancy seemed to feel justified in being a little different.
She had a rock floor in her corner which she took pride in keeping
immaculately clean.
The Alfred Nelsons built a cabin of their own. It was a good
thing they did, for in the next six years they had three more chil-
dren. Orpha May was born March 19, 1873; Dick, May 29,
1875; and Laura, Oct. 23, 1877. Nine years later, in 1886, Ge-
neva was born. Ida died at the age of eight, just a month before
Laura was born.
Through seventeen years of a developmental period in Kansas
they experienced the hardships, griefs and rewards of frontier life.
They knew the disastrous "grasshopper year ', years of cyclones
and hot winds, and occasional years of plenty and prosperity.
There were times when they lived in the towns of Beloit and James-
town.
Living as she did on the outposts of civilization, Mary Dalton
Nelson became a tower of strength to those of her friends and
neighbors with whom she came in contact. She dressed the new-
born babies, closed the eyes of the dead, fed the hungry, cared for
the sick and clothed the needy. She had the only washing machine
and sewing machine for miles around and willingly shared both
with any neighbor who could get to her home. Tired mothers
brought baskets of garments ready to be stitched on the machine
or quilts to be washed in the back saving washer while Mary Nel-
son took care of visiting babies as well as her own. Her talent for
nursing developed as her experience widened and she was always
in demand.
Funny things happened, too, that grew funnier with re-telling,
like Grandmother's visiting Indian.
One day Nancy, working in the big cabin, heard a sound out-
side. The door had a wooden latch and a tiny round peephole
where a knot in the wood had fallen out. She tip-toed over and
put her eye to the peephole, only to find that she was staring
directly into the eye of a curious Shawnee. Grandmother, used to
Indians and always friendly, unlatched the door and invited him
in. The only thing she had to offer him in the way of refreshments
was some fresh buttermilk. She looked around for something to
put it in because he looked pretty dirty to her and she didn't want
him drinking out of one of her cups. Her worried glance fell on
the wash basin. She poured the buttermilk into it and handed it
to Grandfather who offered it to the Indian. With great polite-
ness he grunted, "You drink, too." So Grandfather, silently thank-
ful for Nancy's cleanliness, drank first, then handed the basin to
their guest.
In 1876 when the discovery of gold was luring people to the
Black Hills an emigrant train of eighteen wagons left northwestern
Kansas bound for the sold fields. This was known as the Petti-
8 ANNALS OF WYOMING
grew party since Charlie Pettigrew had been made wagon boss.
Many in the party, like the Pettigrews, were not gold-seekers but
desired relief from the drouth in Kansas.
When Charlie, a giant of a man, and Sarah, a large, laughing
woman and their fourteen children departed with the big train it
was a sad day for the Nelsons. They were not yet ready to leave
Kansas. Later when they received letters from Sarah telling of
the experiences of these people, they were glad they had stayed
home. They wept over Sarah's story of the death of their young-
est child, six year old Freddie, who was crushed under a wagon
wheel near Kimball, Nebraska. The eyes of the children sparkled
over several tales of minor encounters with Indians in spite of the
mounted guard that accompanied the train. And, most hair-rais-
ing of all, was her letter describing the ambush at Beulah on Sand
Creek. The members of the train who were not gold-seekers had,
after a brief look at Deadwood and vicinity, decided that it was
no place for farmers. Six or eight families, including the Petti-
grews, decided to go on to Montana which they thought would be
more like the farm land they were used to. In spite of warnings
that it was dangerous to go because of Indians, the party pro-
ceeded.
It was a beautiful land after they left Deadwood Gulch. The
arms of the hills spread out, opening vistas of vast prairies of red
soil, shadowed canyons and wooded hills in the distance. Spear-
fish Creek was a wide, clear, rushing stream that watered the
broad, fertile Spearfish Valley. But they kept going. It wasn't
like Kansas. Perhaps because of the somber warnings they were
unusually apprehensive and the rugged beauty of the place didn't
appeal to them.
At Beulah their fears seemed to materialize. They were sur-
rounded by Indians who had no intention of letting them go fur-
ther into their territory or of permitting them to return the way
they had come. They had no choice but to defend themselves the
best they could.
The men hurriedly put the wagons in a ring and started digging
small pits from which to fight and a large one where the women
and children would be safe. The Indians seemed determined to
hold the party there until all either starved to death or were killed.
They were there almost a week. To the women the hole in
the ground became home. They accepted it just as they had all
the other discomforts and hardships of living on the trail or in a
camp. They had a certain measure of security. Their men were
protecting them.
Their mode of living in the hole had organization. There was
a fireplace in one corner where they prepared meals. Even the
children had helped pick the stones for this out of the sides of
the hole. Their sleeping quarters were in another corner. In a
MAY NELSON DOW 9
third corner the men dug a deeper hole, throwing the dirt up high
around it for the accommodation of their physical needs.
One night toward the end of the week a rider managed to slip
out in the darkness and get to Deadwood for help. A day or two
later the soldiers came and the Indians were driven away. After
such an experience the people were willing to concede that it was
too dangerous to go on. They retraced their trail into the peaceful
Spearfish Valley and stayed there. Some settled along the creek.
Others went into the little town of Spearfish.
With feelings of relief and thankfulness the Nelsons read in
later epistles that the wanderers found it a good land in spite of
the terrifying and unhappy episode which had forced them to stay
in it. So good that they began a written campaign urging the
Nelsons over and over to leave Kansas and come on along to the
Black Hills.
It took twelve years of eloquence to dislodge any of the family
from the Kansas plains but at last Alfred who had, perhaps, in-
herited a touch of his father's restlessness succumbed to the
temptation to go west once more.
Nancy, Grandmother Nelson, had died and after several years
of being lonely and living with various members of the family,
Lloyd had married again. The grandchildren learned to call this
lady "Grandma Ann". She and Lloyd lived in Jamestown, but
had, daringly, gone twelve miles to Delphos to be married!
Alfred and Mary's oldest daughter, Nancy, was married by this
time to Charles Donielson. Frank was a young man and already
working as printer's devil on a newspaper. May, Dick and Laura
were what we would now classify as teenagers — they were no
longer small children but they weren't quite grown-up, either.
Neva was still a babv not much more than a year old when they
began planning to leave and making preparations.
One of the first arrangements was to see that all unbaptized
children were baptized for this journey into a strange land. The
family belonged to the First Christian Church. May (and prob-
ably Dick and Laura ) were of the group which went solemnly
down to the river on an early spring day. It was not very warm.
There was still some ice on the river. Steps had been built down
to the baptistry at the edge of the water and on these mothers
waited with blankets. As each child was immersed and stepped
out he was wrapped warmly and hurried home. Not a single one
caught cold that day and after baptism in such icy water they felt
ready for anything!
In the spring of 1888 they came by train to Whitewood, Dakota
Territory, which was at that time the end of the railroad. Frank,
May, Dick, and Laura climbed out of the train and stood close
to their parents and the baby on the station platform in the land
of the Black Hills for the first time. It was more than a thousand
miles away and many years ago that Nancy Collier had slid out of
10 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the upper story window of her childhood home to run away with
the man she loved and start this family whose destiny was to move
west as pioneers. In all the years of living in Iowa and Kansas
and on the trails in between, none of them had ever seen anything
like these pine and spruce covered hills. The children were
speechless with wonder, especially May, who was delighted with
the excitement of this new life. It was a wonderful adventure.
It was LIVING, and she knew that she would never forget a
minute of it. Dick and Dot (which Laura was called because she
was a tiny dot of a girl) also were filled with the wonder of be-
ginning life on a new frontier. The three of them were old enough
to remember and enjoy everything that happened to them and
young enough to be unimpressed by the discomforts and hard-
ships which their parents undoubtedly knew.
The stagecoach which went from Whitewood to Spearfish was
owned and operated by a man called Uncle Harvey. He was an
exciting figure to the Nelsons who were amazed at the wildness of
his horses. He assured them that everything was all right. He
helped them into the coach which they found already occupied by
two men carrying carpetbags and whose conversation indicated to
Mrs. Nelson that they were Swedes. Alfred and the boys decided
it was pretty crowded inside so they climbed up on top with the
driver. Trying to be calm, Mrs. Nelson got out the lunch basket
and prepared to feed the children when suddenly the train whistled
a shrill blast. The wheel horse reared and came down astraddle
of the tongue. The other horses were nervous and jumping around
as if they were standing in a pool of hot water. Mrs. Nelson was
frightened but tried to be merely polite as she leaned out of the
window to ask, "Shall we get out?"
"Just keep your seat, lady," Uncle Harvey said reassuringly,
"it's just that that bronc was never hitched up till two hours ago!"
Mrs. Nelson smothered a gasp and shrank back inside, wonder-
ing what would happen to all of them.
Within a few minutes the men had unhitched the horses,
straightened them out, hitched them up again and they were on
their way. They went at a dead run all the eighteen miles to
Spearfish. By the time they reached there, the bronc was thor-
oughly "broke".
As they went around the end of Deadwood one of the strange
men remarked, "Py kolly, I don't see anyting gold in tose Hells!"
May had never heard an accent before and it struck her so
funny that she began to giggle. Her mother reprimanded her
severely for laughing at the oddities of others.
By the time the Nelsons arrived all the land in the Spearfish
Valley was taken. They farmed the Bob Evans ranch near Charles
Pettigrew on shares that first summer, but it was not quite what
they had hoped for. So, late in the fall when news of a coal dis-
40
MAY NELSON DOW 1 1
covery at Cambria in Wyoming Territory reached Spearfish, they
decided to seek their fortune on the western edge of the Hills.
Alfred went over into the country, picked his location and came
back, stopping at Sundance, which was at that time the county
seat, to file his claim. He bought an ox team and wagon into which
they once more packed all their belongings. It was ten degrees
below zero on December 12th as they came down over Lookout
Mountain at the beginning of the eighty-five mile journey to their
claim in Wyoming Territory. The loaded wagon creaked along
behind the slow moving oxen. No one seemed to mind the cold
too much. Mrs. Nelson had made long red flannel pants lined
with calico for the girls to wear under their dresses!
They made it to Beulah that first night and stayed with the Tom
Hewes family, remembering, no doubt, what had happened to the
Pettigrew party there. By the next night they were in Sundance
with some of the many Pettigrew relatives. Frank, May's older
brother, decided to stay in Sundance and find work. He was
immediately successful. Judge Joseph Stotts of the Sundance
Gazette felt very fortunate in finding an assistant with even a min-
imum of experience in the newspaper business.
While it was fun visiting with friends and relatives along the
way, nothing kept the travelers from pushing on each morning.
The third night found them at "Cap" Young's place. "Cap" and
Mr. Nelson did all the visiting that night — refighting the Civil War.
The fourth night they expected to stay at a cabin that "Boz"
Gupton had built between Sundance and Nels Holwells. They
kept looking for it as the day grew dark and colder but it was
farther away than they had figured. Two year old Neva was
tired and couldn't hold back the tears. Mrs. Nelson comforted her
by saying, "Don't cry, honey, you'll have a nice warm cabin to sleep
in tonight." At last the cabin came in sight. Near it was a little
stream at which they stopped long enough for Mr. Nelson to
break the ice and get water for coffee. When the wagon finally
stopped they climbed stiffly out, went up to the cabin and pushed
open the door — only to find that another family had found it
first — a mother skunk and two kittens! The mother protested the
disturbance by perfuming the place so suffocatingly that no one
could stand to stay in it. So, Neva, instead of a "nice, warm
cabin" had a tarp for shelter that night with a campfire in front
of it. They were warm and slept soundly in spite of mama skunk.
The next night they spent at the Brewer place which later be-
longed to Sirene Hoist for many years. May especially enjoyed
being there because the Brewers had a daughter, Nellie, who was
about her age. Even though they had never seen each other
before they had a good visit.
A few hours of traveling the next day brought them to the land
on Oil Creek which was their own. The country was big and
12 ANNALS OF WYOMING
empty. Oil Creek was a small stream wandering southward from
the hills out into a wide, rolling plains country covered with sage-
brush and grass just now almost buried under snow. Sundance,
five or six days of traveling away, was the nearest town. There
were a few families on Beaver Creek about eight miles east and
there were the LAK and the YT ranches, one five miles east and
the other about four miles north. Custer, though not quite as
far away as Sundance, was almost impossible to reach in the winter
because of its barrier of hills and deep, snow-filled canyons.
With them the Nelsons had a year's supply of food, seed grain
for the spring planting, the ox team, a couple of cows, two pigs
and a dozen chickens. They needed shelter immediately from the
bitter cold weather. Alfred set to work (with some help from the
family) and made a dugout in the north bank of the creek which
would have to do them until they were settled and spring brought
better weather for getting out logs with which to build a cabin.
He did get a few logs and small pines for the front and roof of
the dugout from the hills about a mile away.
The room in the bank was twelve feet square with a great center
pole in the middle which, with the back wall, supported the ridge
pole, a stout log over twelve feet long. From the ridge pole to the
side walls were laid shorter logs close together with the small and
large ends alternating. Over these was a thick layer of the prairie
grass and on top of that a good eighteen inches of dirt. The
door in the center of the log wall had a window in it, the only
lighting, but, as May remembers, it was so cozy and warm in the
dugout that the door stood open most of the time even in the
winter. As it faced south, the winter sun streamed in most of the
day.
The children helped chink the log wall with mud from the creek.
Outside of the front door there was a shelf above the creek which
was their yard.
Inside Alfred drilled holes in the center post and inserted pegs
on which to hang their clothes. Some very special pegs not too
far from the floor were for Neva's small things. They had brought
bedsteads, a feather bed, a stove, pictures and an organ box which
made, when fitted with shelves, a roomy cupboard. For the
children's beds they stuffed straw ticks with sweet dried grass.
They set up the stove and Alfred built a woodbox which the chil-
dren were instructed to keep filled. Before long he had a table
made and some chairs and benches which could be pushed under
when not in use. Mrs. Nelson had her precious Singer sewing
machine, indispensable article, at the back of the room between
the beds.
On the other side of the creek and a few feet south of the dug-
out were four or five big boxelder trees that hung out over the
stream and up over the bank. The children found those trees
the best of playhouses. They could climb the far bank and walk
MAY NELSON DOW 13
into the trees on the branches. With scraps of logs and lumber
they build a platform in one of them — a tree house with leaves
for a roof.
It was Christmas by the time they were settled in the dugout.
The neighbors at the YT ranch sent a cowboy with an invitation
to spend Christmas there. This was accepted with a great deal
of pleasure and excitement. Friends were all they needed to make
their first Christmas in a new land one of perfect joy.
One of the highlights of their life on Oil Creek was the visit of
the circuit rider. May has told this story so many times as one
of her favorites that it is quoted directly here from a newspaper
account.
"One cold winter day we spied him coming over the snowy
prairie from the direction of Elk Mountain. As he approached we
were surprised to see a small Indian pony carrying a rider so tall
that the man's feet were dragging in the snow. It was Reverend
Curran, the circuit rider from Custer. He had heard about th;
new families in this region and had come all that way to visit us.
He was a tall, dark man of the Abraham Lincoln type, very pious,
deliberate and slow. He had an unusually long beard and his
features were narrow and sharp, just a typical "long-faced Presby-
terian". He wore a broad black hat and a frock coat and carried
a Bible under his arm in the regular circuit rider style. Our visitor
had arrived just before dinner, but we had plenty of wild game
cooked. We made him welcome and he stayed with us and held
services. At night he slept on the spare bed roll that was laid
out on the dirt floor. The next day he went on to visit some folks
on Black Thunder Creek, and we watched him ride away over
the prairie, zigzagging back and forth to avoid the snow-filled gul-
lies. We never heard from him after that until we went to Tubb-
town. After Newcastle was established he came walking in there
one day. He preached a few sermons in the church, but his views
were rather too straight-laced. He disapproved of donations to
the church by saloon keepers, calling the contributions 'blood
money'. So naturally he wasn't very popular with the people of
the progressive new town."
By spring Mr. Nelson and Dick had cleared the sagebrush,
greasewood and cactus from five acres of land. It was easier to
clear the land in winter when the brush was brittle from cold and
broke off easily. They found that the cattle relished cactus plants
after the spines had been burned off. May helped with the work
almost as much as Dick did. In the spring when her father broad-
cast seed oats on the new soil, she harrowed them with the ox team.
This was the first stand of oats raised in Weston County, though
it was still Crook County at that time.
That spring also a great roundup corral was built near the ranch.
Hundreds of cowboys gathered up droves of cattle from all over
the country and brought them there to be branded. Many cow-
14
ANNALS OF WYOMING
* 3
a. faj
MAY NELSON DOW 15
boys came to the Nelson's place. Roundup time was a lively
season. The ruins of the old corral may still be seen and the
stout snubbing post that stood in the center is still there.
One day when the weather was nice they had company. Mr.
M. J. Coyle and Mr. Frank Mondell rode over to the dugout and
had dinner with the Nelsons. Mr. Coyle was a young married
man with a wife and two small sons who were living in the Bear
Butte Valley over near Sturgis. He had land at the foot of the
hills north of the Nelsons and was building a home there for his
family. Mr. Mondell was a single man, described many years
later by Dot Nelson Hart as the "pioneer heart-throb". He had
been employed by the Kilpatrick Brothers and Collins, a railroad
construction firm, to look for coal in this area and had discovered
it in a canyon in the hills to the north. His interest in this new
country was unbounded and his love for it as vast as the country
itself. That particular day, however, his enthusiasm soared over
Mrs. Nelson's sour cream biscuits. During the visit Mr. Nelson
asked for and was given permission to get logs for a cabin from
Mr. Coyle's land.
There was an oil spring on this land, back near the foot of
the hills. In order to develop it, Mr. Coyle, Mr. Mondell, Billy
Fawcett. Fred Coates, Beaver Creek ranchers J. C. Spencer of the
LAK and perhaps others had formed the Eagle Oil Co. They had
dug a pit about six feet square and made steps in the dirt down into
one side of it. The logs for the cabin were to come from the land
around the oil pit.
Mr. Nelson dug a well that spring before he started on the
cabin. They needed a better water supply. Oil Creek water was
very hard and almost impossible to use for washing, though Mrs.
Nelson did use it. Her greatest hope was that the water in the
new well would be soft. The children helped with the digging at
first. When the hole got deep they had to make a ladder of small
poles which they would lower into the pit so their father could
get down to dig, then pull it up with a rope so he would have room
to use the pick and shovel. One morning when the hole was about
twenty feet deep they had hardly pulled the ladder up and gone
off a little way to play when they heard their father call, "Molly,
oh Molly, come here!"
Mrs. Nelson came hurrying out of the dugout and the children
ran back to the hole. Looking down they could see that where
the shovel had made the last bite in the bottom, water was boiling
up. They hurried to put down the ladder so the victorious digger
could bring his tools and climb out. Mrs. Nelson sent one of the
children to the dugout for the wash pan and soap so she could
see if the water was soft. To her delight it was. It made a fine
lather when soap was used in it, but the next morning they were
all dismayed to find that it was just as hard as the creek water
16 ANNALS OF WYOMING
and they could only resign themselves to using it. For the stock
they made a watering trough out of half a barrel.
One morning soon after this Mr. Nelson and Dick took a lunch
and left in the wagon, heading for the timber to get out logs. A
little later in the day May rode her pony, Bess, over to see the
place. When she arrived there were some men there and a big
wagon loaded with four great barrels. She watched while one of
the men put on high rubber boots, picked up a sort of double
dipper made by nailing a kerosene can to either side of a long,
narrow board and went down the steps into the oil pit. He filled
the dipper with oil and handed it up to another man who poured
it into one of the barrels. They filled all four this way. May
watched for a long time, then went to where her father and Dick
were working. When she asked Mr. Nelson what they did with
the gooey black stuff he told her it was hauled to Lead City and
used in the mines for lubrication and was also mixed with pulver-
ized mica as grease for wagon wheels.
They made many trips to the timber that spring, most of them
uneventful, but one trip will never be forgotten by May or Dot.
not because they went along, but because they were left at home.
The Nelsons took Dick and Neva with them one morning, leaving
the older girls home to see that the cattle (milk cows) didn't stray
and get mixed with the range cattle. Old Shep, the cattle dog,
was left to help them. By evening, their parents not home yet,
the girls went about getting ready for night. They had shut up
the chickens and were doing the chores when they thought they
could hear voices — dogs barking and children crying. It was
already dusk and when the girls looked up toward the divide, low
hills west of the ranch, they could see little fires all along the top
of it and knew, to their horror, that a party of Indians was setting
up camp. They learned later that their land lay nearly in the
path of an old Indian trail used by the Sioux and Crow tribes as
they went back and forth to visit each other.
The girls were terrified. They took Shep, crossed the creek and
went up the branch of the big tree to the platform over the stream.
It was completely hidden by the thick leaves. They sat down with
the dog between them and spent a good part of the night there.
Once they heard horses snorting underneath and splashing in the
creek. Shep started to growl so they held his mouth shut to keep
him quiet. Peering out through the leaves they could barely make
out two Indian boys who, after letting the ponies drink, rode over
toward the dugout. They rode around it several times, but didn't
seem to bother anything and finally rode away.
After what seemed an endless time the girls heard the chuckle
of the wagon as it came down the trail. They got down out of
the tree, still holding Shep's mouth shut, and went up the road
to meet their parents. After hearing their story, Mr. Nelson sat
MAY NELSON DOW 17
up the rest of the night watching, but early in the morning the
Indians departed and didn't come that way again.
They got out all the logs they needed that spring to build a
large, two-roomed cabin, twelve by twenty-eight feet. They had
made arrangements to have their furniture shipped from Kansas
when they were ready for it. The nearest railroad station was at
Buffalo Gap in Dakota Territory. Mr. Nelson hitched the oxen
to the wagon one fine day, took Dick and May with him and went
after the load of furniture. Coming back through HelFs Canyon
it was rough going with such a top heavy load, but they had a tarp
over it that was tied down well and they eventually crawled up
out of the steep rock-sided canyon and brought everything safely
home. Among the articles of furniture was the organ belonging to
Nancy, their married daughter, the first to come into this part of the
country. For years afterward it was an important part of their
home life and served faithfully at church services, funerals, wed-
dings and dances. The box in which it had been shipped was made
into another cupboard for the cabin.
The railroad was crawling slowly northward from Alliance.
There was much speculation as to the course it would take after
it crossed the line into Wyoming Territory. Deloss Tubbs of Cus-
ter, South Dakota, made a fairly shrewd guess that it would follow
the valley of Stockade Beaver, turn west at Jenney Stockade and
pass by Salt Creek near the ford on the old Custer-Belle Fourche
trail. With this thought in mind he started a small settlement on
the east bank of Salt Creek where the trail crossed the ford. He
had previously built a log cabin on the west bank of the creek as
a supply point along the trail and from here he ordered enough
lumber to build a store from a sawmill on Stockade Beaver a few
miles above the Jenney Stockade. The mill, owned by Tom Sweet,
Fod Hansen and Davis, was powered by a big water wheel in the
creek.
Tubbs1 store was scarcely up before another Custer business
man had followed his example. F. R. Curran set up his bar first
out in the open and continued to do business while the building
was constructed around it.
Alfred Nelson, seeing an opportunity to establish himself as a
business man as well as a rancher, went to a farming section of
Nebraska, bought some milk cows and drove them to Mr. Tubbs"
town, officially named Field City. Neison had obtained permis-
sion to live in Tubbs1 two room log cabin on the west bank of
the creek. It was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Hershan White at
the time, so giving them time to find other accommodations. Mr.
Nelson built a temporary enclosure for the cattle and then went
to the homestead to pack up his wife and family.
It was a cold gloomy day that they spent loading the wagons.
Black clouds hung over the hills. Rain at the homestead was in-
termittent and they kept at their work between showers. Late
18 ANNALS OF WYOMING
in the afternoon they were ready but decided to wait until morn-
ing when perhaps the sun would be shining.
There were tears in May's eyes the next morning as she watched
them roll off over the muddy prairie into the watery spring sun-
shine without her. Mrs. Nelson, feeling that May, almost sixteen,
was at a very impressionable age, had decided to leave her on
the homestead with her older sister Nancy and her young husband
who had come from Kansas by covered wagon a few weeks before.
She and Alfred both knew that the frenzied activity of the new
little town was attracting a motley assortment of people. Clean
honest business men were rubbing elbows with gamblers, outlaws
and fancy women — all hoping to reap large profits by sitting on
the right of way of the railroad. It was raw, bawdy and wild.
They agreed that May, attractive and unspoiled, should be shield-
ed from as much of its wickedness as possible. Dot and Neva
were not old enough to be much affected (they hoped) and Dick,
well, he was a boy and they felt they could keep him busy. It
was hard for such a close family to be parted from one child and
it later must have proved neither desirable nor possible for May
made many visits to Tubbtown while her parents lived there.
When the Nelsons arrived at the log cabin they found that the
rains of the day before had sent a flash flood rolling down Salt
Creek and the Whites were weltering in mud. The dirt roof, along
with many gallons of rain water, had washed into the cabin. To
give the Whites a little more time to pick themselves out of the
mud and Alfred a chance to put a new roof on the cabin, Mr.
Tubbs offered them the use of a tiny room back of his store.
Mary was against staying there but there was no other place
to go. There were saloons on both sides of the place and since
the building was built of upright boards, loosely battened, they
could see the lights through the cracks all night. Even worse, they
were regaled with drunken laughter and anything but genteel con-
versation from the patrons.
Early the next morning the children were awakened by shooting,
shouting and the sound of running horses. Mr. Nelson was talking
to Tubbs. Mary, who was slicing bacon for breakfast, started
toward the front door to see what was going on. Alfred got there
first and called back to her, "Stay back, Molly. This is not a
thing for women and children to see!1'
Mary's eyes blazed with indignation as she marched back into
the tiny room. With one foot she kicked the crude pine door
shut and with a violent, exasperated gesture sent the long-bladed
knife she was still holding hurtling across the room. It stuck in
the wall, vibrating, as she stood glaring at it and breathing hard.
Then, as though unconscious of the shocked and incredulous stares
of her three children, she jerked it from the wall and viciously
attacked the side of bacon.
"I have never been so furious," she told Alfred later. "To
CffOQk COUH T /
LiHU Oil C*^fc-M«r <*IW
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Courtesy Elizabeth J. Thorpe and Mable E. Brown
20 ANNALS OF WYOMING
think that I've brought my children to a place so vile it's not even
safe to look outside!"
Mr. Nelson no doubt hurried with the roof, for they moved into
the cabin across the creek soon after that and Mary never went
into town unless it was absolutely necessary. Alfred sold miik,
cream and butter to the steadily increasing citizenry.
How the women learned that Mrs. Nelson was a skilled seams-
tress was a puzzle, but one day one of them approached Alfred
about his wife making some dresses for them.
Mary was horrified, but since they really needed the extra
money, she unbent, only however, to the extent that she would
sew anything they cut and sent over by Alfred. She would not
have them coming to her house. So, when he delivered the milk
in town he gathered up the bundles of materials. Mary stitched it
up, sent it back and was always well pleased with the prompt and
generous payment. Once one of the women tripped across the
bridge and invaded Mary's privacy further. Mary sent the chil-
dren to play in the pines behind the cabin until "that woman"
left, did the work requested of her and afterward scrubbed her
hands and arms as if she'd been up to her eblows in deadly poison.
The name, Field City, descriptive of the town's location on a
comparatively level flat between the hills and the creek, was soon
lost in the wild, haphazard bustle of the place and evolved almost
immediately into Tubbtown. It had grown adjacent to Tubb's and
Curran's places of business, straddling the old trail that ran east
and west along the foot of the hills.
By July 1st in addition to these and the milk ranch almost every
kind of business was represented: a dry goods store run by Leo
Roderick, a small drug store, two restaurants, one run by a Mr.
Babcock, a post office, three saloons, gambling halls and dance
halls and a roofed counter where meat was sold after being killed
and dressed on the open range.
Frank Nelson, then eighteen years of age, was sent over from
Sundance by his employer, Judge Stotts, to start a paper, the Field
City Journal or Stockade Journal. He came on horseback, carry-
ing with him a cigar box full of tvpe wrapped in his slicker and a
small, hand-operated army cylinder printing press tied on behind
his saddle. He set up his business in the building nearest the
creek on the south side of the trail and proceeded to get his paper
out. He found that the noise and other disturbances of Tubbtown
which never let up, night or day, so distracted him that he occa-
sionally took to the hills to do his writing in a clump of pines.
While he was ad man, editor and back shop man, he taught his
sisters, Dot, and May, when she was there, to set type and be
"printers devils". They learned to spread ink onto a marble slab
and work it smoothly over the surface with a tool similar to a
rolling pin. Then they passed the roller lightly over the type in
the form, laid the paper on, pulled a lever and made the impres-
MAY NELSON DOW 21
sion. The sheets were small, about the size of typing paper. Only
one sheet could be printed at a time. In this way they printed
the first paper in what was to be Weston County. It came out in
time to chronicle the first and only political rally in Tubbtown.
Frank Mondell was running for state representative and a lot of
the "boys" were beating the drum for him. This was in late Au-
gust. In the second edition published the first week in Septembsr,
1 889, the big news was of the lots that would go on sale September
10th in the town of Newcastle at the mouth of Cambria Canyon
where the railroad would meet the spur to the mines. The rail-
road had swung west of Beaver Creek Valley and missed Tubb-
town by two miles!
The few real families in Tubbtown lived as far away as they
could from the turmoil of the business places — mostly on the west
side of the stream. The children were kept strictly to their side
by eagle-eyed mothers. Still, regardless of age, they could not
have been unaware of the gaudy life going on just across the way.
They were taught to fall to the floor, according to May Nelson,
if any shooting started, particularly if they happened to be in a
tent house where the floors and part of the sides were of boards
and the upper half of the sides and the roof were of canvas. More
than once the wild shots of the gamblers ripped through canvas.
No one, however, was ever killed in Tubbtown.
Hershon and Addie White had put up a tent house across the
creek from the Nelsons, but back behind the point of the hill,
a location which put part of the hill between them and the main
part of town. The ladies could wave to each other if they hap-
pened to be out of doors at the same time. Mrs. White was a
sweet and delicate little lady with a pronounced lisp. She and
Mary Nelson had much in common. Like Mary, Addie was also
a seamstress and had been pressed into service by the dance hall
girls. Neither of them liked the way in which their customers
earned their living. They were respectable women with an earnest
desire to combat the wickedness surrounding them. The only
other family with children were the McLaughlins, so Mrs. White
and Mrs. Nelson organized a Sunday School in the Nelson's cabin,
attended by six McLaughlins and four Nelsons. Occasionally
Reverend Curran from Custer would come to direct the Sunday
School and hold services for the adults as well.
One of the few times Mrs. Nelson deviated from her resolve to
never step foot on the other side of the creek was on May's six-
teenth birthday. For both it turned out to be a most memorable
occasion. She had decided that, as May had reached the status
of a young lady, it was high time she was corseted. Although
May was slender as a reed and felt she not only didn't need a
corset but didn't want one, her mother insisted. It is possible
that she thought the corset would restrain May's free and torn-
22 ANNALS OF WYOMING
boyish ways. The same thought had occurred to May. Her
protests were many. She acted like a lady — her mother had seen
to that. But she loved the outdoors and her pony. She had helped
her father with his work too long to want to be confined like a
lady. The argument which probably defeated her was, "But
Mother, I can't run and jump on Bess if I have to wear a corset!"
Her mother was adamant. They proceeded to Tubbtown for
this rather dubious birthday gift.
March 19, 1889, was a warm spring day. The rutted trail and
the raw board buildings lay bathed in sunshine. While May was
still objecting to the idea of the corset she couldn't help being
happily aware of her surroundings as they climbed out of the
wagon and walked across the footbridge to the general store.
Mr. Roderick, a plump man, was asleep on the rough board
counter, his head on a couple of feather pillows he had for sale.
His round stomach rose and fell as he breathed and from his
open mouth issued peaceful but mighty snores. To May's alarm,
there were flies buzzing around his head in the warm atmosphere
of the shack. With each deep inhalation they seemed drawn to-
ward the moist, pink abyss. She watched, fascinated, as they
stood there, not knowing just how to make him aware of their
presence.
When he finally heard them — or sensed their proximity — he
rolled off the counter a bit sheepishly, smoothed down his heavy
blonde hair and inquired politely what he could do for the ladies?
Mrs. Nelson said she'd like to see one of the corsets he had on
the shelf. He had two boxes of them which he took down, lifted
out a corset, unwound it, all with a very solemn face, and held
it out awkwardly for them to inspect. May was embarrassed be-
yond words, but no more so than was he. She thought she had
never seen such an enormous garment — -even the strings reminded
her of lariat ropes!
While Mrs. Nelson was admiring it and May was trying to pre-
tend that this wasn't happening to her, a freight outfit rumbled to
a stop in front of the store. The humdrum air of the place was
suddenly charged with excitement. Through the open door they
could see the big freight wagon and hear the voices of other store-
keepers along the street. May caught the mumble of a deep voice
saying, "By , that's Calamity Jane!" and about the same time
she saw a woman swing down from the high seat. There was a
flash of booted feet and black-stockinged legs under a full, rusty
brown skirt of some heavy material that caught on the wagon
wheel. The woman swore as she snatched the skirt loose and came
on in the store. She gave the impression of bigness with her
attitude of taking command. Her eyes swept the entire store at
a glance — customers, proprietor and the contents of the shadowed
shelves. Her gaze was caught and held by the one spot of color
MAY NELSON DOW 23
in the place — a bolt of bright pink china silk. As she demanded
to see it May half shrunk behind her mother, amazed that she was
looking at Calamity Jane, and a little afraid, too, though why,
she didn't know. Mr. Roderick obligingly brought the bolt down
from the shelf and held it up off the counter so the delicate silk
wouldn't catch on the rough boards. He rippled out about a yard
of it so she could behold its beauty. Her eyes snapped. Turning
to Mrs. Nelson she said, "Lady, don't you think that would make a
pretty wrapper?"
"It surely would." Mrs. Nelson answered.
"How much do you think it would take?"
"That would depend on how you wanted to make it," Mary told
her.
"I want it with Watteau pleats and a stand up collar," the wo-
man said dreamily, " — real full."
Mrs. Nelson thought a moment. "In that case it would take
about fifteen yards," she said.
So, Calamity Jane bought fifteen yards of the silk and strode
out of the store with her package, apparently enjoying her sur-
prised audience, yet at the same time ignoring it. May, remem-
bering the boots as Calamity Jane had vaulted from the wagon,
couldn't help picturing them protruding from the folds of pink
silk and the vivid pink ruff framing the brown, weather-beaten
and somewhat sunburned face. She smothered a giggle. After-
wards when asked how Calamity Jane looked she said, "I had
often heard it said that Calamity Jane was mannish in voice and
manner but she did not impress me as being so masculine appear-
ing. She was medium in height with a rawboned look and a skin
so tanned and weather-worn that it looked like leather."
They watched while Calamity Jane returned to her perch on
the freight wagon, cracked her long bull whip over the backs of
the leaders, and slowly continued her wabbling, creaking course
down the road.
May hoped that her mother had been distracted from the awful
corset, but not so. Mrs. Nelson returned her attention to the ar-
ticle and purchased it for $1.50. Vowing silently that she'd not
wear the thing unless her mother was around, May didn't say a
word. She was afraid her mother would remember her giggle
and reprimand her. After all, it was her birthday.
Dick, who was fourteen by this time, was in Tubbs' store one
day when "Club-foot Bill", the proprietor of a five stool lunch
counter in the back end of Blackwell's saloon, came into the
store to make a purchase. Seeing a boy standing at the counter,
he said, "Son, you are the fellow I'm looking for. I need some-
one to help wash dishes and sweep out. I'll pay you three dollars
a week and give you board and room. You can use my bed.
24 ANNALS OF WYOMING
I don't need it — I cook all day and play poker all night. What
do you say?"
Dick explained that he would like the job but would have to
have his parents' permission.
"Get it then," said Bill. And Dick took off like a jack rabbit
for the cabin across the creek. It took some consideration and
discussion but at last Dick was allowed to accept the job. He
found that his other duties were to peel the spuds, serve the ham,
hot cakes and coffee — no tea. All the men were he-men and
there were few women.
Dick paid strict attention to his work and offered the ultimate
in courtesy to each customer. This brought another offer of em-
ployment. Hunter Bowen, the foreman of the Kilpatrick Broth-
ers and Collins sawmill came in to the saloon one day to get
(of course) a cup of coffee. After being served so well by Dick
he offered the boy a place as kitchen and dining room "mechanic'
at the mill at $6.00 per week and room and board. The astound-
ing offer, after more discussion with his parents, was accepted.
After Dick worked there a while he was promoted to work in the
mill itself, feeding the lath machine. From there he was sent up
to Cambria where the mines were being opened. There his first
job was to carry hand tools and drills from Davey Forbes, the
blacksmith, to the miners driving the first entry on the Antelope
side of the canyon. His next job was helping K. O. Hurt, the first
commissary man and timekeeper, in various ways, such as sizing
the pine logs cut from the canyon sides to be used to build the
first tipple for loading the railroad cars. He also helped in the
commissary, selling the men tobacco, cotton sox, underwear (red),
gloves, overalls, snuff, hard water soap, Carter's Little Liver Pills,
Castor Oil, and Perry Davis' Pain Killer, as well as other staples.
Next he was transferred as a clerk to the first KB&C commis-
sary in Newcastle the day the town lots were put on sale there.
Harry Clark was in charge of the Commissary. Later Dick
worked under Walter Schoonmaker in commissaries at Minne-
kahta, Moorcroft and Gillette when those places were at the rails'
end. He also served Frank Mondell when he was State Senator
and for as long as he managed the Kilpatrick business interests
in Northeastern Wyoming.
In 1895 Dick succumbed to his fascination for the railroad and
went to work for the Burlington and Missouri and spent the next
forty-five consecutive years on the "Burlington Lines". He re-
tired on November 1, 1939.
With Dick employed, May was evidently allowed to stay in
Tubbtown part of the summer. In her own words she tells:
"From our house in the trees we could easily see without any
special observation the wickedness, wretchedness and many strange
things that went on in the town. There were three saloons and
several dance halls and gambling dens. A band of some thirty
MAY NELSON DOW 25
or forty sporting women lived around the saloons. There were
Big Maude, Old Humpy, Jimmy the Tough and dozens of others.
Jimmy the Tough was a pretty little thing, reckless and wild. One
time we saw her run from a saloon half clad in a chemise and
leap onto the back of a bronc that belonged to some cowboy. She
raced around through the timber for a while and then rode back
to the saloon. No doubt she had taken a dare to ride the wild
horse. It was a frequent sight to see a group of these girls, clad
only in their birthday suits, bathing in Salt Creek. People of all
classes flocked to this region and rubbed shoulders in the new
settlement."
During the late summer grading had been going on at the site
of Newcastle for both the town and the railroad. By September
10th the lots were all laid out and went on sale. Most of the
people of Tubbtown had been waiting for this moment and were
prepared to move when the day arrived. With the inhabitants
of Tubbtown moving en masse, Newcastle seemed to spring up
overnight. In May's words, "The people scurried back and forth
like ants." According to Dick Nelson one of the saloons "knocked
out the whole front of the building that housed it, loaded the back-
bar and bar on the running gears of a heavy wagon and started
for its new place of hope. The bartender served drinks all the
way to those on horseback. When the 'four up' was stopped to
'blow', the driver got his chance to 'lift one\ The bar was taken
to the lot in Newcastle where the bank now stands (now Newcastle
Men's Store), unloaded, blocked and leveled up and service never
stopped while its new covering was being constructed. . . . The
teamster and bartender of the moving job bragged that not a glass
was broken or cracked and not a drop spilled in this . . . transition."
Mr. Nelson moved the milk ranch to the west side of Newcastle.
He built a log house there about where the Sioux Refinery is now.
He was made the first Justice of the Peace.
While Alfred was busy with the ranch and meting out justice
to the townsfolk, Mary was no less busy. She had officiated at
the birth of the only child born in Tubbtown, William Hough,
son of one of Mr. Curran's saloon employees. So, it was fitting
that only a few nights after the exodus from Tubbtown the first
child born in Newcastle made his appearance with Mary Nelson
in attendance in a tiny room back of the Meyer Frank dry goods
store where the father, George M. Durett, was a clerk. The
mother, Cora, was formerly of Sundance. In Mrs. Nelson's per-
sonal reminiscences she tells of that night:
"Next door to the dry goods store stood the famous — and in-
famous— Jimmy Wheeler's dance hall and saloon. Sounds from
there came clearly through the flimsy board walls. Sometime
during the night some one of the hilarious crowd next door called
for a song from a woman known as 'Old Dode' whose beautiful
26 ANNALS OF WYOMING
voice was a drawing card for the resort. The raucous music was
stilled and the lovely voice rang out in the refrain:
There was no one to welcome me home.
No one to welcome me home,
God in his mercy will answer and say,
There was no one to welcome me home.' '
When Newcastle was a few weeks old a diphtheria epidemic
took the lives of several people, most of them children. The
Nelson's little Neva, who was three, caught it. In spite of Mrs.
Nelson's constant care she died. Some of the boys who worked
on the ranch built a little coffin. May helped her mother line
it with a sheet. They laid her out as nicely as they could and held
the funeral the next afternoon, a mild day in November. They
took the little casket out in the yard for the services. About
twenty-five friends and neighbors had gathered, but everyone was
so afraid of the disease that they preferred not to be shut up in a
house which they thought contained it.
As the last prayer was said a tall, handsome stranger stepped
forward and laid a lovely American Beauty rose on the casket.
This man afterward became well known to them as a prominent
Newcastle attorney.
They buried the child in a sheltered spot in the pines not far
from the house. Soon after the funeral Mrs. Nelson went to the
house of a neighbor to nurse the twin girls there who were also
sick with diphtheria. Both of these children died, too, and were
laid beside the Nelson baby. Later when the second cemetery was
made ready in Newcastle, the bodies of all three children were
removed to it.
May said years later, "When I remember that sad and difficult
time, I realize that we experienced some of the hardships of real
pioneering as well as the elation of being among the first in a
new country."
There was work to be done everywhere. Mr. Nelson had his
office as Justice of the Peace in a building on Seneca Street, just
off Warren Avenue or Main Street. The family had living quar-
ters there also for a while. These were separated from the office
by heavy curtains. May helped at the ranch part of the time,
washing the big milk cans, a job she detested. She found work
at a restaurant run by several women in Newcastle. This she
liked very much. The women were very kind, good people and
liked May, although her mother never really approved, and felt
that May was associating with all sorts of unsavory characters.
Mary Nelson was expecting another child, so May spent some
time helping her, too. She was boarding several young men at
the time and needed help during the dinner hours.
May was a popular young lady and took an active part in the
MAY NELSON DOW 27
town's social activities. Dick called her a "willowy town marti-
net". She represented one of Wyoming's counties in the long and
colorful parade which celebrated Wyoming's admission to the
Union in 1890 and Weston County's organization.
When the Newcastle City Hall was completed in 1891 a Grand
Ball was held. May was chosen to lead the grand march with
the town's handsome young mayor, Frank Mondell. She is still
proud that she was asked to do this, for not only was Mr. Mondell
an outstanding citizen and the Mayor of Newcastle, but he was
Weston County's first representative to Wyoming's first State Leg-
islature and later was for twenty-six years Wyoming's sole repre-
sentative in Congress. He was the kind of young man who caused
much heart fluttering among the young ladies, too, but was, for
the most part, unaware of his effect on them.
May wore to the ball a lovely gown of white muslin with inser-
tion at the neck, wrists and hem that was laced with black velvet.
She knew she looked especially lovely and was dancing in the
clouds when she was jolted suddenly back to earth. Someone
had stepped on her beautiful dress and torn a three cornered hole
in it!
Terribly disheartened, May retired to the ladies' room to esti-
mate the damage and see if repairs could be made. If not, she
felt she would have to leave — a major disaster on a night which
had begun so wonderfully.
But Mrs. Kilpatrick came to the rescue with a little mulatto
maid she had brought with her from the "big house on the hill".
The girl's dark fingers mended the tear so deftly that it could not
be seen and May returned to the ballroom and a memorable eve-
ning. In 1 959 May's niece wore the white dress when Newcastle
celebrated her 70th anniversary.
While May was growing up in Kansas and experiencing the
wonders of a pioneer life on Oil Creek and in Tubbtown, a young
man was growing up in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
Charles Dow, born February 29, 1868, was the son of George
W. Dow and Fannie Walters Dow. His parents had come from
the east to Iowa and had met and married there. George Dow
was a blacksmith. He worked at this trade in West Union, Iowa
until 1884 when he took his family to Red Cloud. There he
became City Treasurer and remained in this office nearly all of
the years while Charles was growing up. In 1887 Charles grad-
uated from high school and learned the carpenter trade. He
worked in Red Cloud until 1889 when he became twenty-one. At
this time his father said to him, "Son, you're twenty-one years of
age and it's time to get out on your own."
Charles thought this over. He inquired around about the new
country opening up farther west and decided that his future lay
in that direction.
When the first train came into Newcastle on November 1 8.
28 ANNALS OF WYOMING
1889, Charles Dow with his suitcase in one hand and his tool
chest in the other alighted from it. He looked up the dreary,
rutted expanse of Warren Avenue (Main Street) and knew that he
had come to the right place. There was much to be done here.
This place needed him.
Looking for a place to live was a hopeless task. People had
made temporary homes in the backs of their business houses.
They lived in tents, tent-houses and even dugouts in the banks
of Little Oil Creek (Coal Creek or Cambria Creek). No one
had a place for a young man. There wasn't a hotel yet. Inevi-
tably he met Judge Nelson on the street and his problem was
solved. Alfred took him to their temporary quarters behind the
office.
May remembers peeking out from behind the heavy curtains
and seeing Charles Dow for the first time. She thought what a
nice appearing young man he was and was very pleased when he
joined the other young men who boarded with Mrs. Nelson.
Charles had no trouble finding work. Store buildings were
going up as fast as the bricks could be dried in the brickyard kiln
run by Tom Howie and lumber could be hauled from the sawmills
up Cambria Canyon and out on Beaver Creek. When he wasn't
working on business houses he was building residences. Many of
the oldest houses in Newcastle today were built all or in part by
Charles Dow.
At the Nelson's he was happy. He had never lived any place
but at home and this was as much like home as it could be. Mrs.
Nelson was an excellent cook. And then, there was May. Sweet-
ly sixteen, she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. After a
very little while Charles knew she was the only girl for him. He
sought out her father to see how he would feel about having his
daughter courted by a newcomer and was encouraged when both
Judge and Mrs. Nelson approved of him. A few months later he
knew that he must confront May with a declaration of his love
and a proposal of marriage.
He cornered her late one evening in the parlor. She was curled
up on the sofa reading by lamplight. He pulled up a little folding
rocker that had come from Kansas close to May and sat down.
She was both thrilled and startled when he began pouring out his
love and affection for her, but became apprehensive as, the more
nervous he became in trying to convince her, the closer he sat on
the edge of the chair. While trying hard to appreciate what this
wonderful young man was saying. May was impishly fascinated
by what she knew was bound to happen. She sat there speechless
and entranced, but helpless. Suddenly the chair folded and
Charles went over into May's lap! Before either of them could
recover, Mrs. Nelson stood in the doorway in her long-sleeved,
high-necked nightie. One look at the folded rocker and Charles
with his head in May's lap told her what had caused the commo-
MAY NELSON DOW
29
tion. She began to laugh so hard that all they could do was join
her.
Such a proposal could only be accepted. May Nelson and
Charles Dow were married on October 11, 1891. The ceremony
Charles W. Dow
May Nelson Dow
First Couple in Newcastle to be married by an ordained minister, the Rev.
Arnold Lutton, of the Episcopal Church, Oct. 11, 1891.
Courtesy Elizabeth J. Thorpe and Mabel E. Brown
30 ANNALS OF WYOMING
was performed in May's home by the Reverend Arnold Lutton,
a minister of the Episcopal Church. While Alfred, Judge Nelson,
had performed other marriages, May and Charles were, as far as
is known, the first young couple to be married by a minister in
Newcastle.
At first they had a little house out in the country, but they
bought a lot on Winthrop Street near the Episcopal Church which
was at that time still in the planning stage. Charles started build-
ing their house. They had chosen this particular lot because it
was on the edge of a deep hollow and would require very little
excavation. Even so it took many months to build because they
could only work on it evenings, holidays and Sundays. May
didn't do much carpenter work, just helped in any way she could.
When their first daughter, Pearl, was born August 19, 1892 in
the front bedroom of this house it still was not quite finished.
They had lived in it for some time, however. May could look
out of her windows and see Charles working on the church win-
dows. He did not have the contract for the church but had been
hired to work on it.
Charles supported his family well by working at his trade until
in 1912 he was appointed postmaster of Newcastle by the presi-
dent, Woodrow Wilson. He held office until 1916 when he es-
tablished the Dow Motor Company. To house his new business
he built the largest garage in Weston County, located at the head
of Warren Avenue and modern in every respect. He had the
Ford agency. On the hill just above the garage overlooking all
of Newcastle he bought the Jay Baird home.
After establishing the garage, Charles Dow became more and
more prominent in city, county and state affairs. He served as
a member of the City Council for five terms and as Mayor for
one term. For twelve years he gave much time and energy to
School District No. 1 as treasurer of the Board of Education. In
November, 1928, he was elected to represent Weston County in
the State Senate to fill out an unexpired term, taking office in
January, 1929. The following November he was re-elected to
this office. He had remained as president of the Dow Motor
Company until January 15, 1930, at which time he sold his in-
terest. From 1926 to 1930 he was Vice President of the Securi-
ties State Bank of Newcastle. When this concern sold to the First
State Bank of Newcastle he became President. He continued in
this office until his death on December 3, 1932.
May has outlived her husband by many years. After his death
she learned to drive a car and traveled all over the country to
see what the rest of America was like. She went to Alaska by
plane and ship and stayed four months one summer. It reminded
her some of her pioneering days. She met several people from
Wyoming there, including one old friend from Newcastle!
Next year May will be ninety years old. She lives alone on the
MAY NELSON DOW 3 1
hill in an apartment behind the home her husband bought in 1916.
From her front door she can look down Main Street and beyond
toward the old homestead. From her north window where a pair
of field glasses lie on the sill she can look up Cambria Canyon
which now appears almost exactly the way it did in 1887. The
old trail to the Home Ranch and Cambria is only a dim scar on
the face of the hill. No railroad twists and turns up the canyon
whose steep, rocky walls have changed very little with the years.
It is wonderful to have such a store of memories, for one of
May's great pleasures is in holding an audience of small and med-
ium sized great grandchildren wide-eyed and spell-bound while
she tells them the tales of "olden times" that they have begged for.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beach, Mrs. Alfred Holmes (Cora M.) ed.. Women of Wyoming, Vol. 1
Casper. Wyo. 1927
Chamblin. Thomas S., ed.. Historical Encyclopedia of Wyoming, Vol. 1
Wyoming Historical Institute 195
History of Weston County — May Nelson Dow and Sheila Nelson Hart
Dow, May Nelson, Personal Reminiscences, Personal Interviews, Clippings
from News-Letter Journal, Newcastle, Wyo.
Hart, Sheila Nelson (Laura, "Dot") The Rise and Fall of Tubbtown
Empire Magazine — Denver Post
Nelson, Dick J., Only a Cow Country
San Diego, Calif., 1951
Zke Cegend of Cake "DeSmet
By
Mary Olga Moore
This story was written when the author was about twelve years old,
attending school in Sheridan. According to Mrs. Arnold, "The story
grew, I think, out of some exercise written for classwork. ... It was
printed by the Sheridan Post Printing Company." Mrs. Arnold, whose
biography appears in this issue of the Annals, has since become one
of the state's best known writers. "The Legend of Lake DeSmet"
was made available to the Wyoming State Archives and Historical
Department by Thelma Gatchell Condit, of Buffalo.
An Indian seldom, if ever, is found in the Red hills, and why?
In the midst of these old hills, with their rock-crowned heads and
sage-clad sides, lies, according to the red man's superstition,
the home of Satan and all his imps; and this terrible place of awe
and dread is none other than Lake DeSmet.
Yes, and there is something weird and wild in this great body of
water, with its strange, mysterious romance, over which many
have worked and puzzled; with its deep, unfathomed depths of
water; with its picturesque shores, from which rise the great
majestic hills of red with their beds of purest coal, plainly proving
that, in the prehistoric days, now past and gone forevermore, great
forests of strange, gigantic trees graced the shores of Lake DeSmet.
I should have loved to have seen it then, wouldn't you? To
have seen it hundreds, yea, thousands of years ago, as it lay
enthroned midst hills and forests, a queen of waters, a priceless
gem of the boundless unknown west. To have stood upon its
beach 'neath the shade of a giant tree, with a bird of brilliant
plumage twittering o'er my head, and watch the white-capped
waves advance and dash to spray upon the shore, while over on
yon beach, an animal of the prehistoric past laps the waters of
Lake DeSmet.
On every side stretched away the forests, with trees and trees
and countless trees, equal even to those of sunny California in
size and beauty. While sheltered in their mighty branches were
the nests of tropical birds. The hills were clad in jungles of trees
and vines and shrubs, in short, every form of plant life ever
found in the tropics.
Yes, scientific men, by different discoveries and theories, have
proved that Wyoming was once a tropical country.
I imagine the solitude and silence was intense, broken only by
the scream of a many-colored parrot, or the agonized groaning and
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET 33
creaking of the underbrush as some frenzied beast crashed his
way through, while on the azure-tinted waters floated or swam
great sauria, the skeletons and petrified remains of which one
sometimes sees in the museums.
But that was the Lake DeSmet of yesterday. The Lake DeSmet
of today is a dead world. The forests have given way to long
vistas of sage brush, and the hills no longer bear their weight of
verdure, but rise bare and grim, rearing their mighty heads in
indescribable grandeur, silent sentinels of the past. Instead of
jungles, one sees great wastes of red terra cotta, while herds of
horses and cattle trod the earth where once prehistoric monsters
lived and died. The solitude and silence still remains, however,
occasionally punctured by the song of a meadow lark, or the war
cry of some range bull.
And yet, and still there are for us some messengers, messengers
who tell us of that wonderful world, now receding back into the
farthermost pages of history; of the death and desolation that
befell it: of the countless years it lay buried, hidden from any
human eye, till at last science unearthed and displayed to the
present day its secrets and untold mysteries. Who are these mes-
sengers'7 Friends, I prithee, take yourselves to some hillside, and
there, securely fastened in their beds of terra cotta, lie the ghosts
of the former forests, a number of time worn petrifactions.
Ah, those huge branches and trunks, once mighty trees, growing
in a land of beauty unsurpassed, now lifeless stones, telling better
than all the words of the language of men, the story of death.
The death that befell the forests; the death that robbed the hills
of their clinging vines and stalwart oaks; the death that killed the
sauria; they tell us of all this.
But look! Look at their beauty; see the crystal formation
covering some of them, see the huge knot holes, and see, oh ye
men of science, their size, unexcelled by any tree growing in the
civilized world of today.
Time is a grim, rough factor, hard to deal and struggle with.
He reduces the fine old buildings of yore to a pitiful heap of
weather-beaten ruins. He wrinkles the brow and turns the golden
hair to gray and he alone can turn the living jungle to a mass of
blackened coal. But these petrifactions, these silent messengers
of the Wyoming gone before, have well withstood his ravages.
They look the same now as they did then, except that instead of
living trees of bark and sap they are old gray stones, otherwise
they are unchanged.
Nor is this the only wonder of the red hills country. Near Lake
DeSmet is a burning coal mine. The flames have long since died,
but smoke still rises. On still days one can watch it smoking,
smoking, ever smoking, never tiring, never dying, burning its very
heart away.
Many theories have been advanced as to how it caught on fire.
34 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Some say the miners were cooking dinner, and while laughing and
joking, the flames spread to the utmost corners of the mine,
causing the underground heroes to flee for their lives. Others
claim that the catastrophe was brought about by gas escaping
from a room of useless slack. Just how long it has been burning
no one seems to know.
But in spite of all these sad changes of land and time, ye cannot
change the romantic mystery of Lake DeSmet.
This legend first originated in the days when the red man ruled
supreme monarch over the land he loved, the land now dotted with
villages and ranches. In the days when the buffalo roamed o'er
the prairie and the antelope bounded o'er the rocky cliffs of the
great red hills. Those were the days when the region of Lake
DeSmet was renowned for the abundance of game it afforded,
and the Indian had possession of all. The braves going forth to
fight their battles and hunt their food, while back in the wigwams
that lined the picturesque shores of the famous lake, the squaws
cooked the meat and tended the wants of the dusky papoose.
Now, as you probably know, an Indian is no Indian unless he
has long since mastered the art of swimming, and mastered it
well; and whence they got their training?
It is the custom of the black-eyed wives of the red men, upon
arriving at a new camping ground, to toss their children into the
stream, river or pond, whichever they are camping by, and then,
with a catlike grace, run and spring in themselves about a hundred
yards below the child. Thus, you see, the waters carry it straight
into the outstretched arms of its mother. Naturally, in these rides
down stream the babe quickly learns to swim.
Now it so happened that a papoose already educated in the
science of swimming was cast by the loving hands of his dusky
mother into Lake DeSmet, there to display his prowess and skill
before the eyes of his father, a warrior just returned home from a
mighty war in which he had covered himself with glory and won a
name of great renown. But look; lo and behold, the papoose, the
darling of his mother's heart, the pride of his father, has disap-
peared down into the shadowy depths of Lake DeSmet, never to
rise again.
The air was filled with the wailing of the women, and when
Aurora, with a rosy flush, heralded the dawn of another day, only
the desolate hills looked down upon a scene where once children
had played and squaws had worked, where dogs had barked and
horses had whinnied. Now only the mournful yelp of a coyote
rose on the morning air.
To this day no Indian will go near Lake DeSmet, for it is their
firm belief that the wily Satan, with his hands of sin, had snatched
the little red child, and the same fate will befall any one who
haunts the country of Lake DeSmet, for who is there with soul so
vile, that would endanger himself to the Master of Evil. While
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET 35
grass and sage brush grew over the ground where once the council
fires blazed. Thus was founded the legend of Lake DeSmet.
Years rolled by, and then one day a white man stood on the
brink of the mighty lake, gazing down at the laughing waves and
wondering what mystery they contained. This man, this son of
faraway France, was a young priest. Father DeSmet. The greater
part of his courageous, God-fearing life had been spent among the
children of the sun, trying to convert them from their superstitious
beliefs to a life of righteousness. And now he realized, as he stood
there, that he was the first white man to set foot on the brink of
the beautiful western lake and henceforth Lake DeSmet proudly
bears the name of its noble discoverer, that young French priest
who left the land of sunny France for the Indians of the northwest,
hoping thereby to save their souls and teach them to be loyal
disciples of the Great White Father who sits above and dwells
thereafter in love divine. Another lapse of time and the country
was filled with the martial tread of soldier's test, while the red
men rose in bitter revolt against the intruding paleface settlers.
Oh, the days of war and bloodshed that followed. Many were
the books and poems written of the heroism of the scout and
soldier, but not a word in praise of the Indian.
The struggle was bitter and fierce. Then followed days of
terrible sorrow for the red man, for the government claimed the
plains, the hills and the mountains where once they had lived and
fought.
Once more Lake DeSmet awoke to the vibrating pulse of human
life, for the rollicking cowpuncher on his wild-eyed bronch dashed
by or stood his lonely vigil neath the starlit heavens of wild Wyo-
ming, watching over a herd of long-horned steers. Wandering
bands of prospecters and huntsmen scaled the rugged hills, while
troops of daring soldier boys filled their canteens with the sparkling
waters of many springs, which leaped and tumbled and laughed,
coursing their way down the terra cotta sides of the great red hills.
The enchanted spell of moonlight lay soft on the land, not even
the shadow of a sound broke upon the silver silence. The great
hill monarchs loomed black against the moonlit heavens. The
rugged outline shown in vivid contrast with the silver sky, while
down in the numerous valleys, the hush of night lay over all. The
waters of Lake DeSmet lay spellbound, for down upon their glassy
surface the moon had shed her mantle of silver light, while in the
dense black shadow of the shore the spark of a camp fire glowed.
Watching this scene of loveliness with sorrowful eyes sat white-
haired Father DeSmet, still loyal friend of the Indian. Before him
lay the lake, his lake, and behind him rose the lofty hills. His
godly heart burned sore within him and his thoughts were those
of righteous wrath. Why could not the white man live in peace
and happiness within the bounds of Europe and eastern America?
Why did he push westward, robbing the childlike children of
36 ANNALS OF WYOMING
nature of their dearest treasure, freedom? How could they expect
him to save their souls, when they broke their faith and destroyed
their confidence? Oh, it was hard, too hard; and the venerable
white head buried itself in a pair of withered hands while the camp
fire flickered low.
He had come to America in his early manhood, this noble son
of France, with a band of fur traders, and after a year of wander-
ing had settled down as the head of a Catholic church in West
Virginia. But his heart was ill at ease and the call of the untamed
savage lured him ever westward, until at last he abandoned his
position and journeyed to the land of the Sioux and Cheyenne,
the land for which his soul yearned. Oh, many were the hearts
he led to God. and many were the lives into which he inspired the
valor of true righteousness. He wandered over the greater part of
the Rocky mountains north of Denver, always searching for a
good work and always finding it. While on the lips that once
hissed the war cry the prayer of love broke forth.
But now; now all was changed; the Indian hearts no longer
responded to his appealing words of wisdom but turned away in
hatred. Not long ago a mighty chief replied to his urgent appeal:
"White father no like us. He take our land, we no pray to him."
"Yes," he told himself fiercely, as he sat there, white head bowed,
"the latter part of my life has been a failure, a miserable, terrible
failure, through no fault of mine, thank God. All I have accom-
plished has been undone, but with the help of my Heavenly Father
I will right this wrong." So saying, he arose with renewed vigor
and strength.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the roar of many waters
and the heretofore calm surface of Lake DeSmet was lashed into
myriads of mighty waves, as a huge tawny body plowed its way
through the seething, swirling waters. The other members of the
party, aroused by the sudden noise and confusion, stared in
unbelieving wonder. Only a minute, then the great monster disap-
peared, down into the treacherous depths of Lake DeSmet, and
the night settled back to her usual calm.
But not so with the little group of government men watching
on the shore. On the morrow, in company with Father DeSmet,
they were to go forth in a tiny row boat and lower the measure,
thereby hoping to learn the depths of the lake. But now the
superstitious ones rebelled against this throwing themselves straight
into the jaws of death. To make matters worse, some lover of
mischief recalled to their minds the old Indian story of Satan and
the papoose. Therefore many and bitter were the words of pro-
test; but the officials and Father DeSmet were firm. They had
been ordered to go, and go they would.
When "Old Sol" smiled down upon the earth he saw, floating,
like a bit of airy thistledown, upon the azure surface of the lake,
a wee brown boat, manned by a handful of excited soldiers. On,
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET 37
on they went and on, rowing with swift, firm stroke, until at last
the little craft rocked in the center of the broad bluish-green bosom
of Lake DeSmet; and then, oh, triumphant moment of moments,
the knotted line, with eager haste, sank down into the restless
waters. Down, down the dark lead sank, and down, but no bot-
tom. Down, down, down, and the knots on the wire counted one
hundred fifty, still the tiny bit of lead rested not on its downward
flight. Down, still down, and the telltale knots announced that
two hundred fifty feet had been passed, still no bottom. Another
breathless wait and the figures ran up to three hundred. Down,
down, down, and the eager, watching eyes counted three hundred
fifty, but the lead swerved not, neither did it rest. And so on,
number after number sank out of sight down into the hungry
waves, where no human eye could follow, until the line was
exhausted, but the floor of this legended lake was still unknown
to man, and so with puzzled, wondering hearts, into which the
worm of superstition was crawling, the soldiers landward turned
their boat. Lake DeSmet was bottomless. So the story ran from
mouth to mouth, from ear to ear, the settlers learned to look upon
the gem-set lake with fearful awe.
The night was bleak and cold and wintry, a few pale stars
shivered in the setting of cold, dark sky. The great, black rocks
which crowned the stately heads of the desolate hills were wrapped
in a sheen of silver frost, while a coat of thinnest ice imprisoned
the mischievous waves of Lake DeSmet. In the winding yellow
roadway that ran to the south, a small brown horse plodded
through the drifting sand and on his back, alert and watchful, rode
a splendid type of western manhood, though, I regret to say, he
had just recieved a little too much inspiration in the barroom at
Buffalo. He drew the faithful sheepskin coat closer about the
mighty shoulders, that could bear great burdens unflinchingly.
The night was cold, yes, very cold, and the mournful wind which
swept across the country without mercy, without ceasing, sounded
not unlike the howling of a pack of distant wolves. A sudden
thought siezed him and he glanced in apprehension at a ridge of
rocky cliffs surmounting a huge red hill where he suspected the
lank gray tyrants of waiting their chance to send some unsuspect-
ing heifer on her road to eternity. He was wondering if the victim
in question bore his brand.
Some unseen hand had cast a decidedly weird speli over the
land that night. The huge frost-clad rocks reminded one of —
shall I say it? — sheeted ghosts. The rugged hills; the whispering
wind; the strange, weird silence of the ice-bound lake; the stern,
erect figure of the man on the small brown horse; the howling of
the wolves; all made one think there might be something to the
legend of Lake DeSmet.
A crash, a roar, the sound of splintered ice and angry waters,
a hissing, swirling noise, and the cattlemen turned in time to see
38 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the lake a seething, foaming cauldron of angry waters and clouds
of flying spray. He also turned just in time to see a monster, the
size of which his fertile brain had never dreamed of before, whose
eyes were burning lobes of flame. The scales upon its wondrous
back were thrice the size of his terrified mount. The open jaws
appealed to his awed imagination as some far-famed cavern and
the teeth as terrible unsheathed swords. And this horrible creature
of fiery eyes and gleaming scales possessed the head of a raging
lion, the like of which mortal beast ne'er bore, and the body of a
fabulous lizard.
With one stroke of his mighty tail he caused waves to form that
would have dashed to ruin any row boat ever built, while the
clouds of flying spray and shivered ice well-nigh obscured the
wintry sky.
Writhing and contorting, lashing the indignant waters with his
slimy tail, the monster of far-famed horrors disappeared beneath
the floating ice and foamy waves, down into the unfathomed
depths of the lake that has no bottom.
Delighted at the prospect of having an interesting story to tell to
the "boss" and his comrades, the homeward bound traveler turned
on his solitary way. His courage failed him, however, when he
came in sight of the log ranch house, as he thought of the ridicule
and unbelief he was likely to excite. Neither were his forebodings
wrong, for his brilliant recital called forth scorn and much laugh-
ter. The cowboys hooted at the idea of any creature with a lizard's
body and a lion's head invading Lake DeSmet, and accused him
of indulging in too much "booze."
The next personality to witness the wonders of this strange lake
was a healthy, prosperous young farmer of modest, refined tastes,
whose greatest ambition was to cultivate his picturesque ranch
into an estate of great value and beauty, which would bring its
owner wealth and luxury and cause him to be looked upon with
respect by those who knew him. His thoughts all ran to winter
wheat, irrigation, good horses and profitable beef cattle. So you
see he had no time to reflect upon some uncanny mystery. He was
very happy that morning, and why shouldn't he be? His last herd
of beef cattle had yielded him a handsome profit and the last rain
had moistened his land to the right degree for fall plowing. Yes,
Providence surely had favored him.
It was a lovely autumnal day. The far distant mountains hid
behind the soft, sweet haze of Indian summer, far and wide,
wherever the human eye could reach, the land was clad in a
strange soft veil. Lake DeSmet was a body of lovely mist, sur-
rounded by enchanted hills, whose rough red color was trans-
formed, as if by magic, into the softest of soft pearl gray. On the
shore of the lake a dreamy-eyed cow stood sentinel over the body
of her sleeping calf. The atmosphere seemed laden with a warm,
soft sweetness which visits the land only in the days of Indian
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET 39
summer. Any artist or poet might have sighed with rapture over
the sweet, still beauty of the scene.
Even the big black stallion on which our prosperous young
friend rode seemed inspired and influenced by the dreamy silence,
for the prancing, restless feet now trod the delicate sand with a
loving reverence and the tossing head and the curved neck were
stilled, as if the never dying finger of lovely peace had touched the
flying mane and dilated nostril, causing even the dumb beasts of
wild Wyoming to look upon her with gracious tenderness. Little
did he dream that in a few minutes the event of his life would
occur. Poor charger, how I pity thee! In less than five minutes
your horse nerves will be racked by a strange, new terror, a deep,
unfathomed mystery, and your trust in human beings destroyed
forever, never to be redeemed again. Hark ye! Do not haste;
listen: From the center of the lake issues a queer, bubbling
noise. The farmer of western fields and meadows found a strange,
unaccustomed thrill run through his body in spite of his cool
nerves and level head. He glanced at Blackbird, his steed, and
found him quivering violently, with erect ears and dilated nostrils.
The dreamy-eyed cow started up and her eyes assumed a strange,
new look of terror that was dreadful to behold, while the slumber-
ing calf awoke and bounded to his feet like a hunted creature.
The sound grew louder, then developed into a mystic thrilling
hiss. The calm surface of Lake DeSmet is chopped into myriads
of tiny gray waves. Higher and higher grew the waves, louder
and louder grew the hissing call. In sheer desperation our gallant
friend urged the trusty Blackbird on, but, oh, terrible horror of
horrors, that noble animal was on the brink of hysteria; so violently
was he trembling that he could not lift one hoof, while his eyes,
fascinated by some weird spell, were glued to the center of the
lake, from whence clouds of spray and foam were rising. And
then, oh, ye gods, what happened next?
Our ranchman never knew. When at last he revived he found
himself prostrate on the cold, wet sand, with a roar which human
soul had ne'er heard of before sounding in his ear, and the air,
once so soft, so sweet and hazy, was clear, tense and vibrating.
Upon raising his head he saw a raging torrent of storm-tossed
waters, but that, ah, that was sunk in oblivion by a creature of
most horrible size and quality, so terrible and yet so beautiful,
it in a fair way dazed the eye. The head was that of a monstrous
swan, graceful beyond comparison, yet horrible and repulsive,
being of a weird, ghastly blue, mottled by flashes of most vivid
red, and the body in form of a huge reptile flashed burnished gold
in the sunshine.
Unlike the other monsters, he did not leap or lash the waters
with his tail. No, on the contrary, he was strangely mild and
pacific, turning over and over and coiling his mammoth, beautiful
body into a series of brilliant folds or stretching out full length in
40 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the sparkling waters as if seeking comfort and luxury in the
gracious presence of the autumn sun. At last he reared his won-
derful neck to its full height of fifteen feet and, gathering the tense
coils of his golden body, much the same way as the panther does
when crouching for a spring, he gave one desperate hissing rush
and disappeared from the wondering gaze of earthly eyes, and the
waves, as they closed over him, looked strangely black and terrible
to the awestruck man on the shore, who, as he heaved a sigh,
turned away from that scene of terrible happenings, alone and on
foot, for Blackbird had gone, human intellect knows not where!
Oh, the miles were long and weary, but at last our red hills friend
arrived at the historic old cow town of Buffalo, where he told his
story in the simple straightforward manner which inspires no
doubt and causes no disbelief.
The rosy, mystic hues of a sunset glory bathed the land of rough
red hills. A glorious amber sky, faintly mottled with soft-hued
orange, screened it from the rest of the world like a curtain of
eternal beauty. A few delicate wild rose petal clouds shimmered
on high, casting their blushing light with sweet reverance full upon
the mighty monarch head of Hiatosa, as he reared his great majes-
tic height far above the rock-crowned heads of his rugged com-
rades over whom he reigned supreme, unconquered. Hiatosa of
the red hills, guardian monarch of them all. The golden beauties
of that love-laden sunset sky shaded into soft brown; a few scat-
tered spruce, standing like erect soldiers upon their firm foothold
of rocky cliffs; the midsummer valleys were filled with an amber
peace; on the pine log roof of a settler's cabin shimmered the last
rosy glow of the dying sun, while over the enchanted surface of
Lake DeSmet hung a veil of golden beauty, though the waters
reflected lights of glorious magenta and shades of delicate orange.
The few patriarchal old box elder trees that fringed the southern
shore deepened into a soft warm bronze outlined by the clear
wonders of that exquisite amber sky.
The winding yellow roadway was again the scene of action, for
it was now traversed by a span of sleek gray Indian ponies, draw-
ing a neat little leather-topped carriage, the occupants of which
numbered two, an old-time pioneer of Wyoming, a man who had
built his home and lived far out here in the great unbroken chain
of red hills, and his old-time pioneer wife. They were on the way
to Buffalo, to that little metropolis of the Big Horn mountains,
and as they passed this lake of renowned legend they smiled with
silent rapture, for the lake had never appeared prettier than it did
now, in the waning beauty of the sunset sky, shining like a bit of
heaven on earth glorified.
Suddenly there was a little rippling movement, a little murmur-
ing splash, and then, while the golden mist wavered and then grew
bright in its own delicate mystic way, the sound of a sweet bird's
note thrilled and fell on the listening air. Was that a symbol of
THE LEGEND OF LAKE DESMET 41
what was to come? What mystery and romance were woven
around that liquid song? Surely it was not that of a common bird.
Slowly the beauty of a new presence stole over the land at that
sunset hour, the golden mist shimmered faintly and then took the
form of a thousand fairy-winged creatures, beautiful, marvelous
in their exquisite grace as clasping hands, they fluttered in one
wide circle of elfin beauty to the wonder-tinted crest of Lake
DeSmet, where they executed a dance unrivaled by any e'er
danced before. Oh, the enchantment of those radiant creatures of
mist, floating and tripping on that sea of ethereal rose and golden
lights.
In all their delicate charm, this host of golden sprites fluttered
and bowed, advanced and retreated, a thousand phantoms of
sunset they, elves of wonderland cloud, lovely creatures of a fairy
mist, they danced on and on, uttering never a sound until again
the air was thrilled by the liquid call of that unknown bird.
Instantly the tiny figures receded to the margin of the lake,
while to the surface rose the head and shoulders of a most wonder-
ful being, a young and beautiful maiden.
Oh, the witchery of that wild wonder maid, appearing as she
did in that sea of sunset glory. She seemed a part of that wild and
beautiful landscape, grave, radiant, yet tender, like one of the
many primroses growing on the terra cotta sides of those great
wilderness lords, the red hills, and yet, oh, so different; not a
creature of land she deemed, but a nymph from the dim, romantic
wonders of the salt sea caverns. Her features were unmistakably
Indian. In the dark unfathomed depths of her great black eyes
there burned the perpetual fire of melancholy. Her tresses of
midnight hue rose and fell and curled in fantastic designs o'er the
surface of mystery's lake; her skin was of a warm, reddish tan,
made more dark by the glow of the setting sun, whom the red men
worshiped in those years long ago when this was a land of freedom
and romance. The delicate lines of a beautiful chin, the dainty
curve of arched eye brow, the perfect nose, the graceful throat
and haughty brow, all gave proof of her Indian reality, tho' her
jewelry differed far from the beaded trinkets worn by the Indian
maiden of today, for on her head there gleamed a small, quaint
cap of pink sea shells and twined about her neck and arms were
ropes of pearl and coral. A robe of sea weed clung about her
shoulders, exquisitely ornamented with tiny shells of the most
beautiful and varying tints.
Then, swaying and rocking on the murmuring tide, she smiled a
smile so brilliant and wonderful, so full of enchantment and mys-
tery, that it dazzled the eyes and took away the breath of those
human spectators on the shore.
Lifting high in the sunset air one slender, tawny arm, she beck-
oned for them to come, smiling the while in a wild Indian triumph
until, seeing they obeyed not her strange, inhuman wish, she dis-
42 ANNALS OF WYOMING
appeared with a look of tender sadness on her dark and beautiful
face.
And as the lighted waves closed over her vanishing form, the
host of sunset elves rose in one great cloud had changed back to
mist again and the colors faded from the sky, while through the
darkening air there rang the mournful cry of the whippoorwill.
With slow and nerveless hand the man turned the horses toward
home: shattered was the faith of these two pioneers in all the
possibilities of the earth and of mankind, yes even in the law of
gravitation. Onward and on sped the ponies, drawing nearer
every second to the whitewashed cabin amid its grove of waving
cottonwoods; the mansion of the hills.
Oh. Lake DeSmet, with your sparkling, laughing waves flirting
with the starlit summer skies, tell us of your past; of your future
mortal man may write, but tell, oh, tell us of the dim romantic
wonders of the ages gone before.
Is there, can there be any truth in the old Indian belief? If not,
why should this strange lady of the lake be a member of that fast
vanishing race? Who are these great monsters, Lake DeSmet,
who inhabit your shadowy depths? Are they creatures of the
sea or can it be that they are the ghosts of those terrible dinosauria
and sauria who lived and dwelt upon this earth in the childhood
of America? Tell us, Lake DeSmet, for we crave full knowledge
of you and your mysteries.
You may laugh and you may sneer, ye men of science, you say
that these wonderful happenings are but the visions of an imagina-
tion overwrought, but tell us, have we any reason to doubt the
words of those favored few who have witnessed these wonders?
Are they persons of such remarkable mentality that they can con-
jure up before them without a moment's warning the sights of
such far-famed horrors, or, on the other hand, beauties? Have
we any reason to doubt the tried and true farmer and his wife,
who were the chosen mortals to witness one of the most beautiful
scenes in traditional history?
People of world-wide renown and wisdom may call it mere
foolishness or may even go so far as to deem it child's play to
believe in mythological demons and elves, or a story to the effect
that you are possessed of no great subterranean sea floor, but,
Lake DeSmet, we, the settlers' children and even many of our
fathers who dwell in thy wild, lonely hills, doubt not the soundness
of your legend.
frontier Cawyer
T. P. HILL
By
Burton S. Hill
Father, a Kentuckian, a lawyer not yet thirty, and recently
married, wanted a location. The time was early in 1888, when
Judge Micah Chrisman Saufley was commencing his tenure as
associate justice of Wyoming Territory. The judge was likewise
a Kentuckian, and a friend of the Hill family. He had left his
native state to accept the appointment of President Cleveland to
the Wyoming Supreme Court. Judge Saufley had served with
distinction as an officer in the Confederate army during the War
Between the States. And afterwards, even in the North, he was
recognized as a man of force and character, with strong, courag-
eous convictions. He was able as a lawyer, of genial disposition,
and otherwise well suited for his duties in the new, raw territory.
Intrigued with the thought of a very special experience, Father
addressed a letter to Judge Saufley asking about Wyoming Ter-
ritory. An answer was not long in coming from Laramie, head-
quarters of the Territorial Second Judicial District. But Father
was not urged to leave Kentucky. In fact, the Judge rather dis-
couraged it, but promised his utmost assistance if needed. He
did not recommend Cheyenne or Laramie, as Father hoped he
might, but stressed the advantages of Buffalo, in Johnson County,
which he described as the most promising town north of the Union
Pacific Railroad. He also added the encouraging touch that John-
son County would be needing a deputy clerk of court, and thought
it might be arranged for Father to have the office. The salary was
to be $50.00 per month until he could get a start practicing law.
Encouraged by his Kentucky bride to make the break, arrange-
ments were made for Father's departure. When Judge Saufley
was advised of these plans, he wrote that he would not be holding
court in Buffalo until June, but enclosed letters of introduction
to James M. Lobban, a banker; to Charles H. Burritt, an attor-
ney of prominence, and to Charles T. Gale, the Clerk of Court.
Thus armed. Father left Kentucky shortly after the middle of April.
1888, and got to Douglas, in Wyoming Territory, on the 29th.
Douglas had come into being two years earlier through the
construction of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, that branch
then being known as the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley.
Word had gone forth that there would be a rush to the abandoned
ANNALS OF WYOMING
FRONTIER LAWYER AND WIFE
ifF'M
T. P. Hill. 1888
Lucy B. Hill, li
is picture of T. P. Hill was taken, according to the calendar, on August
21, 1907
Courtesy Burton S. Hill
FRONTIER LAWYER 45
Fort Fetterman, turned into a large trading center, and immed-
iately a tent town sprang up a few miles away. It was called
Douglas, after Stephen Arnold Douglas, the brilliant Illinois Sen-
ator.
From Douglas, Patrick Brothers conducted a stage line to Buf-
falo, and Fort McKinney three miles west, and from there to
Junction City, Montana. At the Douglas stage office, Father was
tersely informed to be on hand at six-thirty the following morning.
After a wakeful night at the primitive hostel, sponsored by the
stage company, he was there. The day was springlike and balmy.
In complete readiness stood three teams of sleek horses harnessed
in tandem to a large, Concord type stage coach, with ample boots
front and rear. A resolute looking fellow holding a shotgun was
already mounted on the drivers seat, while Harry Nichols, the
driver, arranged the baggage and mail sacks in the rear boot.
But he left his work long enough to motion for Father to climb
aboard.
Inside were seated two other passengers on opposite sides, facing
each other. One was a frail appearing young woman, probably
about twenty-three, wearing a simple calico dress. Over her
shoulders was draped a gray shawl, and a plain white scarf held
back a wealth of brown hair. In her arms, wrapped in a small
blue blanket, she clutched a restless, whimpering infant, at which
she gazed with a tired, worn expression. The other passenger
was a slender young fellow, wearing a new, wide brimmed, low
crowned Stetson without dents or creases. His blue overalls fit
him rather snugly, with the bottoms turned up showing neat high
heeled boots. When Father glanced his way, he smiled broadly,
offered his hand, and genially announced himself as, "Johnnie
Greub of Trabing, twenty-two miles south of Buffalo." Father, as
genially, acknowledged the introduction, then took a seat beside
his new companion. From that moment, a friendship commenced
which lasted fifty-four years.
Presently, the sharp crack of a whip from the stage coach top
and a shout to the horses, set the vehicle in motion towards the
swirling Platte; and in a short time horses and stage coach were in
the midst of it. While the horses plunged forward through the
dashing current, the heavy coach weaved, bobbed, and twisted,
but never faltered under the professional hand of Harry Nichols.
When Father expressed grave concern, Johnnie Greub assured
him:
"He'll make it all right — don't worry too much".
The girl passenger held her baby closer, and was only heard
to emit a deep, relieved sigh when the horses finally plunged up
on the other shore.
After the Platte crossing, the continuing journey seemed quite
without event. At Sage Creek, four hours later, Nichols ordered
a short rest, and at Brown Springs fresh horses were harnessed.
46 ANNALS OF WYOMING
During this process, Johnnie took Father aside to express his
doubts concerning the girl passenger.
"She's hungry," he said, "and so's the baby."
It was then time to eat, or so they thought, when Nichols an-
nounced that a meal would be served at Antelope Springs, about
five that evening.
Somewhat slow in getting started, it was actually five-thirty
when the heavy coach pulled up to the station at Antelope Springs.
From the open door came the bracing aroma of fresh, hot coffee,
and soon appeared Mrs. Lee Moore, the gracious proprietress.
Then, while helping the girl from the stage, Johnnie ventured with
polite caution:
"Ma'm, me and my friend here want ta help ya. We think ya
an' the baby must be hungry."
With this show of kindness the girl cast her gaze to the ground,
and with a wan smile managed to murmur:
"The baby and me would thank ya. We would a lot."
Mrs. Moore was quick to sense the situation and graciously
took charge. With fresh, warm milk the baby peacefully fell
asleep, and the mother, refreshed and revived, for the first time
began to show an interest in her surroundings. There was ample,
well prepared meat and potatoes, plenty of steaming coffee, and
tasty apple pie. The cost for each was thirty-five cents.
Enroute again after about an hour, it was ten-thirty when the
lights from the windows of the Seventeen Mile station began to
appear. Inside there were sandwiches and coffee which helped
to fill in the time, since repairs had to be done to the coach by
lantern light. This took about two hours, which meant something
of a delay in reaching Powder River crossing at old Cantonment
Reno. It was about three-thirty on the morning of May 1st when
the coach pulled up in front of the station door. The girl's hus-
band had been waiting there, and hardly before she had time to
collect herself and the baby, he had them loaded on a buckboard
and away in the darkness. Father never saw them again.
After a run of five hours the same morning, bacon and eggs
were served at Trabing, at Crazy Woman Crossing, and after
breakfast John Greub hurriedly bid adieu, promising to be in
town soon. Enroute again in the course of an hour, it was fully
two in the afternoon when the stage coach pulled up in front of
the Occidental Hotel, in Buffalo. Inside, an inquisitive, fiddling
clerk finally got around to assigning Father a room, to which he
hurried without ado. But, rested and refreshed several hours
later, he felt ready to inspect his surroundings outside.
In front of an inviting, well kept front, Father walked in through
the open door, not knowing he had entered Dannie Mitchell's
popular Cowboy Saloon. Presently, he became aware that the
hum of conversation from visiting groups stationed about and at
the bar had ceased, and that all eyes were turned on him in his
FRONTIER LAWYER
47
city suit and derby hat. Feeling that something should be said,
and that he should say it, with polite hesitation he announced:
"Gentlemen, I'm T. P. Hill, from Kentucky".
The quiet was finally broken by Dannie Mitchell, himself, who
said:
"Nothing's wrong with being from Kentucky."
This brought a more relaxed atmosphere, along with several
courteous introductions. But, when offered a drink at the bar,
there was unrestrained amusement when Father ordered sarsapa-
rilla.
"And you from Kentucky," one fellow howled. And there was
more merriment. It was quite late when Father finally withdrew,
feeling that he had made a good start in Buffalo.
Yet, in the days to come when Mr. Burritt dwelled upon the
economic setback caused by the devastating winter of 1886-7,
Father had reason for serious reflection. With half the cattle on
the range lost to the elements, business had reached an alarming
low; many cowboys were unemployed, and there was extreme
unrest, to the point of lawlessness in some quarters. This was
the situation when Judge Saufley arrived in June to open his first
judicial term.
Before the judge made his appearance, some expressed mis-
givings but their fears were
arrested when they saw him.
Straight and erect in his long,
black frock coat, and of more
than average height, he aroused
immediate respect. Yet behind
a huge mustache and heavy goa-
tee type beard the face was not
stern and not unkindly.
Before ten o'clock in the
morning of June 25th, the first
day of the term, the large court
room in the new Johnson Coun-
ty court house was well filled, Jk
and on the extreme front row,
just behind the rail, sat an er-
rant, disorderly crew obviously .,
bent on disturbing and heckling
the Court. Promptly at ten.
when Judge Saufley made his
appearance, everybody respect-
fully arose while he mounted
the rostrum; that is, all except
the front row occupants. But JudSe Micah Chrisman Saufley as he
the judge appeared not to notice looked in J888
the insult, until there burst Courtesy Burton S. Hill
48 ANNALS OF WYOMING
forth from that quarter a round of loud, raucous laughter, and
taunting howls. Thereupon, his usual calm expression turned
deadly serious, and, still standing, glowering with anger, Saufley
struck a resounding blow with his gavel, and thundered:
'On your feet out there, and quick!"
That is all it took. Without hesitation the bully boys were up,
and there followed a piercing stillness. After a deliberate pause,
the judge continued, with severe austerity:
"I'll fine any one or all of you in contempt of Court for another
show of disrespect. And all the fines will be collected, so help
me!"
With that, everybody was seated, and the business of the Court
was taken up as though nothing had happened. But that evening
after Court when Judge Saufley attempted to enter the Occidental
Hotel, he found the entrance blocked by some of the same mis-
creants, now wearing guns. They did not know it then, but the
judge was also wearing a gun, a pearl-handled Colt forty-five.
The boys were noticeably chagrined when he pushed back his
long frock coat with his right hand and grasped the weapon with
a meaning they understood. Without a word, they moved on.
Judge Saufley was not again molested in Buffalo.
Father was admitted to the bar on June 29th, and on July 3rd
assumed his duties as deputy clerk of court, which took up only
part of his days. The rest of the time he was trying to establish
himself as an attorney. While he did not consider himself estab-
lished by the following October, he had mother join him. Upon
her arrival, she was a house guest at the Lobban home until a
suitable dwelling could be located.
One of Father's first and most memorable cases involved a
water right, wherein a villainous bully known as Arapaho Brown
was on the other side. When Father won the case, Brown threat-
ened to kill him. This caused real concern on the part of some
of his friends, who insisted that Father arm himself. However,
nothing happened except more threats. At all events, before
"Rap" could get around to enforce his minaciousness, he, himself,
was murdered in a lonely Powder River ranch house. Although
shot through the neck and mortally wounded by two companions,
he almost managed to avenge himself on them, but died too soon.
Ironically, his remains were cremated that night by his murderers
in a blazing haystack.
On another occasion, the noted outlaw, Tom O'Day, sought
Father's help. While Father did not consider himself a criminal
lawyer, that did not disturb Tom, who was in jail accused of
horse stealing. But, when Tom came up with an honest alibi, he
went free. He never forgot the help he got. Even years later
Tom sought Father's advice after he became older and a respected
rancher in another state.
By 1892 Father was beginning to think of himself as quite
FRONTIER LAWYER 49
well established, when almost everything was changed for almost
everybody by the Johnson County War. Father wisely said very
little and kept to himself. But, finally he was called upon by a
deadly serious delegation to express his loyalty either to the cattle
companies or the rustlers. It was a situation bound to happen,
but the day was saved by Charles J. Hogerson, First National
Bank president. He maintained that any man who preferred to
remain neutral should be allowed that privilege, and won his point.
At least, Father was never again waited upon.
Father survived the Johnson County War, and many other
vicissitudes down through the following years, but remained in
Johnson County to enjoy a long and successful career. The law
firm he established in 1888 is still active and conducted by the
Hill family.
Cander Cutoff
By
J. K. Moore, Jr.
In the Spring of 1857 an expedition left Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, to construct what was really to be a government road from
the Missouri River through to Oregon.
Congress had made an appropriation the year before for the
building of the road to be known as the Fort Kearney, South Pass
and Honey Lake Wagon Road.
A man by the name of William M. McGraw was awarded the
contract for building the road with the understanding that the road
builders would be accompanied by a military escort to give pro-
tection while the work was going on.
The work of building the road started at Fort Kearney. The
route was west by the Overland Trail and for most of the way
little work had to be done.
Their course was via Ash Hollow, Chimney Rock, Fort Lara-
mie, Independence Rock, and Devil's Gate.
Arriving at Rocky Ridge, near South Pass, late in the season,
when winter had set in, the matter of going into camp at such a
place was out of the question.
The Government guide recommended the Wind River Valley
as a desirable wintering place, so the soldiers and road builders
turned north, and wading through deep snow finally reached the
valley where winter quarters were selected on the Popo Agie River
at a point about two miles north of where Lander now stands.
The location has long been known as Fort Thompson, or Camp
McGraw.
Here the encampment was surrounded with abundant winter
feed for horses and mules, and game of all kinds was plentiful.
In the Spring of 1858 Col. F. W. Lander arrived and took com-
mand of the expedition relieving the contractor, William F. Mc-
Graw of the command of the camp, and the road work to be done.
On June 1st Col. Lander moved south to Rocky Ridge and took
up the work of building the road on across Wyoming, and to the
west coast.
Before leaving Col. Lander negotiated a treaty with Chief
Washakie of the Shoshone Tribe for a right of way through the
country claimed by him extending westward from the Sweetwater
to Fort Hall.
The Indians were paid on the spot in horses, firearms, ammuni-
tion, blankets, and many other articles prized by Washakie and the
chief men of his nation. The route for Fort Hall, and the Oregon
LANDER CUTOFF 51
country left the Overland Trail at Burnt Ranch on the Sweetwater
in a northwesterly course through a rough country.
The road went by the name of the Lander Cut-off in honor of
Col. Lander who surveyed and superintended the building of the
road.
The name of the road had absolutely nothing to do with the
naming of the town of Lander, as there was no connection.
Lander was not established until more than a decade later than the
the construction of the Cut-off Road.
An early settler in the Popo Agie Valley by the name of B. F.
Lowe homesteaded upon the site of what is now the town of
Lander.
Mr. Lowe had been a guide in Col. Lander's employment on the
expedition. He and the Colonel became good friends, and because
of his friendship, and respect for the Colonel, when it came to
naming the new town Mr. Lowe decided to call it Lander in
honor of Col. Lander.
And that is the story of how Lander, Fremont County, Wyoming
got its name.
It had its first settlement in 1 869 when it was named Fort
Augur, in honor of a Civil War hero. In 1870 it became Camp
Brown honoring the name of Capt. Frederick Brown of the 15th
Infantry who was killed by the Indians on the Bozeman Trail in
December, 1866.
In 1878 the name of Camp Brown was changed to Fort Washa-
kie in honor of Chief Washakie.
Fort Washakie was abandoned by the military force in 1909,
and was immediately taken over by the Office of Indian Affairs
as headquarters for the Shoshone Indian Agency, now known as
the Wind River Indian Agency.
1852 Oh Zke Oregon Zrail
By
Mae Urbanek
Just one hundred and ten years ago, the land that is now within
the boundaries of Wyoming was then marked on maps as Indian
Country. It was more commonly known as The Great American
Desert. Daniel Webster, the statesman, described it as "not worth
a cent; a region of savages, wild beasts, shifting sands, whirlwinds
of dust, cactus and prairie dogs."
It was a land without law or government; without buildings.
Across it thousands of ox-drawn wagons were tracing and retracing
the Oregon Trail. Gold had recently been discovered in California,
then a state two years old, and the only state west of the Missouri
River.
Slavery was the political topic of the day. Uncle Tom's Cabin,
that history making novel of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published
in 3 852. Millard Fillmore was president.
On April 7, 1852 a company of neighbors started from Wis-
consin, a state then four years old, to trek their way across the new
state of Iowa, and the vast Indian Country west of the Missouri
River to the free gold in California. On this long journey James
C. David kept a detailed diary until he became sick soon after
passing Fort Laramie.
His granddaughter, Mrs. Hazel Harness of Lusk has this diary
which is in an excellent state of preservation; the ink is as clear and
bright as it was a hundred years ago. Mrs. Harness also has the
hand-embroidered Chinese silk shawl that her grandfather bought
in California and sent back to her grandmother in Wisconsin. For
this perilous journey the shawl was sealed in a tin can. A hundred
years have not weakened the heavy silk fibers, and the shawl is
still strong and beautiful.
James David did not stay in California, but soon returned to his
home at Boscobel, Wisconsin. In 1888 he and his family came by
immigrant train to Custer County, Nebraska, where he filed on a
homestead near Merna. Here he was killed when a team ran away
throwing him from the wagon.
As his ox team inches westward to California in 1852, the daily
entries in Mr. David's diary become shorter, less descriptive, less
philosophical, and more concerned with grass and water. The
diary opens thus:
"On the seventh day of April 1852 we started for California.
Company consisting of 3. . . James C. David, Oliver P. David and
A. G. Sherraden. It was a painful matter to leave friends and
1852 ON THE OREGON TRAIL 53
acquaintances perhaps for the last time. No trial perhaps so great
as starting, and probably many would have backed out had they
not have fixed [made arrangements] and fear of ridicule makes
many a person go to California that would not have gone. Ridicule
is a powerful weapon and is sometimes used, though very wrongly,
for argument. How many useful reforms are put down by Ridi-
cule. Thousands have lost fortunes and what is vastly of more
worth, their souls, by this keen edged tool.
"Great and stout must be the resolution of a man who can
withstand its attacks. But it is right and proper to use it to dis-
suade any man from going to California. How much better it
would be for many if it were more used. We have 4 yoke of oxen
in tolerable plight, little on the wild order; travelled on a very
brisk pace for a long trip. . . . We got as far as Belmont; camped in
regular style. Very little said; rather low spirited; gloomy faced.
Mac joined us in the evening and was duly installed cook with
all the honor and perquisites. Made 12 miles.
"Thursday 8th. This morning got fair start from the borders
of home; all feel somewhat relieved. Roads heavy. Saw several
teams bound for the Land of Gold. Had an application from an
old Lady to take her son; everybody wants to go, seemingly. Oh,
thou Almighty Dollar how precious thou art; but stingy with thy
favors; and with what Zeal thy Devotees worship
"Friday 9th. Passed over a rough and hilly road through a wild
rough looking country to the Mississippi, that Father of Waters
and should be an American's pride in his Nile. It teaches gratitude
to that Beneficent Being who has provided and cast his lot in a
country of such vast advantages, so bountiful in nature's gifts free
for high and low, rich and poor; where every man can have his own
home and enjoy liberty, not abuse it; worship his Creator. Thou
Mighty river when thou refuses to flow then and not until then
may our country be divided and our government cease to exist.
The river is about three-fourths of a mile wide here at Eagle Point.
Road tolerably good; steep gulch to go down to River to cross.
There is a steam ferry; cost $1.25 to cross
"Sat. 17. Raining; cold and very disagreeable; laid by. Boys
went hunting; killed three squirrels and had some fresh meat.
Sun. 18. This being Sunday concluded to stop a day longer. Mac
went to meeting; some went hunting and others did their washing
and letter writing. Absent friends were not forgotten especially
the boys' sweethearts; many were the fine, soft things written today.
When all were collected will be quite a load for Eli Clayton's old
mare or the Black Vacks weekly mail route.
"Laying by is an irksome matter for Californians [all traveling
to California were called thus] ; it gives them the blues. It is
amazing to hear all the plans and several projects in view, when
we all get our piles. Many are the Castles built in air; piles of
money, splendid farms, fine little wives and pretty children. No
54 ANNALS OF WYOMING
happiness without Gold according to our ideas. If only half could
be realized. . . .
"Sat. 24 ... . Went to a cotillion party; Sylvester to fiddle;
found three girls; four married women, four large children, five or
six smaller growth. Young men, mostly Californians, danced all
night without intermission; surprising what legs these Iowa girls
have. Supper, pork, corn bread and pumpkin pies. Went home
with the Gal in the pink dress; a little stuck up. Mac gave us a
lecture on dancing in general and Iowa ho-downs in particular;
washed, fed and went to bed. . . .
"Wed. May 12. Last night formed a corral which is done by
making a circle of wagons and putting the cattle within, and such
a devil of a time we had of it. Such pushing, hooking, crowding,
and bellowing I never heard. It took all hands all night to watch.
We were heartily sick of the operation and hereafter we resolved
not to get into another such a scrape. An old Californian was the
means of getting us unto it. Some men are always trying to show
off. We got our cattle off minus a good deal of hide. Finally got
a start. Road leads over a prairie country; bad places poorly
bridged. No water only in creeks. Never out of sight of emigrant
trains
"Sat. 15. Went to Kanesville to buy our flour and balance of
outfit. Flour $16 a barrel; things high except whiskey, which is
cheap as dirt. Kanesville is a Mormon town of about 800 inhab-
itants. It is on the east side of the Missouri about 160 from Des
Moines. There is considerable trade done between Mormons and
Indians; is also a rendevous for trappers. The Mormons are
selling off to move to Salt Lake and property is selling low. Indians
are plenty around here, mostly Omahas; they are great beggers
[sic] and will steal anything they can lay hands on. They own
the territory opposite here. A heavy auction business in horses
and cattle at Kanesville. Emigrants generally selling horses and
buying cattle." [cattle, meaning oxen, were considered best for
traveling since they could live on less feed, travel farther without
water, and were less apt to stray off or be stolen by the Indians.]
"Grass scarce and water poor; teams in every direction. . . . camped
in a slough a mile and a half from the river [the Missouri] Some
of the boys went down to see about crossing; no prospect for
several days.
"Monday 17. Luckily we got an emigrant who had a barge
to ferry us across. We immediately drove down and commenced
ferrying. We could take a wagon and load at one trip. We com-
menced about two o'clock at night and by daylight we had our
wagons across. We then swam our cattle across; each man taking
a steer by a rope fastened to his horns; take from six to eight across
at a time. Some were ferrying in skiffs. Got all safely over about
nine o'clock after hours of hard labor as we had the rowing to do.
Cost us one dollar for each wagon and twenty cents a yoke for
1852 ON THE OREGON TRAIL 55
cattle. The Missouri here is very swift but the current runs to
the west bank which assists the boats in ferrying. The water is
very sandy and dirty. Good landing on each side The
boats used in ferrying are flats and rowed by hand which is very
hard work, and can't run at all when the wind is high. One or
two had sunk and several lives had been lost. Traders Point is
an old Indian trading post; one or two stores, post office. It is a
poor site for a town; river overflows and banks are continually
washing in. [Traders Point is now Omaha] "Opposite on west
bank is Council Bluffs, an Indian village and store and blacksmith
shop. Indian agency for Sioux, Pawnee, Omahas. The store is
kept by I. A. Larpey. Camped one and a half miles below on
river.
"Monday 17. [sic] Laid by; got some letters from home. Some
went to town; some sauntered around to see Indian sights. Saw
Indian chiefs talk, some four or five chiefs dressed out in all their
Indian sundry. It would have been a stinging rebuke to some of
the white assemblies to have seen the grave and orderly like de-
portment of the chiefs in camp in contrast to the wild and boister-
ous conduct of our solons. Then a drove of Omaha braves came
in riding through on good ponies strung with bells; the riders yelling
and whooping like so many devils. The scene was truly ludicrous."
On Friday, May 21, [Mr. David describes a typical camping
scene on the Platte River when many wagon trains clustered to-
gether near the all important water. ] "A very disagreeable eve-
ning; all confusion; women scolding, men swearing, children crying;
dogs barking; cattle bellowing; wolves howling; fiddles in almost
every camp; boys eyeing and ogling the girls cooking; some laugh-
ing; some praying; some crying; coyotes yipping; guns cracking. . . .
so you have some idea of an encampment of California men from
all the world; a heterogeneous mass all for the gold regions; old
grey headed men with families; old, bent, rheumatic matrons; a
young couple who have just launched their frail bark on life's
boisterous ocean; the minister; the gambler; the merchant; the
clerk; the statesman, and the clodhopper all have forsaken home,
kindred, and friends for gold. The larger portion thinking of
returning when they make their pile. Scarcely any thinking of
making the far west their home. But how few will ever return;
how many will find their graves in the wastes of the American
Sahara. Many will find that all is not gold that glitters; that piles
are few and far between. Some perhaps may get back with their
piles but will it pay for broken health, dissolute habits and broken
ties? Oh, is there a place beyond the mists of eternity where the
soul will be content and rest? I doubt it. 1 1 Vi miles. "
[ In 1 852 Hosea Horn published an "Overland Guide to Cali-
fornia." Trading posts were listed and described, also good
camping spots. The distance between places are tabulated, also
the distance of of each place from Council Bluffs. Mr. David,
56 ANNALS OF WYOMING
no doubt, got his daily information about distance traveled from
such a guide. Many of his entries are devoted to the lack of grass
and fuel, and the poor alkali water which resulted in many deaths
from cholera and diarrhea. Buffalo chips were often used for fuel.
Deer and antelopes and some buffalo were seen but were too wild
for the emigrants to shoot.]
"Saturday, June 5. Passed over heavy deep sandy roads. . . .
overtook several large trains from Missouri and Illinois. Most all
affected with the cholera; one train laid up for a half day; had a
birth in it last night. Laid up to rest the mother. They also had
a birth in it sometime previous. Passed six new graves today.
Cool and team traveled well. Some of the boys out hunting; killed
nothing. Good camping places and passed several fine ones. As
usual in the evening had trouble in finding a camp. Camped on
Rattlesnake River, a fine stream. Several camps in view. 25
miles. . . .
"Tuesday June 8. Got an early start; grass poor all day. The
Bluffs are high and abrupt; the bottoms wide and sandy; the
elevation is very rapid and the river [the Platte] is very high and
swift. Grass is scarce. There has been considerable late burning
done which has destroyed considerable grass. A man that would
set the prairie on fire would murder his grandmother. . . . Met
the express, a private one, Bladget and Co. Paid 250 for a letter
to carry to the states. The Bluffs in the neighborhood of the
Indian mound are full of curiosity. They are about one hundred
feet high. The view from them is both pleasing and instructive.
The Bluffs on the south side are high; some cedar timber on the
hills. The view here extends far up and down the river and Chim-
ney rock can be seen in the west. [Chimney Rock is a well-known
landmark located east of the Wyoming-Nebraska state line on the
Platte River.] The rocks in the Bluffs are hard and ragged; some
are entirely of sand. The whole has an appearance of an old
fortification. Grass poor where we camped tonight. We passed
four fresh graves and two cases of cholera. 20 miles.
"Wed. June 9. . . . This morning Sylvester's team left us. They
got mad because we told them they did not do their part in watch-
ing, driving up cattle, etc. There is more or less quarreling in
every train which is much to be regretted. The fault is in persons
not doing their share of work. The best way is for every one to
lend a helping hand until all is done. Camping is another source
of dissension; and driving, taking care of teams. Men are more
irritable here than any place in the world. I was sorry the boys
should leave but could not help it. We had loaned them a yoke
as they had broken theirs. We had to take it from them. An ox
of Smith's team was lame today. Camped about two miles east
of Chimney rock; grass good; buffalo chips plenty; river beginning
to look smaller; made 15 miles today.
"Thursday 10. Got very early start. . . . good grass all along
1852 ON THE OREGON TRAIL 57
the river. The road leaves the river but it should run along it
as the grass is better and the ground is better for a road. There
is no water but river water which is colder than usual though
dirty as ever which is caused by the sandy country through which
it flows. Chimney Rock is quite an interesting natural curiosity.
The mound on which it stands covers an area of about twenty
acres. The rock which runs up from the top resembles a chimney.
The top of the rock from the river is about 125 feet. The chimney
is about 55 feet higher. There are high bluffs on the south side
of the river running up to Capital Hills, or Scotts Bluffs. Ham
seems to have made a mistake in distances along here. Light
shower this evening; quite warm and appearance of rain. Prickly
pears plenty. Good grass on river; no buffalo chips. Roads
gravelly and hard. 21 miles.
"Friday 11.... Water so strong of alkali you can smell it some
distance. . . . could see Laramies' Peak all day to the west; can
say we have seen the Rocky Mountains. Our cattle have scours
badly from eating bad grass and water. Passed five new graves
today, died recently; saw some camped for reasons of sickness.
Sylvester joined us today again; much all right; everything goes
off smoothly. Cattle no doubt will be well taken care of now.
The reconciliation of old friends is always gratifying. 24 miles.
"Sat. 12 Next place of importance today Blue Rock in the
Bluffs to the right; fair camping; roads good along here; Bluffs
come near the river; roads hard on cattle feet. Fair camping along
road where joins river near Raw Hide creek; no water in it when
we passed. Camped near the river about four miles from Fort
Laramie; plenty of timber; grass indifferent. Saw several Sioux
Indians today. They are finely formed and intelligent looking;
very numerous and of warlike disposition. They are of lighter
complexion than most of the tribes in the west and cleanly; seem
to have an abundance of Indian property, good horses, etc.
"All as busy as bees this morning; a general resurrection of
California goods. Lightening up everything for Black Hills. [In
the early days, pioneers as well as historians referred to the Lara-
mie Range in Wyoming as the Black Hills J Cut off the wagon
beds and coupled shorter for the Black Hills. Threw away every-
thing useless. Got everything in order and started again. Some
of us went to the Fort and the teams started on. There is a Ferry
opposite the fort above the mouth of Laramie River. Ham says
there is one below the Laramie river but 1 did not see it. This ferry
is a very poor concern; some had difficulty in getting over; appears
to be badly conducted. They do not cross any wagons over or
cattle. The river is deep and narrow and runs very swiftly.
"The Fort is on the west side of Laramie River. There are a
number of buildings around the fort. The fort is built of Spanish
sun burnt bricks and looks like a pile of dirt. It is built in a form
of a square with an open space or court in the center. It looks
58 ANNALS OF WYOMING
as though it was in a ruinous condition. The barracks are large
and seem to be good ones. There is a large vacant house, a very
good one, but not good enough for Uncle Sams officers. They
have built a new one which must have cost a large sum of money.
Several other houses and a large store. They sell goods very
reasonable. There is a large amount of government property
destroyed here every year. They bring out supplies and throw
away the wagons and fatten and kill the oxen. They have some
fine mules and horses here. There are about eighty soldiers com-
manded by Captain Ketchum. In the evening in crossing the river
the boat came near sinking, it being rather heavy loaded. There
was great stripping of linen and drawing of boots and some pale
faces; but finally got over without going down which if we had
done, would have been several lives lost. Went on to a stream of
water about six miles from ferry. Some facilities for camping;
water good. Nine miles."
When the U. S. government bought Fort Laramie in 1849, a
new officers' quarters later known as "Old Bedlam" was built from
lumber hauled eight hundred miles by wagon from Fort Leaven-
worth. Kansas. This two story building with porches across the
front of both first and second stories cost about $70,000. No
wonder Mr. David considered it an expensive structure at that
time. The territory of Wyoming was not created for another six-
teen years (in 1868). Cheyenne did not exist until 1867 when
Major General Grenville M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union
Pacific railroad, chose that location as the site of a terminal town.
Casper was not founded until 1888.
But back to 1852 and the diary of James David: "Monday 14.
Road leaves the river and we begin to ascend the far famed Black
Hills. They are a ridge of high and rocky hills on either side of
the Platte. On the south side they run up the river for fifty odd
miles; on the north side only about twenty miles. They are very
high and rocky, hard on cattle feet and wagon. They are spurs
of the Rocky Mountains and the ascent is very rapid. Some deep
gulches in them afford water and is generally good, but feed is
scarce. In evening camped after a hard day's drive of eighteen
or twenty miles; got over the hardest part of the hills; road joins
the river, grass poor, wood plenty.
"Tuesday 15. . . . Taylor was here taken very suddenly and
bad with cholera; procured medical aid immediately. Some of our
teams left us not wishing to stay; not thinking him sick enough to
lay by. We thought hard of them. Now only three teams of us.
This was the first sickness we had and we were in hopes it would
be the last. Some of the boys are badly scared. The whole theme
is to get along and every impediment thrown in the way seems
nearly to set the boys crazy. Sherraden went back two miles to
wash and we had one of the bad times of it. A great many teams
1852 ON THE OREGON TRAIL 59
passed this afternoon. Went into camp as tired as ever I was in
my life. Taylor dangerous".
After this David himself became ill and only brief notes are
written in his diary at intervals of three and four weeks. What
Wyoming history he might have written, what descriptions of the
prairies and mountains he might have recorded but for the dys-
entery!
Petroglypks
By
Sheila Hart
Why did you carve them, Primitive Man,
On cliffs and rocks in a primeval land;
Outlines of deer and elk and bird
And a buffalo great and a lizard low
That crept over the Earth long ages ago?
How did you carve them, Primitive Man —
With a harder rock in your unschooled hand?
You had no metal, no tool save stone;
Did you carve these symbols, patient and slow.
As a history of life in the Long Ago?
When did you carve them, Primitive Man?
Was it after The Flood that your life's short span
Ended, with only these records we cannot heed —
From your lines and circles we cannot read
The pattern of life in that Long Ago:
When you carved these signs we do not know.
Alias T>an 'Davis-
Alias Dan Morgan
Old Bittercreek Ranch Episode on the Powder River circa 1904
As Told By Mrs. "Doc" Daisy Spear to R. H. (Bob) Scherger
I was alone and working in the kitchen. Little Horatio and
Mary were both taking their naps. Then, I noticed out the kitchen
window a man riding hard down the hill in front of our ranch
house. He pulled up, and I noticed right away his horse was
lathered something terrible! Two belts were across his chest and
he had six-shooters on each hip.
I was scared — because I could tell he was an outlaw! I saw
him get down off his horse and walk around the side of the house.
He came back and I met him at the door. "Where's the men?"
he asked. "They're scattered in the hills looking for cattle," I
said.
"1 want something to eat, and I want it damned quick," he
said.
"Yes, Sir," was my reply.
I was afraid, but I knew if I'd look him right straight in the eye
he wouldn't hurt me or the children. I noticed his horse's sides
still heaving. The poor animal was near rode to death, and this
man, I knew, was riding for his life. I went to the pantry where
I'd put some chickens I'd just cooked. They were packed in ice,
and I brought them out and poured him some coffee. He started
to sit down, but his chair was with its back to the window so he
moved it to the other side.
I stood back and waited and watched out of the corner of my
eye for the men to get back, but they didn't come. It was near
half an hour since they'd left.
The outlaw ate fast then got up — he looked tired. His eyes
were like steel as he asked, "Where's the horses?" I looked at
him square and said, "there's none here," yet trying with all my
heart to keep from showing fear. He wiped his mouth with his
sleeve and walked out the door leaving it ajar.
I could see him mount his horse and ride up the road to the
top of the ridge. He looked back — then was gone.
Wyoming s frontier Newspapers
By
Elizabeth Keen*
"THE NEWSPAPERMEN"
Wyoming's frontier newspapermen were a vital part of the west-
ward movement that gathered momentum in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. All but one of the seven editors to be dis-
cussed in this chapter were born in eastern seaboard states — three
in New York, one in Virginia, one in Maine, and one in Pennsyl-
vania. Illinois was the birthplace of the seventh. Four of the
men were born relatively close together in time — between 1839
and 1 843 — so that they would be ripe to feel the effects of Colo-
rado's mining boom in 1859, and the one in Wyoming nine years
later. At least four of these men seem to have been drawn west-
ward by the prospect of business opportunities stemming from the
booms.
They were also men of education. Four of the seven had had
some college training; their editorials and other writing show that
they took west with them the standards of the settled, cultured
areas and fought to re-establish them in the new territory. Versa-
tile as well as educated, they excelled in a number of professions.
One had been the first president of the University of Washington.
At least three were practicing lawyers, and one of these had studied
medicine seriously. Some had taught school before turning to
journalism. One was an experienced agriculturist. Yet, despite
their extraordinary talents and their devotion to journalism, few
of these editors and publishers accumulated more than "a small
competence," and while these few modestly prospered, not a single
one "reached the $100,000 mark."1
Between edition times they actively participated in public af-
fairs: they were local officers, such as mayors, aldermen, justices
of the peace, city and county attorneys, district and county judges;
they were territorial officers such as auditors, penitentiary com-
* This article is Chapter II of Miss Keen's master thesis. University of
Wyoming, 1956.
1. W. E. Chaplin, "Some of the Early Newspapers of Wyoming," Wyo-
ming Historical Society Miscellanies (Laramie, 1919), p. 9. An exception
probably should be made to Bill Nye, who is known to have achieved a state
of considerable affluence. However, Nye made his money after leaving
Wyoming.
62 ANNALS OF WYOMING
missioners, legislators; they were national officers such as post-
masters and commissioners having charge of selling public land.
Such widespread influence would indicate that Wyoming's news-
papermen were leaders to whom people looked for guidance.
They were men of unquestioned resourcefulness and influence.
They were often shrewd politicians, sensing which side of a public
issue would appeal to the electorate. They possessed enough
courage to state boldly and unmistakably their attitude on public
questions. Unrestrained by any kind of libel law,2 they could
express their personal hatreds in type without fearing legal retalia-
tion, although before them was often the prospect of a beating, a
ducking, or perhaps a shot from a Colt's six-shooter, a favored
weapon of the period. Merris C. Barrow, acidulous editor of
Bill Barlow's Budget in Douglas, was once given a "sound beating"
by the citizens of that town, and on another occasion, while attend-
ing a convention in Casper, he escaped a ducking in the Platte
River only when his host grabbed a rifle and told Barrow's enemies
that he would shoot the first person who dared put a foot inside
the gate.a But since most readers of territorial newspapers were
either advertisers and subscribers, or potential advertisers and
subscribers, editors on the whole, since they had to make a
living, prudently restrained their writings. Not always successful,
frontier editors were often plagued by debts. According to Chap-
lin, "Small population and magnificent distances made their finan-
cial lot difficult, but they did not complain and followed the usual
bent of the small town purveyor of news in giving the reader more
than [was] warranted by the patronage."4
Wyoming's best-known newspapermen in the period under in-
vestigation were Nathan A. Baker, James H. Hayford, Edward
Archibald Slack, Charles W. Bramel, Edgar Wilson [Bill] Nye,
Asa Shinn Mercer, and Merris C. Barrow [Bill Barlow]. Doubt-
less there were other editors and publishers of the period worthy
of inclusion here, but because of lack of any positive information
about them, this discussion has been confined to seven men on
whom some source material exists.
2. Wyoming territorial legislators in March. 1890, finally approved libel
and slander laws, under which provision was made for fining the guilty
"not more than $1000, to which may be added imprisonment in the county
jail for not more than three months." See Session Laws of Wyoming
Territory, Jan., 1890, Sec. 33.
3. Margaret Prine, Merris C. Barrow, Sagebrush Philosopher and Jour-
nalist (Laramie: University of Wyoming, 1948), pp. 124-5.
4. Chaplin, p. 9. A printer who advanced from the back shop to the
desk of editor and publisher at a time outside the period under investigation,
Chaplin worked with and knew well many of the early newspapermen. To
his colorful recollections of vivid personalities this study is greatly indebted.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 63
NATHAN ADDISON BAKER
Wyoming's pioneer newspapermen, Nathan Addison Baker, was
a man of many accomplishments: he was a school teacher, law
student, journalist, accountant, "artistic printer," agriculturist, hor-
ticulturist, miner, real estate dealer, and, in 1864, a member of
the Governor of Colorado's Guard."' Above all, he was a man
of great fortitude in the face of disaster, and one who had un-
quenchable faith in the future of the West. He lived to be
ninety-one.
Baker was born August 3, 1843, in Lockport, New York. His
family emigrated to Denver by way of Racine, Wisconsin, in
March, 1 860. Two years later Baker opened the Ferry Street
School in Denver, where for a year he taught thirty-six pupils.
The following year, when the city's first public school was estab-
lished, Baker went to work in the business office of the Rocky
Mountain News, and it was there in 1864 that he barely escaped
with his life when the great Cherry Creek flood swept away the
News building. ,; By the summer of 1867 Baker had saved enough
money to start his own newspaper, the Colorado Leader. The
first issue came out July 6, but the newspaper did not prosper
because "business conditions were not good."7 It was then that
Baker and his friend Gates, the printing expert, set forth by wagon
for Cheyenne, taking along the Leader's plant. Many years later
Baker recalled the precariousness attending the birth of the Chey-
enne Leader:
The conditions on our arrival Tin Cheyenne] were these: a young
city in the feverish excitement of early making. The Union Pacific
road had not yet reached Cheyenne, but was there a few weeks later.
Building of stores and shops were [sic] very active, and for many
days was carried on days, nights, and Sundays.
There was but one building in town that yet had a floor in it. This
the writer was able to secure for the Leader. This was a log building,
with a store front in it belonging to E. A. Allen.
On Thursday. September 19, 1867, we were able to issue our first
number of the Cheyenne Leader. There were on the street opposite
the post office . . . 300 men, all eager to get a copy of the first
paper, for each of which was paid 25 cents.
This was a fine thing for the writer, as it had taken all his money
to pay for his team transportation to the Magic City. He could now
pay for his board at the Bell House, and pay his assistants on the
paper.s
5. An interview with N. A. Baker, Wyoming State Tribune-Chexenne
State Leader, July 27, 1933.
6. Newspaper clipping file. University of Wyoming Archives.
7. Ibid.
8. Wyoming State Tribune-Cheyenne State Leader, July 20, 1929. Cop-
ies of the Cheyenne Leader starting with Vol. 1, No. 1, September 19, 1867,
are in the files of the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department,
Cheyenne.
64 ANNALS OF WYOMING
The Cheyenne Leader did so well that Baker, as has been noted,
was able to branch out from Cheyenne and establish the Laramie
Sentinel May 1, 1869, and the South Pass News "about the same
time."9 He himself remained in Cheyenne, never living in South
Pass City or in Laramie where he had picked capable men to
manage his papers, but he did travel to these places "in connection
with the newspapers and some politics."1" All went well with
his fortunes until the night of January 1 1, 1870, when the worst
fire in the town's history "laid nearly one-half the business portion
of Cheyenne in ashes,"11 destroying the Leader plant and all its
supplies. The Wyoming Tribune, after criticizing the fire depart-
ment for its slowness and ineptitude, estimated Baker's losses at
five thousand dollars and said he had no insurance.11' The Leader
of January 13, 1870,1:! was silent on the matter of insurance, but
put its losses at twice the Tribune's estimate and was altogether
more gallant about the efforts of fire fighters to put out the blaze:
It has been thought that the labors of the firemen could have been
rendered more efficient by proper direction. But we cannot say.
It is easy to criticize and find fault after the danger and excitement is
all over. The engine might have been a few minutes earlier but it
seems that for many weeks there has been no suitable provisions for
such an emergency. There was no fuel. Then again the supply of
water soon gave out. . . . Before the fire had reached the Fort House
the entire force of the office was busy in removing the material of the
LEADER. A party from the TRIBUNE office soon came to our
assistance and rendered brave and generous service. In a few minutes
all the material as well as the household furniture belonging to Mr.
Baker . . . was removed across the street, where it was hoped it
would be safe. . . . The last article removed was the Gordon (power)
press which was got outside the building just as the flames were issu-
ing in the rear and almost over the heads of the brave men who
labored to the last moment with untiring energy. The press had to be
abandoned on the sidewalk in consequence of the heat which was now
too intense for human endurance. In a few moments the building
fell in and a tornado of flames swept across the street with resistless
fury, rendering all our efforts abortive and destroying all that had
9. Newspaper clipping file. University of Wyoming Archives.
10. Letter of N. A. Baker to Grace Raymond Hebard, April 2. 1927,
in the University of Wyoming Archives.
11. Wyoming Tribune, lanuary 15, 1870, Wyoming State Archives and
Historical Department.
12. Ibid.
13. In an unsigned, unpublished MS. dealing with Baker in the Uni-
versity of Wyoming Archives he is quoted as saying that the Leader "never
missed an issue" following the fire. However, the bound files of the Leader
in the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department for 1870 include
no copies of the newspaper between Monday. lanuary 10, and Thursday,
lanuary 13, the latter issue containing a full account of the fire. Baker was
an elderly man when the unknown historian interviewed him, and it is
possible that his memory may have betrayed his sense of accuracy.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 65
been previously removed by so much exertion. The entire outfit of
the office, which was one of the most complete and extensive in the
West, together with a large quantity of paper and other stock, was
consumed in less time than one can write an account of it. The
LEADER'S loss will not fall short of $10,000 . . .
Following the fire. Baker lost no time in re-establishing his
plant. While makeshift headquarters were set up in the office of
the defunct Argus, Baker himself journeyed to Chicago to buy
new equipment and supplies. Thirty days later the Leader was
being published in a new and better plant.14
For reasons this investigation has been unable to establish.
Baker sold all his Wyoming interests in 1872, went to Denver,
and there embarked on a publishing business that turned out
"artistic printing."1'' At some time in the early 'seventies he began
a fish hatchery at Baker's Springs, the quarter-section in the West
Denver lowlands that his father had homesteaded in 1 860, and for
a time the former newspaperman raised mountain trout. Still
later he engaged in the real estate business, and for a time was a
"calculating expert" employed by the United States mint in Den-
ver.1<; He died in the Denver home of his daughter May 27,
1934. ,T
JAMES H. HAYFORD
While a legion of Wyoming editors came and went during the
territorial period, their names living but briefly on the mastheads
of their newspapers, James H. Hayford's lively and sometimes
acrid prose distinguished the columns of the Laramie Daily and
Weekly Sentinels for twenty-six years. For most of those years
he was considered the pioneer newspaperman of Wyoming, since
Baker, the original pioneer, chose to spend the greater part of his
life in Colorado. The excellence of Hayford's editing and report-
ing was appreciated in many places besides his home town. The
Daily Sentinel of May 10, 1870, for instance, contains "numerous
compliments paid us by our contemporaries" on the disclosure
that Baker had sold the paper to Hayford and Gates. The
Atchison [Kansas] Patriot characterized the Sentinel as "one of
the liveliest and spiciest dailies in the West . . ." The Council
Bluffs [Iowa] Nonpareil said it was "a lively little sheet and we
hope it may be compelled to enlarge before another year." The
Colorado Tribune, calling the Sentinel "the best daily for a little
one on our exchange list," expressed the hope that "the success
of these gents will be equal to their efforts."
14. Unpublished, unsigned MS. in the University of Wyoming Archives
15. Newspaper clipping file. University of Wyoming Archives.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid,
66 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Hayford must have been a man of singular modesty, for no
accounts of his life are contained in the various biographical
compendiums of the day. Chaplin left a slight sketch of the man
as a personality, ls but he gave few biographical details and made
no reference at all to Hayford's life before his arrival in Wyoming.
However, on Hayford's death, July 28, 1902, his old enemy, the
Boomerang, the newspaper with which he had feuded for so many
years, came out the following day with a full obituary, and on
subsequent days with rather eulogistic commentaries.
Hayford, according to the Boomerang's obituary, was born
December 26, 1826, in Potsdam, New York, and was first married
at the age of nineteen. He earned his living for a time by teaching
school in New York, Ohio, and Illinois, but while he was still a
young man left teaching to attend and graduate from the Uni-
versity of Michigan medical school. Apparently Hayford con-
sidered all knowledge to be his province, for 1855 found him
established in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, studying in a judge's law
office. He was later admitted to the bar of that city, where for a
time he practiced law. Some time later Hayford journeyed to
Colorado, where he engaged in mining and practiced law. It was
in 1 867 that he moved to Cheyenne, went to work for Baker on
the Ltader, and was "one of the first to build a substantial resi-
dence in the tent city."11' While living in Cheyenne he was sent
as a delegate to Washington to urge the separation of Wyoming
from Dakota and its organization as a territory. He was active
in the formation of the new territory, for several years he was a
penitentiary commissioner, and for eight years he held office as
territorial auditor, making, in 1871, the first report on public
instruction in Wyoming.-"
His years in Laramie were not given over solely to being a
newspaper editor. He was secretary of the first University of
Wyoming Board of Trustees, and for eight years he was Laramie's
postmaster. He was chairman of the meeting of newspaper editors
who convened at the Inter-Ocean hotel in Cheyenne May 15,
1877, to organize themselves as the Wyoming Press Association.-1
As justice of the peace he heard 1,856 cases, and no higher court
ever reversed a Hayford decision. In 1 895 he was appointed
judge of the second judicial district to fill a vacancy caused by
death. And in addition to all this, Hayford was a good Republi-
18. Pp. 22-23.
19. Laramie Boomerang, July 29, 1902.
20. I. S. Bartlett, History of Wvominq (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing
Co., 1918). I. P. 432.
21. Cheyenne Daily Leader, May 16. 1877. Wyoming State Archives and
Historical Department.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 67
can, "a substantial member of the Presbyterian Church," the hus-
band of three wives, and the father of eighteen children.22
Hayford's was a brilliant and tireless mind. His old political
enemy. Judge Bramel, once said that Hayford "could sling more
mud with a teaspoon than he [Bramel J could with a scoop-
shovel."-'1 Bramel was doubtless referring to Hayford's penetrat-
ing irony and his fearlessness in saying what he had to say. Some-
times, as the Boomerang noted in its issue of July 30, 1902,
Hayford's words stung:
Mr. Hayford was strong in many directions. No one who knew
him would deny his claims to the title of politician. He himself
believed it the duty of every man to be one in the best sense and in his
political activities he was a partisan because he believed his party was
right. In his character as editor for so many years of a party paper
he struck hard. He meant to do so. That he conceived to be his
business, and sometimes his words rankled in the minds of his political
opponents who felt that they were often unnecessarily harsh. . . .
Perhaps Hayford's most devastating weapon was that of quoting
a victim and convicting the unfortunate by his own, ill-judged,
ridiculous words. A notable example of this method of attack
is found in the Laramie Daily Sentinel of December 16, 1871, it is
quoted at length here because it illustrates Hayford 's adroit and
unique way of dealing with those he was sure were wrong. Hay-
ford, who had been to Cheyenne to attend a meeting of the Wyo-
ming legislature, had witnessed the attempt of one of the legisla-
tors, S. F. Nuckolls, to start a movement for the repeal of the act
granting suffrage to Wyoming women, an act which Hayford him-
self had championed from the beginning. Angry and contemp-
tuous, he wrote:
We listened night before last to the argument in the Council upon
the motion to pass the act over the Governor's veto, repealing the
act enfranchising women in this Territory. As our readers generally
did not enjoy this rare intellectual treat, we propose to give them a
little outline of what was said.
Mr. Nuckolls introduced the motion and made a speech in its
favor. Mr. Nuckolls is no speaker, and when in his normal condition
he has sense enough to be conscious of the fact and hold his tongue,
but on this particular occasion he was conscious that something "had
to be did," and fortified himself accordingly.
The leaders of the scheme knew they lacked one vote in the Coun-
cil. They had moved heaven and earth to secure that one vote. They
had approached one of our members, who. in a spirit of waggishness.
had encouraged their advances, and made him more and greater
promises than the Devil did the Savior. They had agreed to make
him President of the Council at first, and would give him everything
from the next delegateship to Congress up to a thousand dollars in
22. Laramie Boomerang, July 29. 1902.
23. Chaplin, p. 22.
68 ANNALS OF WYOMING
cash afterwards, if he would only fall down and worship them by
helping disenfranchise the women. All the facts in the case and the
names of the interested parties to these efforts will be given to the
public at no distant day, and they will find it interesting, too, but just
now we have something else to chronicle. . . .
Mr. Nuckolls said: "I never saw the sun go down upon an election
day when I had been engaged in a political contest, struggling to
secure the triumph of my principles and party, that I did not feel that
I had been engaged in a dirty, disreputable business; such business
as no woman could be engaged in without morally degrading herself.
... I think women were made to obey men. They generally promise
to obey at any rate, and I think you had better either abolish the
female suffrage act or get up a new marriage ceremony to fit it."
He closed his eloquent appeal with the entirely original remark, "I
don't think women ought to mingle in the dirty pool of politics."
Here the venerable ex-member of Congress sat down, evidently
overcome by his feeling. . . .
The narrow-gauge member from Cheyenne flies to the rescue. His
head is very small, but what he lacks in brains is made up by thickness
of skull. . . .
Mr. [W. R.] Steele said: "The Governor hadn't got no right to
veto this bill. He hasn't got no right to veto this bill nor nothin' that
we pass unless it is somethin' witch after it has passed it shall appear
that it is wrong or that there is somethin' wrong by witch reason it
had ought not to become a law, accordin' to my reasonin'. I am
willin' every old woman shall hev a guardian if she wants one and
kin git it. . . .
"It ain't no party question this bill ain't. / wouldn't let it come up
in that shape. I would know better than that. This woman suffrage
business will sap the foundation of society. Woman can't engage in
politics without losin' her virtue." (As the gentleman's wife was
quite an active politician during the campaign, we leave him to
settle the above question with her. — Ed.)
"No woman ain't got no right to set on a jury unless she is a man
and every lawyer knows it, and I don't bleeve it anyhow. I don't
think women juries has been a success here in Wyomin'. They watch
the face of the judge too much when the lawyer is addressin' 'em.
That shows they ain't fit for jurors in my way of thinkin'. . . .
"The Legislature hadn't got no right to let the women vote in the
first place. ... If those who hev exercised this debasin' and demoral-
izin' right can't hev it took away from 'em now we can at least
present anymore of 'em from gittin' it and thus save the unborn
babe and the girl of sixteen. . . ."
Hayford was not always the victor during his long career as a
newspaperman. As has been shown, the Sentinel had become a
weekly paper by the time the Boomerang was established, and
although both were Republican in politics, the Boomerang as a
daily "had the backing of the Republican organization of the
county and took from the Sentinel practically all the public patron-
age."-4 Hayford apparently found this loss of revenue so hard to
accept that in 1882 he consented to run on the Democratic ticket
for justice of the peace, at the same time agreeing with the Repub-
24. Chaplin, p. 22.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 69
lican county committee to write some blistering articles in aid of
the Republican cause. He was exposed in this dual role by the
Boomerang, and the revelation lost him the Democratic vote.
Bill Nye, at whom Hayford had been sniping ever since the
humorist began editing the Boomerang,-7' referred to Hayford's
humiliating defeat in his now-famous letter of resignation in 1883
as Laramie's postmaster.
Acting under the advice of Gen. Hatton a year ago. I removed
the feather bed with which my predecessor. Deacon Hayford, had
bolstered up his administration by stuffing the window, and sub-
stituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to post-
masters which made the feather bed a part of my official duties, I
filed it away in an obscure place and burned it in effigy, also in the
gloaming. This act maddened my predecessor to such an extent that
he then and there became a candidate for justice of the peace on the
democratic ticket. The democratic party was able, however, with
what aid it secured from the republicans, to plow the old man under
to a great degree. . . .26
According to an unsigned editorial in the Boomerang of July 30,
1902, Hayford liked nothing better than to argue theology with
someone well versed in the field, since he was '"naturally more of a
theologian than a politician, more of a moralist than a judge. . . ."
In a final assessment of Hayford's character, the unnamed writer
found that, on the whole, "he was a fine example of a man born
and reared in a religious atmosphere wholly different from that of
today, and imbued with the thoughts and feelings of more than half
a century ago, who nevertheless had kept his face to the future,
and had brought to bear the new ideas upon the old conceptions
in such a way that while clinging to the original framework he
had held to little else than the framework." And forgetting any
acrimony that might have been bred by the Sentinel-Boomerang
feud, the newspaper concluded, "Judge Hayford with his pen
moulded much of the progress of the period, and from the columns
of the Sentinel may be read much of the history of the state."
EDWARD ARCHIBALD SLACK
The newspaper career of Edward Archibald Slack, whose asso-
ciates and friends call him "colonel" because of his service with the
Grand Army of the Republic, lasted for twenty-nine years — from
25. A typical example of how Nye fared in the columns of the Sentinel
is this item appearing May 6, 1881: "Mrs. Judge Nye and children left this
week for the east for quite a protracted visit. We saw Nye around the
streets yesterday and hardly knew him. He has had his head shaved and
sandpapered, he wore a standing collar and white cravat, with black kid
gloves, white silk stockings and red morocco pumps. He also had on
sawdust calves and is evidently fixing himself up for a gay deceiver."
26. Quoted by Chaplin, p. 20.
70 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the time he bought the South Pass News in 1869 to 1898, the year
he relinquished control of the Cheyenne Sun-Leader upon his ap-
pointment as receiver of the United States land office in Chey-
enne.-7 Slack, as has been shown, founded the Laramie Daily Inde-
pendent in 1871, moved it to Cheyenne five years later and consoli-
dated it with the Cheyenne Daily News. In 1895 he bought the
Cheyenne Leader, and for the remainder of his years as a news-
paperman published the Sun-Leader.28
Slack was born in Oswego, New York, October 2, 1842. His
father was a civil engineer of some distinction and the close friend
of General G. M. Dodge, the man in charge of building the Union
Pacific Railroad west from Omaha. His mother, who later was
widowed and remarried, was Esther Hobart Morris, a dynamic
worker for women's suffrage and the nation's first woman justice
of the peace.1'9 Slack began to learn printing in Peru, Illinois; he
continued with the trade in Chicago until his apprenticeship was
interrupted by the Civil War and his three years of service with
the Northern forces. Upon his release from the army he attended
Chicago University for a time.3" He emigrated to South Pass City
in 1868, engaged for a time in mining and in the operating of a
sawmill, bought the South Pass News from N. A. Baker, and,
eventually, became clerk of the district court. It was in the latter
capacity that in 1 870 he swore in his mother as justice of the
peace.31 Slack was married early in 1871 to Sarah F. Neeley,
sister of the wife of General John M. Palmer, at the time governor
of Illinois. The wedding took place in the governor's mansions-
William Chapin Deming, who later was to become one of Wyo-
ming's best-known newspapermen, described Slack as "a powerful
man physically, energetic to the nth degree, but with little or no
control of his temper. This together with the fact that he had not
only been a crusader but was also quite partisan [Slack was at
different times politically a Republican and a Democrat] resulted
in a good many enemies, such as an active newspaperman usually
27. Chaplin, p. 23, gives the date Slack ceased being a newspaperman
as 1905, but Bartlett, p. 452, says that upon Slack's government appointment
Capt. Harry A. Clark became a partner in the ownership of the newspaper
with Wallace C. Bond, Slack's son-in-law, who had hitherto been associated
with Slack in the publication of the Cheyenne-Sun-Leader. Since Bartlett
himself was a member of the company which in 1906 bought the Leader
(by which time the word "Sun" had been dropped from the masthead)
from Bond and Clark, his date is presumed to be correct.
28. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming (Chicago: A. W. Bowen,
1903), p. 220.
29. Ibid., p. 220.
30. Ibid., p. 220.
31. Mrs. Wallace C. Bond. "Sarah Frances Slack," Annals of Wyoming,
IV (Jan., 1927), 355.
32. Ibid., p. 356.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 71
finds camping upon his trail. ":!:: Chaplin, however, softened the
portrait, for while stating that Slack "never hesitated to call things
by their proper names," he recorded that the "colonel'1 was fond
of and even lavish with his entertaining, that he basked in the
fraternal aura of the annual Wyoming Press Association meetings,
and that he enjoyed giving philosophical advice to his apprentice
printers. ',4
An examination of his newspapers shows that Slack was in the
front of the fight for statehood and in the crusade for free text-
books for Wyoming schools, that he was active in the formation of
the Wyoming Editorial Association which at one time he headed,
that he was the organizer of the Pioneer Association from which
stemmed the idea of holding annual Frontier Day celebrations in
Cheyenne, that he was an advocate of water, sewer, and electric
street lighting systems for the Magic City, and was a strong cham-
pion of higher salaries for public school teachers.
Chaplin says that a few years before March 23, 1907, the day
on which Slack died, he "seemed to come to a realization of the
necessity for accumulating some money to leave his family."35
Hitherto he had put his profits back into his newspaper, so that he
had made only a "bare living" for himself and his family.'1" At
the turn of the century, then. Slack began "erecting not only a
number of medium-sized office buildings on the southwest corner
of Capitol avenue and Seventeenth street, in Cheyenne, but . . .
also ... a large and commodious building just north of the Inter-
Ocean Hotel on Capitol avenue . . .","'7 So it was that upon his
death he was able to leave his wife and two daughters "a compe-
tency of about $45,000."38
CHARLES W. BRAMEL
None of the newspapers with which Charles W. Bramel was
associated survived for any great length of time, yet Bramel him-
self should be included in any record of early Wyoming journalism
if only for his incurable addiction to printer's ink. When, as has
been shown, the Laramie Daily Sun did not prosper, Bramel sold
it to E. A. Slack and began publishing the Laramie Daily Chron-
icle. When the Chronicle lost the county printing to the Sentinel,
Bramel sold it and began publication of the short-lived Laramie
Daily Times. As Chaplin was to remark later, the man was "so
33. Agnes Wright Spring, William Chapin Deming of Wyoming (Glen-
dale. California: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1944), p. 95.
34. Chaplin, p. 23.
35. Ibid., p. 23.
36. Ibid., p. 23.
37. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming, p. 221.
38. Chaplin, p. 23.
72 ANNALS OF WYOMING
constituted that it seemed impossible for him to keep out of the
newspaper business."39
Bramel was born in Virginia August 11,1 840, grew up in St.
Joseph, Missouri, and graduated from Bloomington college, Mis-
souri, at the age of eighteen.4" After practicing law in St. Joseph
for a number of years. Bramel, like so many other bright men of
that period, resolved to seek his fortune in the new country opening
up in the West. Accordingly in 1 867 he went to the Colorado
mining town of Georgetown, then booming, and there began prac-
ticing law.41 A year later he was elected probate judge of Clear
Creek county, of which Georgetown was the seat. In 1 869
Bramel moved to Laramie and there he continued to follow the
legal profession. He was Albany county prosecuting attorney for
two terms. During the sessions of 1874 and 1876 he served as a
member of the territorial council of Wyoming.4- In 1877 and
1878 he was secretary of the territorial council, in his spare time
interesting himself in the affairs of the Cheyenne Daily Gazetted
In subsequent years Bramel was a member of the Laramie city
council, city attorney of Laramie, judge advocate on Governor
John E. Osborne's staff, Albany county prosecuting attorney once
more, and finally judge of the second judicial district, comprising
Albany, Natrona, and Fremont counties.44
Unfortunately for the historian, only one or two single copies
of newspapers edited by Bramel have been preserved, making it
necessary to turn to Chaplin for what meager information there is
about his journalistic days:
Judge Bramel hit hard licks, but always acknowledged that he was
unable to throw as much mud as Editor Hayford of the Sentinel. On
one occasion while publishing the Chronicle he became engaged in a
controversy with the Rev. Edmonston, at that time pastor of the
Methodist church. One article appearing in the paper relating to
Edmonston was headed. "A Pestiferous, Pious Politician Pointedly
Peppered." The controversy ended in a street fight. Bramel had
gone to the telegraph office to get some report and met the preacher
at the corner of Second and Thornburg. A wordy war ensued until
the divine shook his fist at the judge and said: "Bramel, I am not
afraid of you." The remark was immediately followed by a blow
from Bramel's right that sent the minister to the gutter. Upon his
arrival at the printing office the judge nonchalantly remarked, "I
licked the Methodist preacher while I was out."
Judge Bramel was arrested and fined for a breach of the peace,
but the crowd assembled in the justice court immediately paid the
fine as a testimonial of their regard and faith in his integrity.45
39. P. 11.
40. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming, p. 162.
41. Ibid., p. 162.
42. Ibid., p. 162.
43. Chaplin, p. 12.
44. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming, p. 162.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 73
From Chaplin's remarks and from the files of the Laramie
Sentinel itself, it is possible to deduce that Bramel and Hayford,
in the journalistic custom of the day, constantly exchanged insult-
ing remarks about each other and about their respective newspa-
pers. How serious these comments were in intent it is impossible
to say. Yet at some period of their lives, possibly after both men
left the newspaper field, they must have become friends, for when
Hayford was given his Masonic funeral, Bramel was one of the
honorary pallbearers. 4(:
EDGAR WILSON NYE
Of all territorial Wyoming newspapermen, Edgar Wilson Nye
was the one who made the largest fortune and achieved the greatest
fame. When he died of a stroke at the age of forty-five, the
founder of the Laramie Boomerang was known all over the country
as Bill Nye, humorist and author of fourteen books, and a popular
lecturer who read his funny sketches on the same platform James
Whitcomb Riley used for reciting his folksy poems, as a spellbinder
of audiences even in Great Britain, and as a valued contributor to
the New York World, for which he covered the Paris Exposition
in 1889 at a reported salary of one thousand dollars a week. His
admirers have made a national shrine of his grave in Fletcher,
North Carolina.47
Nye was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Maine, a small town
he was later to recall with noticeable ambivalence:
A man ought not to criticize his birthplace. I presume, and yet, if
I were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select
that particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet.
what memories cluster about that old house! There was the place
where I first met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaint-
ance sprang up which has ripened in later years into mutual respect
and esteem. It was there that a casual meeting took place, which has,
under the alchemy of resistless years, turned to golden links, forming
a pleasant but powerful bond of union between my parents and
myself. For that reason. I hope that I may be spared to my parents
for many years to come.4s
Nye's father was a lumberman whose life was full of hardships.
When only two years old, the son, pondering the difficulties of an
existence that kept his father away from home for the duration
of winter, took his parents by the hand, and, telling them Pisca-
45. Chaplin, p. 12.
46. Laramie Boomerang, July 31, 1902.
47. Bill Nye. His Own Life Story, Continuity by Frank Wilson Nye
(New York: The Century Co., 1926), illustrations facing p. 408. This
book is probably the best source of material on Nye because many of the
Boomerang's bound file were destroyed by fire September 8, 1889.
48. Ibid., p. 3.
74 ANNALS OF WYOMING
taquis county was no place for them, he boldly moved the family
to Wisconsin where the Nyes settled on a farm at Kinnic Kinnic.49
Nye attended the River Falls Academy. Shortly after his eight-
eenth birthday he decided to become a miller, "with flour on my
clothes and a salary of $200 per month.""'" Actually, the salary
proved to be twenty-six dollars a month, and Nye, by his own
account, was not very efficient, for "one day the proprietor came
upstairs and discovered me in a brown study, whereupon he cursed
me in a subdued Presbyterian way, abbreviated my salary ... to
$18 and reduced me to the ranks. . . .,*"'1
At the age of twenty-four Nye left milling to study law, but from
all accounts he was unable to grasp the opinions of English jurists
and found it difficult to digest the voluminous reports of cases in
American law books. At length he turned to teaching school at a
salary of thirty dollars a month.52
During these later years in Wisconsin Nye dabbled in journal-
ism, sending in personal paragraphs and funny stories to small-
town newspapers published near Kinnic Kinnic. His first taste of
fame came when one of the items was reprinted in the Chicago
Times. The heady satisfaction of seeing his work in a large news-
paper may have brought about a turning-point in Nye's life: when
he was twenty-six he quit school-teaching and tried to get a job
on the metropolitan dailes in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. He
was not successful.
It was at this time, the spring of 1 876, that Nye, unable to find a
satisfactory niche for himself in the Middle West, boarded a train
for Cheyenne, where John J. Jenkins, in whose Chippewa Falls
office the boy had read law, was United States attorney for the
territory of Wyoming. It was Jenkins who sent him to J. H. Hay-
ford. The Laramie editor gave the newcomer a job on the Daily
Sentinel, a job which Nye found congenial, if not highly paid:
The opportunity to do reporting came to the surface, and I im-
proved it. The salary was not large; it was not impressive. It was
not calculated to canker the soul. By putting handles on it every
Saturday evening, I was enabled to carry it home by myself, the dis-
tance being short. I used it wisely, not running through it as some
would have done. ... He THayford] gave me $12 a week to edit
the paper — local, telegraph, selections, religious, sporting, fashion,
political, and obituary. He said that $12 was too much, but, if I
would jerk the press occasionally and take care of his children, he
would try to stand it. Perhaps I might have been there yet if I
hadn't had a red-hot political campaign and measles among the
children at the same time. You can't mix measles and politics. So
1 said one day F would have to draw the line at measles.
49. Ibid., pp. 9-10.
50. Ibid., p. 26.
51. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
52. Ibid., pp. 28-33.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 75
I collected my princely salary and quit, having acquired a style of
fearless and independent journalism which I still retain. I can write
up things that never occured with a masterly and graphic hand.
Then, if they occur afterward, I am grateful; if not. I bow to the
inevitable and smother my chagrin. '''■'
Chaplin states that as a newsgatherer Nye was not a great
success, that his mind ran more to "lurid glare" than to facts. For
a week at some time during 1 877, Nye and James P. C. Poulton.
city editor of the Cheyenne Daily Sun, changed places just for the
fun of it. But Nye, according to Chaplin, neglected the local items
that were Poulton's specialty and that made the Sun "an exceed-
ingly interesting local paper," so that "a week of Billy Nye was all
that Colonel Slack, the editor of the Sun, desired. . . . Nye had no
conception of the value of the personal item or the short para-
graphs that go to make up the grist of news that makes a local
paper popular with its readers.""'4
After he had managed to pass the bar examinations in Laramie
in 1877, Nye left the Sentinel to devote all his time to the practice
of law. Later he engaged in mining, became a justice of the peace
and United States Commissioner. In 1882 he succeeded Hayford
as postmaster in Laramie. In addition to all these activities, Nye,
as has been mentioned, was chosen by Laramie Republicans to
be the editor and manager of their new newspaper, the Laramie
Daily Boomerang. It was Nye himself who gave the newspaper
its name in honor of a stray mule which he had adopted as a
mascot.rr' Years after leaving Laramie Nye described his exper-
ience as editor of the Boomerang to a national convention of
editors:
It wasn't much of a paper, but it cost $16,000 a year to run, and
it came out six days in the week, no matter what the weather. We
took the Associated Press news by telegraph pail of the time, and
part of the time we relied on the Cheyenne morning papers, which
we procured from the conductor on the early morning freight. We
received a great many special telegrams from Washington in that way.
And when the freight train got in late. I had to guess at what Congress
was doing and fix up a column of telegraph the best I could. There
was a rival evening paper there [Laramie Daily Times] and some-
times it would send a smart boy down to the train and get hold of
our special telegrams. Sometimes the conductor would go away on a
picnic and take our Cheyenne papers with him.
All these things are annoying to a man who is trying to supply a
long felt want. There was one conductor, in particular, who used to
go into the foothills shooting sage hens and take our cablegrams with
him. This threw too much strain on me. I could guess at what
Congress was doing and make up a pretty readable report, but foreign
powers and crowned heads and dynasties always mixed me up. . . .
53. Ibid., pp. 43-44.
54. Chaplin, p. 19.
55. Bill Nye, His Own Life Storx, p. 77.
76 ANNALS OF WYOMING
There were between two and three thousand people [in Laramie] and
our local circulation ran from 150 to 250, counting deadheads.56
In the third year after the founding of the Boomerang an attack
of meningitis forced Nye to resign as editor and as postmaster.
Late in 1883 his doctor old him he could not live in a town of
Laramie's altitude. For a time Nye stayed with relatives of his
wife in Greeley, Colorado; later he bought a small house in Hud-
son, Wisconsin, not far from his parents' farm. In 1885, his
health restored, Nye began his public lectures and a weekly letter
to the Boston Globe. Success followed success in this country
and abroad until his premature death, February 22, 1896, in the
imposing, towered house he had built for his family on Buck
Shoals Hill, near Fletcher, North Carolina. The last thing he
wrote appeared on the day of his death, and, by a coincidence,
it contained this paragraph:
Sometimes it is perfectly tiresome waiting for a man to die so that
you will feel safe in saying what you think of him, but if he happens
to be a large, robust man. it certainly pays to do so."7
ASA SHINN MERCER
There was not a hesitant, compromising bone in Asa Shinn
Mercer. It was because of his utter fearlessness in printing what
he thought to be right that he lost his thriving Cheyenne Weekly,
the Northwestern Livestock Journal, and the home he had made
in the capital city from which he and his family were virtually
hounded. The story behind this expulsion is this: Mercer for
some time had been concerned with the Johnson county range
wars between the cattle barons and the grangers. The wars began
in the eighteen-eighties. In October, 1892, Mercer printed in full
a confession by George Dunning. The account gave in detail the
means by which the Wyoming Stock Growers Association had
hired gunmen, of whom Dunning was one, to kill off the settlers;
it described in full the cattlemen's attack on and murder of a
number of Johnson county ranchers. 58 In publishing the con-
fession, Mercer showed great bravery, since his newspaper was
written for and supported by the very people whom he was now
exposing — the rich and powerful cattle lords. Mercer must have
foreseen that the cattlemen would react, but he could not have
anticipated the full extent of what these reactions would bring
about: his arrest on a charge of criminal libel, his imprisonment.
56. Ibid., pp. 80-81.
57. Ibid., pp. 405-6.
58. A. S. Mercer, The Banditti of the Plains (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1954), pp. 151-195. Actually it was members of the
Association and not an official action of the Wyoming Stock Growers Asso-
ciation.— Ed.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 77
the seizure of his printing office, and the withholding by the Chey-
enne postmaster of all copies of the paper containing the confes-
sion on the grounds that they constituted "obscene matter," and
were therefore unfit to be carried by the United States mails. In
a foreword to a recent reprinting of The Banditti of the Plains
which Mercer wrote two years after publication of the Dunning
confession, William H. Kittrell says that charging Mercer with
obscenity was "an accusation palpably as false as charging Queen
Victoria with lewdness or St. Francis of Assisi with disorderly
conduct.**"'1' For the fact is that Mercer was the most proper of
men.
He was born in Princeton, Illinois, June 6, 1839.'1" Little has
been recorded of his early life before the summer of 1861, when
he left Franklin College, Ohio, with a bachelor's degree, headed
west to Seattle to visit his older brother. Judge Thomas Mercer,
and fell in love with the Northwest. ,!1 His first job was that of
president and sole teacher at the newly-founded territorial Uni-
versity of Washington. He was engaged for five months, begin-
ning November 4, 1861, at a salary of two hundred dollars. ,!- At
the end of this period he ordered some printed circulars, hired
two Indians with a canoe, and traveled about four hundred miles
visiting all the logging camps he could find from Bellingham to
Olympia, in an attempt to induce young men to go to Seattle and
study at the university. By these personal efforts he recruited
twelve additional male students.63 To cut down the expenses of
his students, Mercer ordered wholesale groceries from San Fran-
cisco and opened a boarding house where undergraduates could
live for three dollars a week.
In 1863 Mercer made the first of his now-famous expeditions
to the East to get young women to return with him as prospective
wives for the white men of the West who were marrying squaws,
a state of affairs that was said to be producing "outlaws. "64 The
following year he returned to Seattle with eleven young women
from Lowell, Massachusetts. Although he found jobs for all of
them, soon they were married and starting families. Encouraged
by his success, Mercer made a second recruiting trip to the East
in 1865, but this venture was full of disappointments:
Lincoln has been assassinated. Mercer had intended to ask Lincoln
for a discarded warship to transport his emigrants to the west coast.
59. Ibid., p. xxiv.
60. Clipping file. University of Wyoming Archives.
61. Delphine Henderson, "Asa Shinn Mercer, Northwest Publicity
Agent," Reed College [Portland, Oregon] Bulletin, XXIII (Jan., 1945), 21.
62. Ibid., p. 21.
63. Ibid., p. 22.
64. Ibid., p. 23.
78 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Now it looked as though there were to be no emigration. However.
Mercer decided to see the governor of Massachusetts and President
Johnson. But it was not until General Grant had heard his story that
Mercer received any active support. It has been said that Grant, as
an officer stationed at Fort Vancouver, had missed the feminine
touch. Anyway, Grant saw to it that Mercer received an order for a
ship. Now the promoter met with a second disappointment. Quar-
termaster General Meigs failed to comply with Grant's order. The
legend goes that Meigs was in a bad humor when Mercer called on
him. Later the Quartermaster General changed his mind and offered
to sell the 1600-ton steamer Continental to Mercer for $60,000.
Although this was a good buy, the latter did not have the money.
Ben Holladay, ship and railroad king, quickly took advantage of the
opportunity to buy the steamer at such a bargain, and agreed to trans-
port five hundred emigrants at a reasonable fee. Mercer was now
ready to launch his campaign. The publicity he received was enor-
mous. . . . Mercer . . . collected about one hundred passengers in all.
. . . Because Mercer had failed to get the number agreed upon in the
contract, Holladay considered it void and demanded the regular fare
from the one hundred passengers.
The Continental sailed February 6, 1866, and reached San Fran-
cisco ninety-six days later. . . . Mercer spent his last three dollars on a
telegram to Governor Pickering asking for money to transport the
women to Seattle. . . . Much to his dismay the governor sent him a
telegram ($7.50 collect) praising him for his effort. . . .65
Mercer was able to get out of his difficulties only by selling some
farm machinery he had bought in the East with funds entrusted to
him for that purpose by a number of Northwest settlers. He was
able to land his charges in Seattle finally, but his troubles were
far from being at an end. Easterners who had paid him for
passage on the Continental, but who had decided not to travel west
in the ship, brought attachment suits against him. It was said that
large sums of money that had been given him by relatives and
friends for different purposes had all been diverted into the emi-
gration scheme.1'" But, according to Miss Henderson, Mercer was
well thought of by the people of the Northwest despite all the
criticism, and eventually Mercer Island was named in his honor."7
After settling his second group of emigrant women, Mercer, who
by now had served a term as joint councilman in the Washington
territorial upper house assembly, moved on to Oregon where, ac-
cording to Bancroft, he built the first grain wharf in Astoria and
"originated the project of shipping direct to the east by sailing
vessels. "6S The governor of Oregon appointed him special com-
65. Ibid., pp. 26-7.
66. Ibid., pp. 27-8.
67. Ibid., p. 28.
68. Hubert Howe Bancroft. Bancroft's Works, XXV, History' of Nevada,
Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 (San Francisco: History Company,
1890), p. 799 n.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 79
missioner of immigration.60 Mercer wrote a number of pamphlets
on the new country, and in 1 875 he began publication of the
Oregon Granger.'" But a year later, for reasons unknown, he left
Oregon for Texas where he lived in cattle towns for seven years,
busily publishing four newspapers: the Wichita Herald, the Vernon
Guard, the Bowie Cross Timber, and the Mobeetie Panhandle.11
In 1883, again for reasons unknown, Mercer sold out his Texas
interests and went north to Cheyenne, where, as has been shown,
he began publication November 23 of the Northwestern Livestock
Journal in partnership with S. A. Marney. The Cheyenne Demo-
cratic Leader of July 22, 1884, described Mercer as "a gentleman
who is above the medium in size, of comparatively little rotundity,
but with a wealth of golden hair confined principally to his face,
and like angels' visits on the top of his head."
Apparently, all went well for Mercer until the day he published
the Dunning confession. It is not possible to know, as Kittrell
says, that he rued the day he did so,7- since no evidence has been
found recording any such regret. Moreover, since Mercer was
apparently a man of principle, it is hard to think that he repented
his action, especially since on the title page of The Banditti of the
Plains he wrote that the Johnson county range wars were "the
crowning infamy of the ages."
When he was forced to leave Cheyenne, he took his family to
Hyattville in northern Wyoming and settled on a ranch which he
was to develop into "one of the finest in the state. "73 There, in
virtual obscurity, he spent the last twenty-three years of his life.
When he died August 10, 1917, the Buffalo Bulletin passed over
Mercer's Cheyenne ordeal and made no mention of his authorship
of the controversial Banditti, but said with the conventional kind-
ness of the day that during his Wyoming residence "Colonel Mer-
cer has been actively engaged in the arduous occupation of trying
to build up and develop the great country of his adoption, and his
efforts will live forever."7^
MERRIS C. BARROW
A man of vast energy often in trouble of one kind or another,
Merris C. Barrow began his newspaper career as a printer. Born
in Canton, Pennsylvania, October 4, 1857, the son of a Christian
Church minister, Barrow lived in Missouri and Nebraska before he
69. Henderson, p. 29.
70. George S. Turnbull, History of Oregon Newspapers, (Portland,
Oregon: Binfords & Mort, 1939). p." 295.
71. Henderson, p. 29.
72. The Banditti of the Plains, p. xvi.
73. Clipping file. University of Wyoming Archives.
74. Ibid.
80 ANNALS OF WYOMING
settled in Wyoming.7"' It was in Tecumseh, Nebraska, that he
learned to set type, a skill that eventually led him to lease for a
short period the Tecumseh Chieftain. At some time in 1878 he
became a United States postal clerk, working on trains out of
Omaha; shortly after the appointment he was transferred to Lara-
mie, sorting mail on trains between that city and Sidney, Nebraska.
Barrow's first serious misfortune occurred in January, 1870,
when he was arrested on a charge of robbing the United States
mails. Leading citizens of Laramie provided bail and Barrow
was eventually acquitted, yet the arrest plagued him all his life
and gave rival editors the ammunition with which they were always
able to humiliate him in the relentless battles of words that were
characteristic of frontier journalism. 7,i On the other hand, this
early trouble returned Barrow, now a husband and father, to the
newspaper career he was to follow until his death: he was given
a job, pending his trial, on the Laramie Daily Times as compositor
and reporter. After his acquittal he was made its city editor.
Chaplin says that Barrow "was a good news gatherer and made
the Times a very readable paper."77
Early in 1881 when he learned that Bill Nye was planning to
start the Boomerang, financed by a number of Laramie's leading
citizens to combat the influence of the Democratic Times, Barrow,
himself a "stalwart Republican,"7* applied for and was given a
job as compositor.7'-' Six years later when he had established his
newspaper, Bill Barlow's Budget, in Douglas, Barrow, with his
own characteristic kind of humor, described in it the birth of the
Boomerang:
A small room above a boot store, a Washington handpress, on
which have just been placed the forms of what constitutes the first
number of the Laramie Daily Boomerang. Bill Nye — then a com-
paratively unknown man outside of Laramie — stands near, a smile of
eager anticipation on his genial phiz and his "high forehead" shining
like a mirror. Beside him Bob Head, the city editor. More Kingsford,
Billy Kemmis and myself — "Slug 2," "slug 3" and "slug 4" — bring
up the rear, interested but not excited. Will Chaplin, the foreman
with his hand on the tympan awaits the inking of the forms which is
being done by Jimmie Mulhern, the devil, under the immediate super-
vision of George Garrett, the job printer. The tympan falls with a
bang, the bed slights beneath the platen, the devil's tail plays with a
double knock against the press-post, the bed returns to the end of the
75. Prine, p. 12. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming, p. 499,
gives the date of Barrow's birth at 1860. However, Mrs. Prine's date is
doubtless correct, since in writing her life of Barrow she had access to
family records.
76. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
77. Chaplin, p. 24.
78. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming, p. 500.
79. Chaplin, p. 24.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 81
track, the tympan is raised, and Chaplin, with a smile, hands Nye
the first paper.80
When illness forced Nye to resign from the paper, Barrow took
on the editorship, a post which he held until early in 1884, when,
for reasons which this study has been unable to determine, the
Boomerang management fired him. Barrow himself only hinted at
the story behind the dismissal in the Boomerang of March 19,
1884, the last issue under his editorship:
With this issue the writer retires from the position of chief muti-
lator of truth on this great moral and religious journal. Though not
as old in the harness as some of our newspaper brethren, we have ex-
perience enough to warrant our remarking right here, that it is a
thankless job — that of editing a paper. It is a "demnition grind,"
which wears out body and soul. We drop the [pen] . . . mentally
resolving rather than resume it again, to wield a long-handled pitch-
fork or shorthand writer in some second-class livery stable, or monkey
with brake wheels at $65 per month . . .
Barrow's next job was as editor of the Rawlins Wyoming
Tribune, mentioned earlier as a Republican newspaper established
in September, 1884. Although he remained with this paper for
only eighteen months, he is said to have "whooped her up plenty,"
to have made it "a treasure and necessity in scores of homes in
and out of old Carbon county," and to have reached six hundred
"good-natured and patient" readers. sl
According to Chaplin, it was in Rawlins that Barrow was first
"seized with the idea that the Northwestern Railroad [at first
incorporated as the Wyoming Central Railroad Company] was
going to bring central Wyoming rapidly to the front."82 Early
in 1886 Barrow, using some money his wife had only recently
inherited, bought printing equipment and supplies in Chicago, had
it shipped by rail to Chadron, Nebraska, which was as far as the
railroad had been built at that time, put the machinery on a
mule train bound for Fort Fetterman, and on June 9, in a small
shack that was later used as a chicken coop, printed the first
number of Bill Barlow's Budget. In August he moved the plant
to nearby Douglas. s::
From its beginning the Budget was popular with its readers.
As the town grew, so did Barrow's newspaper: in the spring of
1887 he was able to order a thousand pounds of new type and
machinery; in the following September he enlarged the building
housing the plant. As Douglas continued to grow, Barrow be-
came its town clerk, a member of the school board, and, finally.
80. Bill Barlow's Budget, March 23. 1887.
81. Prine, p. 25.
82. Chaplin, p. 24.
83. Prine, pp. 34-35.
82 ANNALS OF WYOMING
on May 13, 1890, its mayor. In his editorial columns, in the
meantime, he had pleaded for an up-to-date water system, a fire
department, and campaigned for cleaning up the town and for
planting trees and shrubs; he had, as noted previously, waged
fierce battles with rival newspapers and blazoned abroad their
deaths. But busy man though he was, he seldom lacked the time
or space in which to proclaim the virtues of Douglas as a com-
munity with a future, and of the Budget as a newspaper without
peer. The following item is a typical example of Barrow's
exuberance:
Envy, jealousy and anger may prompt the assertion that Douglas
is a dead town; but the Budget itself — every issue of it — proves con-
clusively to the contrary. No "dead town" could support a newspaper
as the Budget is supported; no "dead town" could long maintain such
an establishment. In fact the history of the Budget, dating from the
hour of its birth, furnishes ample evidence that the town of Douglas
is alive, wideawake, growing and prosperous. The paper has made
money from the day of its inception. While two would-be rivals
winked out through sheer starvation, the Budget prospered . . .
Hence I maintain that the Budget is a monument erected by the
people of Douglas and central Wyoming which stands today as indis-
putable evidence of their own prosperity. s4
Very often, however, Barrow could be bitter and would name
names in the columns of the Budget, a personal indulgence that
led to the beating and threatened ducking mentioned at the begin-
ning of this chapter.
In January, 1904, he began publication of Sagebrush Phil-
osophy, a thirty-two-page monthly magazine containing jokes,
maxims, and humorous articles on topical events and national
figures. A little over a year later he told his readers that the
magazine had achieved a national circulation of twelve thousand
copies, and that advance orders were increasing beyond that fig-
ure.sr' His readers and his friends, including Chaplin, were com-
paring his style and humor with that of Elbert Hubbard. s,i He
continued his writing until his death of heart failure October 9,
1910. The citizens of Douglas showed the esteem in which they
held him by closing the schools and giving him the biggest funeral
in the town's history.
Eight years before his death Barrow had written in the Budget:
The Wyoming newspaper man is an optimist, if there ever was one.
Even in his sober moments — and he has 'em — he sees things. Given
a country store or two at an isolated cross-roads and he builds a
city: ... a forty-dollar addition to your modest shack makes it a
mansion, and his town is the only town, and the best ever. He is
84. Bill Barlow's Budget, March 21, 181
85. Prine, pp. 157, et. seq.
86. Chaplin, p. 24, and Prine, pp. 178-9.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 83
always willing to fudge a little in handling cold fact, and as prophet
he simply skunks Elijah and all his ilk. ... Of necessity he is some-
times a liar; but to sorter toy with the truth in prophetic spirit for the
good of the country or community in which he lives is with him a
labor of love, and by reason of a special dispensation granted him
direct from Deity, these trifling idiosyncrasies which we of the pro-
fesh term "essential errors" are not charged up against him in the
Big Book. In many cases he is snubbed and sinned against — by the
man who has mental mumps, the mossback and the miser — of whom
we do have a few rare specimens . . . when he sets out to paint the
rose for you, his pencil can cough up colors they've never yet been
able to find in the kaleidoscope. ST
It was a description that fitted not only Barrow himself but all
the other Wyoming newspapermen, who, amidst the worries and
triumphs of political campaigning, despite disasters and threats
of disaster, composed, printed, and distributed their newspapers
throughout the length and breadth of the new frontier.
ADDENDA
Information from our readers relating to WYOMING'S FRONTIER
NEWSPAPERS in the October.. 1961 Annals of Wyoming:
Mrs. Leland Harris of Lovell has written in regard to one early news-
paper that was not mentioned. It was the Otto Courier, published in Otto.
Big Horn county, editor, Lou Blakesley.
The Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department has in its files
one issue of the Otto Courier, Vol. 5. No. 48, for October 1. 1898.
Elsa Spear Byron, of Sheridan, writes relative to the Big Horn Sentinel.
On page 158 of WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS it is stated.
" the Big Horn Sentinel, a forerunner of the present Buffalo Bulletin,
made its appearance in 1887." Mrs. Byron says, "This is incorrect. Mama
[Virginia Belle Benton Spear] says in her diary that the first issue of this
paper at Big Horn was Sept. 13. 1884. I do not know the exact date
when it was moved to Buffalo, but 1 have a copy of it (Big Horn Sentinel)
published in Buffalo with the date Aug. 7. 1886."
W. L. Marion, of Lander, in reference to northern Wyoming's early news-
papers discussed on page 155, writes. "On January 1 of the same year, 1883.
Isaac Wynn began publishing the Wind River Mountaineer-- he published
it for two years, and then sold it to Ludin. Wynn went to California, was
there for two years and then came back to Lander and started publishing
the Fremont Clipper. He and his son Ed published it until old Isaac died
in 1898. Frank Smith took over the ownership with the help of his brother-
in-law. O. L. Knifong.
"Carl Graves entered the picture, and in 1904 John W. Cook bought out
the paper and changed the name from the Fremont Clipper to the Wyoming
State Journal.
" — the Wyoming State Journal was never published while Wyoming was
a territory, consequently the Journal and the Clipper were not contemporary.
The Clipper was the dad of the Journal. Cook published the paper until he
sold it to L. L. Newton, L. L. turned the paper over to Ernest [Newton]
87. Bill Barlow's Budget, Oct. 19, 1903.
84 ANNALS OF WYOMING
about 1939. Ernest sold it to Edward [J.] Breece and he in turn sold to
Roger Budrow, the present owner and publisher."
It is difficult, on the basis of newspapers available in the Wyoming
State Archives and Historical Department for this early period, to completely
follow the various changes in publishers, editors and titles, but the papers
on file show the following history of the present Wyoming State Journal:
The Fremont Clipper was published from Sept. 17. 1887 (Vol. I, No. 4)
to April 10, 1896 (Vol. IX, No. 32). Isaac Wynn was the first editor, with
E. R. Wynn assistant editor for a time. The publisher for most of that time
was the Clipper Publishing Company.
The Clipper, published from April 17, 1896, (Vol. IX, No. 33) through
Jan. 29, 1904, was published bv the Clipper Publishing Co.
Editor of The Clipper from' July 30. 1897. to Aug. 25, 1899 was C. G.
Coutant. W. E. Coutant and C. E. Hank were managers during that time.
W. E. Coutant was listed as publisher until January 17, 1902, with Frank
S. Smith as edtior and proprietor, and O. L. Knifong as city editor.
The Lander Clipper was published from Feb. 5. 1904, through Nov. 18,
1904, with Frank S. Smith as proprietor. After Nov. 25, W. A. Hoskin
was manager. From Feb. 25 to May 5, 1905, Smith alone was listed, as
proprietor. From May 5 until Sept. 1, 1905, N. H. Lewis was the publisher
and Smith was proprietor. John W. Cook then became editor and pro-
prietor. The last Lander Clipper was published on April 5, 1907.
On April 12. 1907. the Wyoming State Journal and Lander Clipper first
appeared, with Cook as editor and proprietor. The first issue showing only
the Wyoming State Journal in the masthead is for Sept. 4, 1908 (Vol. XXII,
No. 2) with Cook shown as editor and publisher. — Editors.
Qirlhood Kecollectiom
Of Caramie in J $70 and J $71
By
Nancy Fillmore Brown
The following article is one of a series of reprints from early vol-
umes of the Annuls which are now out of print. It first was published
in the Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 1. No. 3, January 15, 1924.
"We shall not travel by the road we make.
Ere, day by day, the sound of many feet
Is heard upon the stones that now we break
We shall be come to where the cross-roads meet.
For them the shade of trees that now we plant
The safe, smooth journey and the final goal.
Yea, birthright in the land of covenant —
For us day labor; travail of the soul.
And yet — the road is ours as never theirs!
Is not one joy on us alone bestowed?
For us the Master-Joy, O Pioneer:
We shall not travel but we make the Road."
— Friedlander.
It seems only a very short time ago yet five decades have passed
since that memorable tenth day of June, 1 870, at about two p.m. —
and a gloriously bright, sunny day it was, when our family of eight
members arrived in Laramie. We came for a visit but that visit
has proven a sojourn of more than fifty-three years on my part.
I am the only member of the family whose lot has been cast on
the crest of the wonderful Rocky Mountains; I alone am left to
tell what to me is a most interesting experience.
My father, Luther Fillmore, and my only brother, Millard Fill-
more, had preceded us; my father about two years before and my
brother a few months. Fresh from college and just past twenty-one
my brother came and plunged boldly into a very tragic experience
which hurried our coming. After being here a week or so my
brother for some reason was sent out over the Union Pacific
Railroad as a special conductor. He was to make only the one trip
— and a memorable one it was. A few miles east of Fort Steele
at a station I think then called St. Mary's, two soldiers who had
been out hunting and tired of walking got on the train to go to
86 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Ft. Steele. One of them had money enough to pay his fare, the
other had none and was told he could not ride, so the train was
stopped and he was put off. My brother and the soldier friend
stood looking out of the door window of the car, my brother in
front, when the soldier from the outside fired through the door
shooting my brother through the thigh, making a flesh wound.
The same bullet passed into the body of the soldier friend, killing
him instantly. The train was quickly run to Ft. Steele where my
brother was taken to the Army Hospital until he recovered.
One day J was standing with my brother on the hotel platform
when a fine looking man came along. I asked who he was and
was told that he was Judge Brown, the lawyer who defended the
soldier that shot my brother. I immediately said, "I never want
to meet him." Strange to say in about four years' time I married
that very man and we are expecting to celebrate our golden wed-
ding next year.
I have realized more and more as the years have passed what a
trying ordeal it was for my dear mother to come out to this strange
and new country, almost fearing she might have to make it her
home, and I, fearing we might not. The pioneer blood of ancestors
was coursing through my veins and I longed for adventure. Com-
ing from an old aristocratic town, as old as Philadelphia, it was
quite remarkable that conditions in this new country pleased and
satisfied my father, my brother and myself. My three sisters were
too young to care about the change. Of course we were lonely
many times but I can truly say I have never felt regret. There
were no trees or flowers to greet us and we missed them more
than I can tell, but we had the wonderful mountains and beautiful
hills to behold. 1 had seen great mountains but never such hills.
They were a constant source of wonder and delight and 1 can say
after fifty-three years of acquaintance with them they have never
lost their pristine beauty to me. I truly believe much of my
happiness and joy have come from lifting my eyes unto them. We
went on a picnic to them a short time after we arrived. We went
in government ambulances with an escort of soldiers and had a
beautiful day. I forget the members of that party excepting one,
Mr. Joseph Cornell, the Episcopal clergyman. I suppose I remem-
ber him because of a lapsus linguae he made. I asked him why
we were so long getting to the hills, they seemed so near. He said,
'The reason is, that the 'lead devil' of the plains causes them to
seem nearer than they really are." Of course he meant "dead
level", everyone laughed and so did I, immoderately. A girl of
sixteen can see almost too much fun in things.
We were always afraid of meeting Indians somewhere but we
never did. In fact, I have never seen one in or near Laramie
excepting those who have come with exhibitions of some sort.
There was an Indian scare soon after we came at Lookout Station.
The Indians came into the place consisting of a telegraph station
GIRLHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF LARAMIE 87
and section house. No one was home so the visitors did all the
mischief they could, pouring molasses into the feather beds and
emptying all the groceries they did not want over the floor. The
people living in small places like Lookout had cellars or rather
tunnels concealed into which they could hide, something like the
cyclone cellars people have nowadays.
The mountains at the west of us were majestic and glorious.
The wonder and beauty of the Laramie Plains have ever increased
to me until now I am not happy away from them. I recall how
beautifully green they were when I first saw them and when I first
rode over them and saw the thousands of head of cattle — one time
five thousand head together, my wonder was almost beyond me.
The antelope we saw at that time in large herds were a magnifi-
cent sight. They were graceful and beautiful. The prairie dogs
were new to us, their little villages seemed everywhere. I was
always looking for the little owl and rattlesnake I had heard bur-
rowed with them; but I never saw them tho I know they did all
live together in the early history of this country. The antelope
I had seen before for we owned two in our home in Pennsylvania —
Bill and Eliza great pets that my father brought to us on his first
visit home from this country. They became so domesticated
they would do all sorts of things for us. They [would] rather be
fed from our hands than [any J other way. People were always
coming to see them but they were very exclusive and knew only our
family. They were very funny when we would tie a straw hat on
Bill and a shaker on Eliza, immediately they would trot proudly off
to make us laugh and run after them. Over fields and brooks we
would fly and then all lie down together to rest. We felt very sad to
give them up. Father presented them to Governor Packer of
Pennsylvania for his beautiful private park. I always felt so sorry
when I saw the beautiful herds of them that Eliza and Bill had
ever been taken from their native haunts. To see them in such
numbers and so beautiful seemed like a fairy tale come true.
Fortunately the Fillmore family were all lovers of nature. Every-
thing we saw here seemed to us the very desire of our hearts.
1 recall our first visit to the Hutton and Alsop ranches. It was
at the time of the summer round-up and such a sight as that was.
I remember Mr. Edward Creighton of Omaha was one of our party.
It was through him I believe that Mr. Hutton began the business
of cattle raising. At that time the breed of cattle here was entirely
Texas — their long, wide spreading horns were very threatening.
They stood in groups curiously looking at us. I never felt com-
fortable near them. I expected them to start running at us. If
they ever had it would have been good-bye to us.
The first visit to Mr. Hutton's ranch was wonderful but the next
one was even more so for we found out what ranch life really was
in those days. When Governor Campbell and his lovely Wash-
ington bride came they were taken out to visit Mr. Hutton's ranch.
88 ANNALS OF WYOMING
I was invited to be one of the party. I felt quite like an old timer —
'sour dough' they call them in Alaska — showing Mrs. Campbell
about the place. I remember she asked me a great many questions.
I think I answered them all satisfactorily and felt quite puffed up
with pride. Finally Mrs. Campbell said, "I wonder if we could
have a glass of milk?" 1 said, "Oh, yes, of course/' I found Mr.
Hutton and asked him if we might have some milk and bread.
I never will forget his astonished gaze when he said, "Milk? Why
we never have milk or bread. We always have biscuit. Go and
see if there are not some cold ones in the cupboard." We went
on a voyage of discovery. All we found was half of an uncooked
ham. We both exclaimed "Old Mother Hubbard." I asked Mr.
Hutton why they never had had milk with thousands of cows
around. Surprised at me again he said, "We never had time to
milk a cow. And besides the calves must have all the milk there
is." There were a number of men standing and lying in the shade
of the corrals. After a good dinner they were resting. The cooks
were in the bunk house asleep. Mr. Hutton insisted upon calling
them and having a dinner cooked for us but we would not hear
to it. After that time we always took our own lunch basket with
us for we learned the business of a ranch in those days was raising
cattle and nothing else. Ranching was then in its infancy. Women
were rarely seen about at all. Today, ranches have become lovely
country homes — some of them almost luxurious.
Mr. Hutton was a peculiar man and a most unique and original
one. He was as interesting to us children as Santa Claus. He and
my father became very dear friends. His presence in our home
was always hailed with delight. He was one of the very bright
spots in our new life and was as unusual as the many other things
we had met. He truly belonged to the Laramie Plains. He was a
part of them. If his business ability had been half equal to his
good humor and kindness of heart he might have been a great
cattle king. 1 doubt if any man ever had a better opportunity.
I shall never forget his merry laugh and twinkling blue eye or the
splendid philosphy of his life which was enough to make him
envied. It never seemed right to me that he died a poor man.
Some one said to me in the early days that Charlie Hutton was his
own enemy and the only one he had. I hope some one who knew
him better than a young girl could write a sketch of his life. I
know that he came out here from Iowa before the Union Pacific
Railroad was built and was employed in building the Western
Union Telegraph line.
Dr. Latham was also a most interesting character whom I recall
of the early days. He was a tall, erect person and was the Union
Pacific surgeon in charge of the hospital here. He was full of
antecdotes and a charming talker, a man of culture and education.
He and his lovely wife helped us to be happy many times after
the novelty of arriving was over. He too is a man who could be
GIRLHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF LARAMIE 89
well written up. Years after he left here 1 met him in California.
He was then managing Mrs. Hurst's large estate. Previous to that,
after leaving here, he held some important educational commission
in Japan.
We lived for some time at the Union Pacific Hotel and enjoyed
it very much for the proprietor, Mr. Philo Rumsey and his sons.
Captain Henry Rumsey and James, or Jim as we called him, did
everything possible to make us feel at home. We have always felt
very grateful to them. Mr. Henry Rumsey's wife was a most
charming woman, one I shall never forget. Edith, the sister of
Henry and James, was near my own age, though much more
sophisticated than I. My life had been spent in a quiet, Quaker
town, and school. I had had never been out in society and Edith,
it seemed to me, had always been in society. She had quite a
charm of manner and we were good chums. The other girls of
my acquaintance in the early days were Alice Harper ( Mrs. Robert
Marsh) and her sister. Nellie (Mrs. John Gunster), Eva Owen
(Mrs. Stephen Downey), and her sister Etta (Mrs. Roach), Hattie
Andrews (Mrs. Phillips), Cora Andrews (Mrs. Brees), Ella Gal-
braith (Mrs. Charles Stone), and Minnie Arnold (Mrs. Eurgens),
and Maggie Ivinson (Mrs. Grow). 1 also recall Nellie Hilton
(Mrs. Locke). Her father was a physician, also a Methodist
preacher.
One of my very early recollections is of two beautiful brides
calling upon us, both gorgeously attired. Their distinct types
interested me. Mrs. Donnellan was a handsome brunette and Mrs.
Abbott a perfect blonde. I remember in detail just how they
looked and fascinated me. They both became very dear friends of
mine in later years.
One of the very interesting events of our first summer was seeing
several trainloads of Chinamen pass through Laramie. They
stopped long enough to cook their rice which took them an incred-
ibly short time. We watched them with great curiosity and interest.
When the train stopped almost instantly the cooks jumped from
different cars along the train with large kettles. They quickly
built fires and boiled water into which they poured quantities of
rice and it seemed no time until those kettles were filled to over-
flowing with large kernels of cooked rice. Then out of the cars
came forth swarms of Chinamen all sizes, each with his bowl and
chop-sticks. They were served with all they could eat and how
quickly they did eat it! The chop-sticks played a tune, and how
they all jabbered at once all the time. They soon began piling
back into the cars and seemed like a swarm of bees. Finally all
was quiet and the cooks cleaned out their kettles quickly and
jumped onto the different cars from which they came out. Not a
word had been spoken by those cooks that 1 could see. They
attended strictly to business. The discipline of that occasion was
truly marvelous. After they had gone 1 could hardly realize what
90 ANNALS OF WYOMING
I had seen. I felt as if the earth had turned over and I had seen
China on top. Those people in their native dress with their large
hats and hair in queues were too much for my imagination.
Those Chinamen were being taken to New England where they
were going to work in shoe factories and the men in charge told
us they had eaten only rice seasoned with salt, no sugar or butter
or tea, from San Francisco to Laramie, and that their diet would
be the same to the end of their journey in New England. Some
time after this I met Ah Say, the agent and interpreter for the
Chinamen employed on the Union Pacific Railroad. Ah Say was
often in our home in consultation with my father. He was a
gentleman, intelligent, and most interesting and spoke very good
English. He was always bringing us presents of Chinese fruit and
nuts and very often more costly and rare gifts. He came one day
looking very happy and said he was soon to be married and wanted
us to see his wife some time. He told me rather quietly that she
was a little-footed woman. I suppose he did not want to boast
too proudly of his great fortune so told only me about it. I always
hoped we might see Mrs. Ah Say but it was never our good fortune.
I believe they lived in Evanston upon their return from China, but
my father had become a cattle man before their return. Chinese
were not very long employed after that time but I know they
served very faithfully and satisfactorily while they were permitted
to stay.
We met many noted people in the summer of 1870. Most of
them from New England who in some way were interested in the
Union Pacific Railroad and were going over it to see whether it
was a reality or a myth. I recall one party in particular which
we were invited to join on a trip to Salt Lake City. My father and
mother and I went with Colonel Hammond in his private car on
that occasion. Colonel Hammond was an officer of the Union
Pacific Railroad. Our party consisted of Colonel and Mrs. Ham-
mond, Dr. and Mrs. Hurd of Galesburg, Illinois, and Mr. and Mrs.
Meade of Quincy, Illinois. We had a wonderful time, the whole
trip particularly through Echo and Webber Canons was interesting
to us all. When we arrived at Salt Lake City, Brigham Young
gave a reception to the party and we were taken about the city in
royal style. In the evening we attended the theater and saw
Brigham Young come in with all his wives (it was said). I really
think all nineteen were there. The husband looked perfectly com-
posed and the wives not at all disconcerted. The play I forgot
all about but the circumstances attending it I never can, they were
too unique. I had always thought of Brigham Young as sort of a
Bluebeard but after seeing his kindly face and pleasant smile con-
cluded that he was just trying to be another King Solomon. I have
made many trips to Salt Lake City since but the thrill of the first
visit has never been eclipsed.
Laramie was a queer looking place in the early days, no trees
GIRLHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF LARAMIE 91
or flowers, but one thing it did have that was most attractive was
clear, running water along either side of the streets much like the
beautiful brooks at home. On a quiet night one could hear their
merry ripple. Most people used the water from them for ordinary
purposes but for drinking we had water brought from the river
which was quite expensive. People often sank barrels in the
ditches and so had a quantity to dip from but those barrels were
very treacherous on a dark night, one was liable to step into them.
My sister-in-law, in getting out of a carriage one night very agilely
jumped right into one. The worst of it was she had on a beautiful
new gown her mother had sent her from Philadelphia. She was a
sorry sight when we got her out, and her new gown completely
ruined. I often got my feet wet stepping into the ditches but never
got into a barrel. There were no sidewalks to guide one and the
ditches were level with the streets so it was quite a feat to keep
out of the water. I often wonder now how mothers ever kept their
children out of those attractive ditches for there were no fences
around the shacks or houses people lived in.
The houses had tent backs and pretentious frame fronts, some-
thing like the ones 1 heard Bishop Robert Mclntyre describe as
houses with Queen Anne fronts and Mary Anne backs. They were
certainly unique and interesting.
The second week after our arrival 1 met Mr. F. L. Arnold, the
Presbyterian minister. He called to know if I would play the organ
for him the next day. He was to hold services at the school house
which was the meeting place alternate Sundays for the Methodists,
Baptists, and Presbyterians. I said no, Fd rather not. I was such
a stranger he'd better find some one else, and he very pitifully
said, "My dear child, there is no one else to find, for there is no
one here who will play for me." My dear father was present and
said, "Yes, she will play for you. She must do her part in this new
country and that is one thing she can do." So I mustered up
courage like a dutiful child and did my part, I finally ended by
playing at all the services of each denomination that I have men-
tioned. They also had a union Sunday School for which I sang
and played for I always had to do both. When the different
churches were built I played at the dedication of each one. Mr.
Mr. Arnold became one of the dearest friends of my life and my
memory of him is most sacred. One Sunday after church he asked
me to go with him to sing at Fiddler Bill's funeral. We started off,
he with his Bible and I with my Hymn Book. We went to a little
shack dirty and miserable in every way. The house was crowded
to overflowing with the flotsam and jetsam of the town. I had
never seen or heard of such looking people both men and women,
blear eyed and sodden. Mr. Arnold stood just outside the door
and made a beautiful talk to those poor people. I sat outside on a
sawbuck with a board laid across it and sang several times, too
often but Mr. Arnold said afterwards he thought the singing would
92 ANNALS OF WYOMING
do them more good than what he could say. I recall how miserably
I felt because I was too dressed up. I apologized to Mr. Arnold
for being so unsuitably dressed. (No doubt my subconscious
mind had suggested sack cloth and ashes for the occasion.) Mr.
Arnold and I had many experiences similar to that one but none
that ever impressed me more seriously.
Mr. D. J. Pearce, the Baptist minister, came later in June. Mr.
Pearce was a remarkable man, most industrious and earnest. He
soon built a church on the site of the present attractive one and
opened a school in the basement. He called his school Wyoming
University. He was ably assisted in his work by his young wife
and their school was a great credit to Laramie. I was a member
of their Latin class, Mr. C. P. Arnold was also a member. If
there were others I do not now recall them. Mr. Pierce was a
man of vision. He told me our beautiful University of Wyoming
of which our state is so justly proud would stand just where it does.
There was a cemetery there then. I said, "Impossible, Mr. Pearce.
It is Laramie's cemetery/' He replied, "You will live to see that
moved farther up the hill." So I have. I often wish Mr. Pearce
could have lived to see our present University and be able to dream
with us its great future.
Mr. Brooks, the Methodist minister, soon came and took charge
of the Methodist services. He was a young unmarried man, won-
derfully active and insisted upon very ambitious music. Since I
was the only person so far who could or would play and sing it was
rather hard on me. 1 never can understand why the people in
Laramie would not sing in those days. I often shed tears over it.
I believe people finally felt sorry for me for they did find their
voices and helped me all they could.
Right here I wish to subscribe a tribute to a Mr. Crancall [sic].
He was a painter and a hard working man but when he could he
always came and helped me at the Sunday services. He had a good
voice and quite an understanding of music.
I remember Chaplain McCabe sang at the dedication of the
Methodist Church. I assisted him. He had a wonderful voice and
rejoiced my heart for he was the first singer I had heard since com-
ing to Laramie. I think Bishop McCabe preached the dedicatory
sermon. I am not quite sure about this, any way I heard him
preach in the new church and recall his powerful sermon and
wonderful stories. I also heard Bishop Joyce in the old Methodist
church. He was one of the most saintly looking men I have ever
seen, also I think the most powerful preacher 1 have ever heard.
Methodist bishops have always impressed me as being great
preachers.
Rev. Joseph Cornell of the Episcopal church was here when we
came and the church built. My father often wrote us how he was
helping to dance the roof on the new Episcopal church. Not
being a dancing man we always laughed about his help. But our
GIRLHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF LARAMIE 93
dear friend Mrs. Ivinson told me that she had gotten father to
take a few steps. Now we have the beautiful Cathedral standing
near the site of the little old church of the early days.
The Catholic church was also built when we came and is the
only one so far that has not been rebuilt. Father Cusson was in
charge of it. He was a Frenchman and a man the whole town
respected and loved. Laramie was a good town and striving up-
ward all the time. The churches and the schools showed their
influence.
Mr. Harrington was the principal of the public school; and my
father was a member of the School Board. The building has been
transformed into Root's Opera House and stands on the same site
where it was erected. I think in some way it should always be
kept as a memorial to the early work it was privileged to begin.
It is true there was still many saloons and gambling places left
in Laramie. It was a common thing to hear some one call out
loudly something about a key. It seemed to me sometimes like a
song a man was singing inside the building but I soon learned it
was a game they played called Keno. But those days did not last
long. Public sentiment required at least more quiet in the places
that were once so open and noisy.
The terrible days of lynching were past though I'm sorry to say
two cases have occurred since that time that I remember, but the
early cases were before our time.
The first large party of my life was one given by Mr. and Mrs.
Ivinson shortly after our arrival. It was a great event to me and
I recall it as a very beautiful one. I have attended a great many
parties given by these same dear friends in the past fifty-three years
in more spacious and costly surroundings but none more beautiful
to me than that first one in 1870 when they lived over and back
of their store. After all it is what we put into our hospitality of
our very selves that seems to count most. My mother became
somewhat reconciled to her exile in Laramie and gave the second
large party of my remembrance in honor of my brother and his
bride.
There were plenty of social affairs. It kept one quite busy at-
tending them. I recall a reception given by the young men of
Laramie in honor of Governor Campbell and his bride which could
not have been outdone by anyone anywhere. Those young men
were wonders particularly when they gave parties. Colonel Down-
ey, Colonel Donnellan, Mr. Ora Haley, Mr. Charles Wagner, and
Judge Brown were the moving spirits. Social life in Laramie as
I knew it was of high and lofty character in those early days and
my remembrances of it all are most delightful and happy.
In August of 1870 my father decided that we had better remain
a year at least and occupy a new house the Railroad Company
had built for him if he desired it, or in other words could persuade
his family to remain. The house was a commodious one painted
94 ANNALS OF WYOMING
white. It is still standing where it was built on the north side of
Fremont and Second street.
When we were finally settled in our house we were very com-
fortable and most of us happy. I wanted a piano very much. The
story of how I got it is to me very interesting and I think worth
relating. A merchant in Laramie saw an advertisement in a New
York paper of what he thought were toy pianos selling at nine
dollars and seventy-five cents. He (good friend of mine) sent for
two to be sent immediately by express. The firm sent one but
advised having the other one shipped by freight. The one that
came by express instead of being nine dollars and seventy-five
cents was nine hundred and seventy-five dollars with express
charges. My father bought the instrument for seven hundred
dollars. I knew nothing about it until one day I came home from
a visit I had been sent to make and found a beautiful piano in our
home. My joy knew no bounds, it was to me almost a miracle.
When Mr. Sidney Dillon who was an old friend of my father's
became president of the Union Pacific Railroad he persuaded
father to come with him and help him in some plans he had for
the reconstruction of the road. Father had suffered a serious
breakdown in health during the Civil War and a change had been
recommended for him by our dear old family physician, Dr. Reeves
Jackson, (who by the way is the Doctor Mark Twain in his
"Innocents Abroad" writes of so humorously) so he with Mr.
Dillon recommended the high mountain country as the very best
possible change that could be made. Father liked the idea of going
west so in a very short time he was off for what became his abiding
place for several years.
Here he regained his health and was very happy particularly
after he became the owner of a ranch and cattle. Mr. J. J. Al-
bright, an old time friend of father's from Scranton, Pennsylvania,
became his partner in the cattle business. Mr. Harry Albright,
his son, came out with his charming family to assist father. To-
gether they had a very successful and pleasant experience, but the
cold winters and exposure told on father's health again and he was
obliged to seek the more congenial climate of California.
If this simple story of mine will interest the readers of the His-
torical Bulletin I am very happy in having told it for them as well
as for my grandchildren, for whom it was originally intended.
Zke Mole~in~tke~ Wall
By
Thelma Gatchell Condit
PART VIII - SECTION 4
THE STUBBS CLAN
One of the most interesting sections of Johnson County in the
early days was the Barnum community and the country located
west of Kaycee behind the Red Wall. It settled up fast because
of its rich native feed for livestock, its plentiful water supply and
its rare beauty. The very nature of the place gave the inhabitants
a community closeness even in the early days. A feeling of
"substantialness" was there, as if the settlers were putting down
roots and intending to stay. The cabins were sturdily built of
unusually large hand-hewn logs, durable and tough like the people
themselves.
Most of the homestead cabins and first homes had dirt roofs.
While no doubt adequate, they were most annoying, for dirt
particles were always falling down from between the cracks in
the ceiling boards. This, of course, mattered little to the men;
dirt sprinkling down on stove, table and food wasn't half as bad
as being wet and cold or being out in all kinds of weather. But
when wives began to arrive an end was put to this by stretching
strong unbleached muslin across the room top to serve as a lower
ceiling. The strips of muslin were stitched together and firmly
tacked along the top sides of the walls. However, this did not
prevent dirt from falling onto the muslin throughout the year and
by spring the muslin ceiling would be full of sags and lumps no
matter how tightly it had been stretched. While unsightly, it
was much better than forever cleaning up ceiling dirt and floor
dirt. Goodness knows enough mud was tracked in to keep any
woman plenty busy without adding any from the ceiling. A part
of every house cleaning job in the spring was taking down and
washing the muslin and white washing the log walls. Each year
or two men hauled more dirt for the roof tops. All summer
sparse grass and weeds grew on the dirt roofs, and if a tall, high-
dancing cowboy hit a sagging lump of ceiling he thought nothing
of it.
There was no such thing at the old NH ranch, it being strictly
bachelor quarters, and no one now remembers much about that
dance in the summer of '94 (or '95) when Jim Stubbs paid
96
ANNALS OF WYOMING
(Uncle) Jim Stubbs
Grandpa and Grandma Stubbs Rap Harrell on 2 wheel "stacker cart"
Courtesy Blue Creek Ranch
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 97
Cassidy $1500 in gold pieces for the Blue Creek ranch. The
exchange apparently was the most important event of the evening.
It was significant in that it marked the end of the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang in the Barnum country; at least, it meant that they no longer
had legitimate holdings on which to carry on their horse-raising
operations and so no lawful reason for being there any more.
But this didn't mean that rustling days were over in the Hole-
in-the-Wall. People always thought that Jim Stubbs was a U. S.
Marshal or stock detective employed by the Cattlemens' Ass'n.,
or maybe privately hired by important big cattlemen to see who
was branding what and just exactly what was going on up there
behind the Red Wall. Some of the family think that the big
cattlemen put up the money for Jim to buy the Blue Creek outfit,
so they'd have a place to get their cattle out of the Hole-in-the-
Wall, for this spot was a hot bed for rustlers and just everybody
didn't have the nerve to meddle around much up there. And
while Jim was not noted for bold or daring deeds, they felt his
being in that locality had a good effect. William Deane ( Billy ) '
and George Wellman- had both been sent earlier and had both been
bolder and more daring men, but neither had lived long enough to
accomplish much. One old-timer said, "It is my supposition that
as a stock detective Jim may have hidden his 'tie-up' and there may
be no record of it at all. I don't know of any arrests he ever made
while there, or later, but I'm sure there was some connection until
some time after he settled at Blue Creek. Pinkerton and other such
detectives used to come to Blue Creek to see Jim."
1. William Deane (Billy) was appointed deputy sheriff in 1897 b\
Johnson County Sheriff Al Sproul, when the County Commissioners wanted
a man to go to the Kaycee and Hole-in-the-Wall area as a special deputy to
stop rustling activities there and make necessary arrests. "He was a nervy
man, never had any fear of anything." In April 1897 he was at the Grigg
post office and the Logan brothers of Cassidy's gang tried to kill him, but
Mr. Grigg grabbed the rifle and the shot was fired into the ceiling. On
April 13th Deane was at the Jesse Potts homestead a few miles west of
Kaycee standing in the yard when a rustler shot him in the arm, breaking
it, the second shot killed him. both fired from the rifle of the rustler hiding
in a gulch to the north.
2. George A. Wellman was foreman of the Hoe Ranch located on Pow-
der River below the mouth of Nine Mile, 50 miles south of Buffalo. In
May 1892. shortly after taking over the foreman job, he was also made a
special U. S. Deputy Marshal by Deputy Craig (of Gillette). Wellman's
instructions as Marshal had been received in a letter from Marshal Rankin
of Cheyenne. He was to take an active part in assembling evidence to
prove that herds of absent cattlemen were being rustled. (All this to
receive from Washington D. C. a declaration of martial law for Johnson
County.)
Shortly after this while on his way to Buffalo from Powder River
Crossing, when about 12 or 15 miles south of the George Harris ranch on
Crazy Woman Creek, he was dry-gulched and killed. (Ed Star, an outlaw
rustler who'd as soon shoot a man as a coyote, fired the fatal shot.)
98
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Charlie Stubbs 1862
Courtes\ Blue Creek Ranch
It was the habit of a few cow thieves in the late summer to drift
cows with big, unbranded calves following them down to the
mouth of Backus and Keith Creeks and Powder River Canyon and
then cut the calves away from their mothers and throw the cows
out over the rough trails, which left no tracks, then closing the
trails and weaning the calves which now bore their own illegal
brands. Jim, upon finding calfless cows of this kind would inves-
tigate and try to locate the calves before they were branded and
turn them back with their mothers where they belonged, and then
brand them according to the cows they were following.
Some of the most brazen rustlers up there added cruel tricks
to the rustling game, like cutting out eight or nine month old
calves and splitting their tongues so they couldn't suck the cows,
and then hiding them out in little secret corrals and later branding
them for themselves. Or if they met up with an obstreperous cow
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 99
who didn't handle so easy while being separated from her off-
spring, they'd just put a bullet through her head and leave her
for buzzard food.
Speaking of Backus Creek Canyon and obstinate cows brings
to mind the time some Barnum cowboys on fall roundup were
working this canyon which is the last word in roughness and
ruggedness. One cow critter was really wild, and they'd been
fighting her all the way all day long and were getting plenty tired
of her stupid antics. When they had her just about out of the
canyon, she suddenly quit the bunch on the trail and decided to
climb out over a ledge to the left. She was having a frustrating
time of it, too, but after much slobbering and struggling and
grunting she got her belly on the ledge and seemed about to
teeter over the top, but couldn't quite make it. Church Firnekas,
the cowboy who'd ridden onto another ledge above to head her
off in case it was necessary, saw the predicament she was in and,
crazy-like without thinking, quickly threw his rope over the cow's
head hoping to help her on up; but before he could even blink an
eye she jumped straight off the ledge and just hung there in mid-air
as there wasn't enough rope to let her clear down to the bottom
of the canyon.
Church was riding a Bar C horse called Tar Baby; he weighed
about 1 1 50 pounds and was coal black and had short sturdy legs
as he was part Percheron. Tar Baby just stood there trembling,
with his feet braced on that narrow place, and held that cow until
Church could get out his pocket knife and cut the tight rope. The
cow fell 30 feet and landed broadside on the rocky bottom and
was killed. If either Church or Tar Baby had lost their heads all
three would have plunged to death below. In a predicament of
that kind a man's weight in the saddle is a lot of help to a horse,
and Church, addlepated and nervy at the same time, knew it and
stayed in the saddle. After it was all over, all he said was, "By
the gods of war, (his favorite expression) a man must be plum
out of his mind to pull a stunt like that and, by God, ought to
have his head examined," and rode off down the mountain behind
the herd singing "Cremation of Sam McGee" through his nose.
Church was always roping something. When at the ranch and
he'd open the gate to let the milk cows' calves out, "they'd lay
back their ears and run like hell for the nearest brush before he
could rope them."
Church was always pulling something like that and sometimes
it wasn't really his fault; like the time in Powder River Canyon
when his horse spooked and started bucking where there wasn't
any place to buck, so he just dumped off into a big deep hole in
the creek. Church and horse both disappeared in the water, the
hole was that deep. The other fellows thought sure both were
"goners," but pretty soon up they bobbed and the bronc climbed
100 ANNALS OF WYOMING
out on the other side with Church still astride, and went along
as if such happenings were of daily occurrence.
Barton Jefferson Stubbs and Sally Avery, born and married in
Georgia, were the parents of the Stubbs clan. They had eight
children, Rachel, James, Charles (Bud), Martha Sarah (Sally),
Elizabeth, William Avery (Bill), Amelia and Isaac (Ike). Some-
time through the years the family moved to Texas; maybe some
of the children were born there (no one remembers.)
When a young man in the early 1 880's, Jim came north several
times with Texas Trail herds. Later the whole family moved to
eastern Wyoming and settled near Lusk, about 20 miles north, at
the Hat Creek post office. The boys, Jim, Bud and Ike, worked
out as cowhands most of the year and supported the family. Bud
and Jim worked for the 4J outfit, Bud as shipping boss who went
to Chicago with the beef, and Jim as roundup wagon boss and
trail boss when Keelines trailed cattle up from Texas. They were
handsome young men. Bud cut quite a figure walking up the
streets of Lusk "with his spur rowels rolling along behind him
like wheelbarrow wheels, they were that big." Bud always said,
"Whenever you patch up a bridle rein you've ruined it." He was
just that fussy about his things.
Jim was a six-footer and rather heavy set, very slow motioned
and seemingly easygoing, but had an air of authority about him
that gained him respect wherever he went. He had a good busi-
ness head on his shoulders and knew all along "where he was going
and what he would do with his life." He had a way of always
chuckling to himself as he went about his work, a likeable, inti-
mate sort of habit that inspired confidence and good will. Bud
and Jim were both good reliable men, "as honorable and good
men as could be in those times when everything was a battle, when
a man had to fight for everything he got, when every bloomin'
thing was a struggle and hard work, when both nature and people
made lots of trouble." They saved their money; they didn't throw
it around, as soon as it was earned, in loose living like so many
did. They weren't like the cowboy who said to the saloon keeper,
"Leave me alone, will you, this is my money I'm drinkin' up - when
I get broke I'll go back and make a good hand." And this type
did go back and make a good hand until next pay day; but he
never put any roots down or left much of a mark to justify his
existence on this earth. Bud and Jim felt a sense of responsibility
toward their family. There was always some of them needing
something.
Around 1897 Jim came into Johnson County and bought the
Billy Hill ranch over on Red Forks, now the upper end of the
Alfred Brock ranch. (Tom Gardner was living where Brocks
now live. ) The old folks and Bud and Ike then moved up here
and were there when Jim bought the Blue Creek spread. After
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 101
buying it he leased the place to Billy Brock (an uncle of J. Elmer)
and the Stubbs continued living on the Red Fork place.
At this time a fellow called "Latigo" was homesteading the
land about 50 yards above the lower Blue Creek bridge. Some
of the buildings he put up are still there. Latigo was sandy-haired,
and rather stoop-shouldered and didn't associate much with any-
body - and nobody knew much about him, so just called him
Latigo and let it go at that. When he proved up Jim bought his
160 acres for $300 and added it to his Blue Creek holdings.
A few years later Billy Brock bought Jim's Red Fork place
and the Stubbs clan moved to Blue Creek. The Stubbs and their
nephews, the Taylors from Texas, have been ( and still are ) an
important part of the Barnum community. They surely are a
mixed lot for character study and have added much to the local
color of the area.
Around 1875 Sally Stubbs married John Wesley Taylor, a
buffalo hunter on the Cherokee Strip. He went to the Great
Staked Plains in the northern panhandle of Texas and helped kill
the last of the great herd of buffalo in that area. Sally's folks
objected violently to this man John Taylor, for in Texas a buffalo
hunter was considered flighty and not likely to settle down long
enough to make a woman a good husband. So, loving each other
like they did, they were forced to elope. They took off horseback
one night and father Stubbs sent brother Jim after them. He was
hot on their trail and all for nipping this affair in the bud, until
they came to the Red River which was slightly swollen and not
particularly good crossing at any time at that point. When Jim
saw them abandon one horse, which they likely thought unfit for
such a swim, and both take to the churning water on one horse,
he gave up and turned back, thinking (and rightly) that if their
love was that reckless and heedless of consequences he'd just be
wasting his time to ever even think he could bring them back and
prevent this thing; for there'd always be another time and another
place and another plan. He couldn't understand love like that,
but he came to respect it that night. So, the wedding ceremony
was performed some place north of the Red River without benefit
of family.
Sally and John had seven children, Ed, Will, Bert, Rose, Emma,
Homer and Talton, of whom we'll hear more later. Rose, when
still a small child, was blown away in a cyclone. The Indians
warned the white people that a cyclone was due and coming, that
every twenty years it came without fail, but nobody took this
omen seriously. However, right on time it came and went and
took little Rose with it, never to be seen again. Some of the
Stubbs felt that this was a punishment inflicted upon Sally for
having so openly defied her family and married a buffalo hunter.
In fact, the Stubbs were always inclined to have it in for the
Taylors — not in big things that really counted, for they at heart
102 ANNALS OF WYOMING
were a clannish people, but in little obnoxious, spiteful, trifling
ways that'd get under a fellow's hide. They acted at times as if
they were hoping to see some of that buffalo hunter's blood show-
ing up along the line, so they could pounce on it and have sound
reason for proving that Sally's marriage was bad.
Amelia Stubbs married Sumner Richardson at Lusk some time
around 1890. A few years later he was killed by a bolt of light-
ning, and Bill and Ike moved Amelia, her son and household goods
and cattle, up into Barnum country where she took up a home-
stead over south near the Hole-in-the-Wall. She was the first
woman to live in those parts, which was quite a distinction, people
said.
Ike Stubbs took up a homestead over south, too, about 100
yards from where Eagle Creek and Buffalo Creek come together.
He built a two-room cabin covered on the outside with red tin —
so the place was always called the Red Cabin, and became quite a
landmark in the community. People would say "over by the Red
Cabin" just like they said "over by the Pumpkin Buttes." It stood
by the road on a bleak and lonely spot where in the summer time
the sun boiled down unmercifully on the red dirt and the red tin.
To its back was Eagle Creek Canyon and trees and water, but a
place not easy to get in and out of. It did, however, make a
beautiful background if one took the time to look.
That's the way ranches spread out and became big outfits in
those days. Relatives and friends (and sometimes just people)
would take up homesteads and when they proved up, they'd sell
to the ranches.
Ike was the "most human of the Stubbs," the most likeable and
also the tallest and darkest. He had a black mustache and was
more inclined toward feminine company than the others, and he
didn't mind at all getting roaring drunk and shooting up the town
at times. He also was a bronc rider and a good one, too. In
later years he fell in love with a school teacher who taught at
Willow Creek (over south of Buffalo Creek). She was neither
young nor beautiful, but Ike wanted to marry her. He'd bring
her to the dances and seemed to enjoy her company a lot. Most
of the people were of the opinion that she was horrible. They
made fun of her looks, because of her big large nose and tall
skinny frame. Some of the cowboys nicknamed her "Old Rough-
lock," the inference being that such a nose would make a good
roughlock for blocking a wheel going down a steep hill. This was
rather farfetched, because all of the Stubbs had bigger than normal
noses and nobody remarked about them. Anyway the older
Stubbs brothers thought Ike shouldn't marry - "Boy, discontinue
this idea of marriage, for how can you take care of her? As soon
as she gets you hooked, she'll always be wantin' something, that's
the way a woman is, always wantin' something." Being older
they felt that Ike should always be ready and willing to take their
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 103
advice on any and all subjects. Whether Ike got too tired of
listening to this perpetual dictating and felt he couldn't stand it any
more or for some other reason, nobody knows, but one night when
he and Bud were over at the Red Cabin (this was after their
mother had died) Ike got up and said, "I'm going where mother
is," and went outside by the door of the cabin and shot himself
in the head. Ike was closer to his mother than the other boys,
and he worried a lot about her and I imagine she did have a hard
time of it with her bachelor sons. In discussing Ike's suicide with
an old-timer, I remarked that overly bossy older brothers didn't
seem a very logical reason for a man's killing himself, and the old
fellow spoke right up and said, "Well, you didn't know the Stubbs.
The Stubbs were Stubbs and you can't get around that."
It seemed at times that the Stubbs couldn't stand each other.
When they'd go to town, or any place in fact, even just to the
mail box, they'd ride apart, a mile apart maybe. Bud, then Bill
and Jim bringing up the rear, or vice versa. When they got to
town they'd all stay and eat at different places or at different times.
All the Stubbs men as they grew older became slightly stoop-
shouldered, big-faced, big-nosed and heavy-headed with little to
show in way of a neck; their heads seemed to sit on their shoulders.
Bill more so than any of the others. While the other three boys
were fundamentally honest and law abiding, Bill was not. He
was always on the fringe of society, that is respectable society,
and ornery and mean as the day was long. As one fellow said,
"Bill Stubbs was the meanest man on earth if he didn't like you,
but if he liked you and you remembered not to cross him in any
way, there was no end to what he'd do for you." Another one
remarked, "When Bill was in a sociable frame of mind he could
be the most entertaining liar you ever met." Bill's favorite ex-
pression was "By doggies" - he began every sentence with it and
sometimes put two or three in between; it was one entirely orig-
inal - no one ever heard it used by anyone else. Bill had a big
hearty laugh and could be most jovial at times and likeable for
the moment, thoroughly likeable.
When he first came to Blue Creek he was married to a woman
"off the row." She was quite nice looking, and quite willing and
ready to be a good wife and housekeeper for Bill. But she was
neat and clean, and Bill was not, as a usual thing. The first thing
they quarreled about was Bill wouldn't take his socks off when he
went to bed, said his feet got cold. When she finally did get him
to remove them they'd be so dirty and sweaty, next morning would
find them as stiff as if they'd been shellacked (and smell, how
terrible they would smell). When dry they were so brittle it was
just like stepping on egg shells. That's why men didn't want to
take them off.
Which brings to mind an old fellow who lived up the slope who
used to ride by Blue Creek on his way home in the afternoon;
104 ANNALS OF WYOMING
he'd sit and visit until supper time and then decide to stay for
supper (anybody was always welcome); then he'd light up his pipe
and sit around and smoke and talk until bedtime and say he
guessed he'd just stay all night, since it was so late. This didn't
bring any repercussion until one time, after a visit of this kind,
a hired hand came in early to breakfast mad as a hornet and said,
"If that old codger ever comes here and sleeps in the bunk house
again I'm quittin'. Last night the old fool came in stumbling
around in the dark walkin' over everybody's boots and blamed if
he didn't bust the whole toe-end outa my best sock."
Bill and his wife lived in a sheep wagon down in the pasture
between the Latigo place and the Blue Creek ranch. One time in a
spurt of generosity Bill bought her a nice, high priced sewing
machine, which was a mighty fine thing to own in those days
and she was very, very proud of it and happy with Bill because
he'd bought it for her. One day Bill came in with a pair of heavy
denim overalls and wanted her to alter them a bit on the new
sewing machine. She sweetly but flatly refused saying that the
cloth was too heavy and she feared to damage the machine if she
tried to sew it, but hastened to say she'd sew it by hand right away,
which would really be better and stronger. But Bill didn't think
so, and puffing up in typical Stubbs style, lugged the machine all
the way out to the wood pile and proceeded to chop it to pieces
with the axe, which in turn so disgusted Mrs. Stubbs that she took
the stage next morning and left Barnum forever.
She later married a stockman in Montana and together they
built up a 75,000 sheep business. Everyone said she had the
business head of the family - anyway they prospered and became
very well-to-do. One time while visiting back east in Vermont
they became acquainted with a man who thought he was in the
sheep business in a big way himself. He proudly stated that he
ran 500 head of sheep. The Montana man spoke up with his
thumbs in his suspenders and said, "Hell, man, I have more sheep
dogs than that."
Bill didn't stay at Blue Creek much - went here and there and
from time to time pretty regularly got mixed up in shady deals,
like the time down in Box Butte County in Nebraska in the early
'90's when a man by the name of Watson had a contract for fur-
nishing beef for a grading crew on the Burlington railroad. Bill
and a partner (whoever he was) subcontracted from Watson to
do the rounding up and butchering. Bill kept the crew well fed
during the summer and when fall came he found that Watson had
collected and spent all proceeds from the railroad pay; and Bill
and partner found that they were flat broke.
Now Watson was the owner of a better than average race horse,
so Bill and partner purloined the horse, moved him 200 miles up
to Lusk, Wyoming, matched him in several races and made some
quick money. When they stole the horse they killed the other
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 105
horse in the barn and burned the barn down, dead horse and all,
to throw off suspicion. Jim Stubbs, so the story goes, was sent a
warrant for Bill's arrest, but Jim turned the job over to another
stock detective, as he did not want to be a party to sending his
brother to the pen. Anyway, that's where Bill went for a year.
Another time Jim got a $200 reward for turning Bill in for
more horse stealing, and then turned right around and used the
reward money to hire a lawyer to clear him of the charge. (It was
the same lawyer Cassidy used when he needed legal help. )
Later Bill was again sought by the law, being described as a
"long, lean, lantern-jawed, big-nosed, thick-necked renegade, the
ugliest man in Wyoming." Bill said, "By doggies, that's the first
time I've heard of a man being arrested for his looks." This time
he hid out in a dugout in the Hole-in-the-Wall somewhere and
the law didn't find him.
Another time while evading the law he received a shot in the
leg which broke the bone. This time he hid out in a haystack all
winter until the leg healed. His friends brought food to him at
night.
As can be surmised he was pretty much the renegade of the
family, but lived to be 100 years old (lacking only three days.)
He often told of how when a young boy he sat on a rail fence and
watched Sherman's army march on Atlanta.
Grandpa and Grandma Stubbs were real characters, too, very
individualistic. The family said that in later years Grandpa was
scared to death of Grandma; said "she'd eat a man for breakfast,"
she was that bad-tempered at times. Her disposition was like a
barrel of gunpowder and one never knew what would touch it off,
or when. The Stubbs men were confirmed bachelors at heart and
no doubt she had to use stringent measures to get her just dues,
and make a noticable place for herself in the household. It gets
pretty monotonous being just taken for granted; makes a woman
develop all sorts of complexes, at times.
One old-timer said, "They all stepped down on old man Stubbs
a little," and when things got too unbearable and out-of-hand,
he'd just hitch his yellow ponies to the old buckboard, throw a
bed roll and some grub behind, and take off for Texas. It'd
usually take him a couple of years to make the trip and when he
got back everyone, including Grandma, was glad to see him again.
The old fellow made himself useful around the ranch — he'd
raise a nice big vegetable garden in the summer and do a lot of
coyote trapping in the winter. He was painfully and annoyingly
frugal — he'd gather up all the horse hair he could find around the
corrals and barn and put it in sacks. He'd pick up all the rusty
nails and bolts and pieces of wire and string, thinking they'd come
in handy for something some time. One day he came in lugging
a water-soaked cowhide carrying the wrong brand ( a rustled cow ) .
Bill had had his hired hand grubbing willows and sage brush half
106 ANNALS OF WYOMING
a day along Buffalo Creek trying to burn the hide up. After much
sweating effort they saw that the green, bloody hide was not going
to burn, so they carelessly threw it in the creek. But the water
wasn't high enough to float it out of sight and in a day or two
here came Grandpa who spied it and fished it out and toted it
home, saying, "By God, now boys, there's no sense in wasting all
this good rawhide."
Grandpa had a little brown mare that he rode. He was short-
waisted and long-legged and didn't exactly make a pretty picture
on the little horse, looked awkward and out of proportion, but
they got along fine. Grandpa'd ride her to Buffalo with a couple
of gunny sacks of coyote hides and horse hair tied on to sell.
When 82 years old he was still riding her around. One day he
happened onto a sheep wagon while riding on the mountain and
the herder didn't know who he was; so he introduced himself
thus. "Howdy, sir, I'm one of the Stubbs boys."
Grandma Stubbs was rather big and tall. She had a room of
her own built on extra. The partition walls hadn't been put clear
to the ceiling, so there was a space of several boards' width left
at the top of the side adjoining the other room. Grandma always
kept her door securely locked (and carried the key in her apron
pocket) whether she was in or out of the room. This began to
puzzle Grandpa, for he couldn't figure out why she'd have to lock
the door, unless she had something in there she shouldn't. So one
day when she was gone his snoopy instinct could be denied no
longer, and he decided to climb over the partition space at the top
and see what (if any) little trinkets she had collected. He and
Tommy Porter, another old fellow there, got a ladder and climbed
over, getting down inside with considerable difficulty. To their
keen disappointment they found nothing, absolutely nothing, to
warrant the locking of the door. Suddenly realizing that they'd
probably stayed in forbidden territory too long already, and fearing
Grandma's return, they hurried too fast climbing out and tipped
the ladder over. So there they were huddled astride the partition
top with no way to get down. Luckily one of the boys returned
before Grandma did, or Grandpa likely would have been com-
pelled to set out for Texas again to save face.
When Grandma got mad at the boys or Grandpa, or anyone
else for that matter, she'd lock herself in her room and pull down
the blinds and stay in there not making a sound or even answering
anyone for days at a time, until Jim would lug in a ladder and
climb up and look over the partition to see if she was still alive.
She liked this kind of attention; it made her feel important; it
was good to have someone finally worrying about her.
When Jim got older and his rheumatism got to bothering him,
he'd pack up and go down to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and spend
the winter months and take the hot mineral baths. By this time
the Taylor boys, his nephews from Texas, had arrived and were
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 107
getting located in the cattle business and he could leave knowing
things would be taken care of at home.
Johnny Tisdale was cowboying for him at this time, and he'd
take Johnny down to Arkansas with him each winter because he
liked him and enjoyed his company. That's the way the Stubbs
were, big-hearted and generous to excess if their mood was right.
Like the time during a hard, long winter, Jim sold hay he himself
needed and could use to his neighbors down the creek who were
completely out of feed and having a hard go of it to even make
food ends meet. Jim sold them enough hay at $4.00 a ton to get
them through the rest of the winter — he was like that — a good
citizen and a good neighbor, solid and dependable.
Jim and Johnny had exciting times in Hot Springs, it being a
favorite winter resort town for cowmen and outlaws alike. It
was here Johnny met up with Ross Gilbertson, who was in the
cabin above the Bar C with Nate Champion the time big cat-
tlemen first tried to kill him. Ross was now in the saloon and
dance hall business sporting a big diamond ring and fancily attired.
However, he was decidedly reluctant to discuss how he'd promptly
rolled under the bed when Nate was fired on and made no attempt
to help him. This was where the Johnson County Invasion was
hashed and re-hashed and feelings ran high and heated arguments
sprang up among the winter guests as it did in Johnson County
itself, for here were a lot of the men who'd been participants on
both sides of the fence, and most of them knew what they were
talking about, which made the talking a little dangerous.
Here it was that Johnny gained applause and renown as an
exhibition bronco-buster. These rides were made on the stage of
the opera house. It wasn't exactly easy for either the horse or
the rider to be cutting up bronc riding capers on a slick floor, but
Johnny was a showman and a good rider and afraid of nothing on
earth. He'd already had practically every bone in his body broken
at one time or another, and was used to riding the most knot-
headed horses on the range, so what did this matter? What did
he have to lose? One more broken bone or a cracked head
wouldn't be much of a catastrophe to Johnny. He'd already
been through the mill.
It was here that Jim, when 70 years old, met his future wife.
Aunt Lois, as everybody called her at Barnum. She was a nurse,
probably employed at some of the health establishments (hot
springs or bath houses ) . Anyway, he met her and enjoyed her
company upon many occasions, however never with the slightest
matrimonial intention. Bud and Jim both liked female company,
but backed off from any responsibility along that line. They liked
women all right, but didn't want to be obliged to support one.
Bud said he figured "women wanted to get married only so they
could cast their burdens on a man." But Aunt Lois was very
sweet and unassuming and was very good to Jim.
108 ANNALS OF WYOMING
One winter she told him sadly that she'd always wanted to see
Yellowstone Park; she'd heard it was so beautiful, but it was so
far away, and she knew she'd never get to see it. She was so
wistful and sort of forlorn that when spring came Jim decided he'd
just take her to the Park — after all it wasn't much to do and he'd
probably enjoy seeing it himself. When they got to Blue Creek
they hopped into his Model T Ford and took off for the Yellow-
stone country.
When they returned via Casper Jim drove up to the depot to
buy her return ticket to Arkansas, but Aunt Lois became very firm
in her refusal to return to Hot Springs alone. Very gently she told
Jim that she felt that he had put her, all unintentionally, of course,
in a rather compromising position and she thought under the cir-
cumstances, being a true gentleman, he should by rights marry her.
Jim, completely taken aback at the mild rebuke, thought the
situation over awhile and decided that she could very well be
right; so out of the kindness of his heart and with no further
pressure, he married her. After all, what did a man of 70 have
to lose one way or another, and she was a sweet little person.
So they went back to Blue Creek, but Aunt Lois didn't particu-
larly like country living and she wasn't a very capable housewife,
so they took to spending more and more time in Arkansas, coming
to Blue Creek only a short while each summer.
When folks came to visit Aunt Lois (the door of the two-room
cabin opened into the kitchen) she always smoothed down her
hair and her apron and said, as if realizing it for the first time,
"Oh! my, I don't know why this kitchen floor is so dirty — I swept
it good day before yesterday."
Jim died in Arkansas when 84 years old and his body was
shipped back to Buffalo for burial. He had by this time sold his
Blue Creek ranch to his nephew Ed Taylor. Aunt Lois, much to
the family's disgust, took her widow's third of Jim's estate plus
two wheat farms in Kansas which he owed. The relatives thought
she'd just married Jim for his money and maybe she had.
Before Jim died he'd said to Ed, 'Tve taken the lead for the
Stubbs family and you're going to have to take the lead for the
Taylors." And Ed did (more of him later). One old-timer said,
"If it hadn't been for Jim all the Stubbs would have starved to
death. Wherever he went his relatives followed and he found
places for them and staked them to ranches, etc. They paid him
what they could and he crossed off what they couldn't pay." He
always stood by ready and able to help when times were tough.
He had a keen, level-headed business sense and made money with
no apparent effort to do so. (Ed Taylor had the same knack.)
Jim never hurried around setting the world on fire, but always
got things done at the right time, even if it did appear as if he
weren't overly hard working, or too ambitious. As I said before
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 109
he was a man who knew what he was going to do and did it. The
only thing he hadn't planned on was marrying Aunt Lois.
The first time the Barnum people saw Rap Harrell, a half-breed
Pottawatomi Sioux Indian, was when he appeared at Blue Creek
carrying the deed to the ranch. Cassidy was unable to deliver it
himself and told Rap, "Now don't give this to anyone but Jim
Stubbs. Deliver it personally, no matter where you have to go to
do it, so there'll be no trouble and no mistakes made." Cassidy
trusting Rap this way made people feel right away that he was
honest and reliable and he was, and soon afterwards he became a
permanent fixture in the Barnum country. His real name was
Lemon David Harrell. He was called Rap because one winter
he'd lived with an Arapahoe squaw on the Indian Reservation;
this when times were tough and he couldn't get a job. When work
was scarce and money short. Rap would work any place for just
his room and board.
At one time he was a freighter for the government, and while
doing this he was in the Wounded Knee Battle. He said it was
such a horrible experience that, when he saw a squaw run up
with a big butcher knife and cut the nose off a soldier, slashing
open his whole face, he "just cut me a mule out of the traces,
jumped on and went to whipping and took off. Couldn't stand
any more of it."
During Invasion time Rap was working for the Ogallala outfit
getting out logs on the Pine Ridge. After Ed Taylor got Blue
Creek, Rap and his brother Ray took up homesteads on the Dry V
over in the Hole-in-the-Wall country, and when they proved up
Ed bought the land and gave them jobs on the ranch and gave
them a start in cattle.
Rap was a rather slight, five-feet-seven-inches, 1 40-pound man.
dark-complexioned with one bad eye. He said he fell in a camp-
fire when a small boy and burned the eye, which caused the upper
lid to hang down and droop in a peculiar way, and the lower lid
also hung down and open, showing the red inside. He had no
control whatever over the eye. Folks said it looked like an eagle's
eye and the Indians called him "Eagle Eye."
When at Blue Creek Rap had a black mustache shot with gray
and he was plenty dirty most of the time. He smoked a pipe
which seemed constantly in his mouth. He ordered his tobacco
out of Kentucky — "long green" it was called. It came in long
leaves and was so strong one whiff would make a bull blink his
eyes. Rap would tear off pieces of the stuff and put them in his
hip pocket along with his false teeth and pipe. Sitting, riding and
moving about working, ground the leaves up fine enough for pipe
smoking. Rap was one to avoid all extra exertion at all times —
that was the Indian in him. He was slow-moving and unexcitable.
He had a pleasant, soft, low monotone sort of voice and used
pretty fair English. He really was quite intelligent, lots smarter
110 ANNALS OF WYOMING
than Ray, who was taller and cleaner and looked more "Indian-y"
in spite of his blue eyes.
Rap could argue current events and politics; he was a man
"who worked on his reading and was a good talker," and he had
good, sensible ideas about things. He and Bud Stubbs used to
argue about the Johnson County Invasion, one on one side and
one on the other. Bud liked nothing better than a good argument;
he would argue about the most trivial subjects just for argument's
sake, argue and spit. He used to lift up the lid on the side of the
cook stove, and spit inside. This was a long, narrow opening,
only wide enough to put in a whole stick of cookstove length
wood; which was much handier than trying to poke a piece of
long wood into a round stove-top lid opening. Bud would get so
excited arguing, nine times out of ten he'd miss the opening and
hit the pancake griddle on top of the stove. This was really very
funny unless you had to eat the tobacco-spewed hot cake; but
ordinarily out-of-doors working men weren't too particular about
their victuals.
Along about this time a lot of the Barnum cowboys were playing
the rodeos which usually took more money than they won, so
they'd borrow the money from Rap and pay him back when they
got it later. He automatically became their banker. People used
to say they "didn't know where Rap got his money, but he always
had some." One reason was that he never spent much money
himself; if he had $500 he'd spend $100 and save $400. Also
he'd built up a nice little bunch of cattle, had the money from his
homestead, and he'd bought a couple of rental properties in Casper
which brought him a monthly sum. This, of course, was when
he was old and was just "chore boy" at Blue Creek for his board
and room.
Rap used to drive a stacker team during haying season, but he
refused to walk back and forth behind the teams like most men
did; so Ed rigged up a two-wheeled cart for him to use. That
was the Indian in him coming out again.
About the time Rap took up his homestead a little slim-built
fellow by the name of Frank Spangler took up one on the Ghent
slope. He was a queer one with small, sharp, beady eyes. He liked
to roam around prospecting for gold, and also he was always
trying to put into practice his own religious philosophy. He was
one of those kind of fellows who believed in giving every single
living being a fair chance. He wouldn't shoot a coyote unless he
was running and had a fifty-fifty chance of getting away. He was
an excellent shot with a rifle, too, and even a fast-moving coyote
didn't have much of a get-away chance if Frank really intended
to kill him.
Spangler had an old horse which he said was a "one man horse."
He was a chunky animal and ornery-natured, and if he didn't feel
just right would buck viciously for a short distance. He didn't
THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL 111
pull any tricks, though, bucked the same every time and no cow-
boy in his right mind would ever want him, for as a mount he had
very little to offer. However, every fellow who went by heard the
same tale, "I'll give you this horse if you can ride him 50 yards
away from the corral.-" All newcomers to the Hole-in-the-Wall
and others besides took up the challenge; and some stayed on and
some didn't, but nobody ever took the horse. Frank liked this
idea of his because he felt that he was taking a fifty-fifty chance
of losing the animal.
Spangler was also full of peculiar ideas about food. Off and
on he'd go on a special diet of his own concocting. One time he
went on a pecan and banana diet. He'd bring out five pound
boxes of pecans and fifteen pounds of bananas at a time and
that's all he'd eat until they were gone. But in spite of all his
theories about proper food intake, he always felt poorly and com-
plained about it incessantly.
One night Rap stopped by the cabin and old Frank was in bed,
but at once began grumbling about his aches and pains to such an
extent that Rap thought maybe the old fellow was in a bad way.
So he sat there with him, not knowing anything else to do, and
pretty soon all was quiet in the bed. Rap said, "When he quit
complainin' and laid so still, I figured he'd died, so pulled the
sougan up over his face and rode home thinking we'd have a
burying next day, but we didn't."
As more people began coming into the Red Wall country —
homesteaders, school teachers and wives — homes and school-
houses just weren't large enough for dance crowds; so the Barnum
people decided to build a community hall big enough to accommo-
date all their needs along that line. L. R. A. Condit donated the
site for the building, a part of the Coppingen place, north of the
road just outside the entrance to the valley.
As we think of these Barnum people a quotation of Channing
comes to mind, which says, "No man should part with his own
individuality and become that of another."
(To be continued)
Wyoming Memories
By
Dick J. Nelson
After living forty-three years in that 'splendid'
state that lies above - Wyoming -
And now being retired and reaching that point in
life some call life's 'gloaming',
1 enjoy going back into my gallery of memories
to live again the wonderful past,
To recall happenings, people, places, and thoughts
that will always last;
To reverie in a mood of my early manhood time,
Of friends, neighbors, and conditions that now
seemed always sublime,
Of ranches, cattle, hills, valleys and flowers
as nature displayed her best,
Of the sun and moon which rose and set among the
mountains highest crest,
Of antelope, deer and elk, well nourished on
luscious grass,
With a background of dark green timber reflected
as if in a polished looking glass
In the snow-made streams that flowed from their
canyons grand, that wind
Until the Snake, Green, Powder, Big Horn, Platte,
Tongue, Cheyenne, and other outlets they find;
Of the men who rode the range
With their 'strings' of horse-flesh tough from
which to make a change,
Of the 'beef round-ups' and the drive to the railroad
pens,
Thoughts of this vanishing spectacle will not fade
until my life ends.
I see again those cowhands who rode with poise and grace,
Roping, branding and in the 'to the Chuck Wagon race'
In their incomparable outfits - boots, spurs, chaps,
six guns and the famous Stetson hats -
They rode and dressed, not for display,
But did far out-class the great Cinema stars of today;
And too, I see, the livery stables which were the
rendezvous for men.
WYOMING MEMORIES 113
I remember those wide-open dramatic 'cow towns'
that never locked a door
Twenty-four hours round the clock and many could
have used more,
And the plenty that was doing - excitement galore.
The people - a mixture of creed and class -
The 'dealers' in the many games of chance,
with cunning and skill unsurpassed.
The 'gun plays' - feuds, loves and hates often
settled by 'range land law'
The one who survived was the fastest on the 'draw'.
Then too I remember the coming of the railroad's
revenue hunting rails,
With trains to replace stages to carry passengers
and freight, and to expedite the mails,
The 'kids' that hired out to the railroads to fire
and brake
Soon to get promotion to 'pull the throttle' and
the train tickets take.
The men who worked in the shops, on the track,
and the clerks at office desks,
Alert, efficient, politely answering questions
and carrying out patrons requests,
The dispatchers, the train and engine men of
each crew
Who fought severe elements and conditions to have
their trains arrive when due.
Now I think about the people on the ranches
and in the villages and towns
Who served in the banks, offices and stores -
And those unforgettable country doctors -
Thoughts of all these people and up my estimation soars
Of the men and women who were honorable, trying
a life of helpfulness to fulfill,
People of sterling qualities and characters
displaying their good-will
There were those with hearts of gold
All honor to the many whose virtues went untold.
Now my reverie has passed.
I can vision that great state of today with its
unbelievable contrast,
Oil wells, refineries, banks - money flooded -
Cattle, sheep, horses - all blooded -
114 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Mills, factories, mines, transportation, schools
and churches - the best -
Yes, Wyoming is now an outstanding progressive state.
Just thought I would write from my 'back log' of
wonderful memories, a heritage from the past,
Before it is too late.
Wyoming State historical Society
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
By
Edness Kimball Wilkins
More and more the people of Wyoming, in areas all over the
state, are becoming aware of the priceless ( and glamorous ) his-
torical heritage we have within our borders. Our history in recent
years has been brought into the world-wide living room of every
person who owns a television set. Western stories have been
featured, many of them mentioning the colorful names of Wyoming
towns, creeks, mountains, ranches, law officers or badmen. The
rough appearance and furnishings of our early day saloons have
been glamorized into very large, handsomely furnished barrooms,
with mahogany bars and glittering crystal chandeliers. "Maverick"
has become the symbol of those long-ago gamblers who were
once an important part of our citizenry.
It is not only in the "Westerns", however, that Wyoming is tele-
vised. Recently, in one of the most moving incidents of a popular
doctor-hospital series, a famous scientist-explorer was asked what
he remembered as the most beautiful place in the world. His
description of a lovely little valley in the Tetons was one that every
one of us who calls Wyoming "home", should obtain and treasure
in our hearts forever.
Wyoming's stories, traditions and folklore must be written down
so that it will be available as a reservoir of information for use
and guidance of future researchers and authors. Every item of
pioneer life that has been told by our forefathers or their friends
should be noted for posterity. Verification of dates and details
can come at a later time, but it is urgent that all of these "tales
our fathers told" be put on paper before they are forgotten. The
suggestion has been offered and I relay it to you, that you should
carry a small notebook in your pocket or purse, and jot down
every bit of information that comes into your mind.
I have such a book, with the title "Unwritten History Notes."
Each time I open it, I am surprised at the amount of information
I have entered, and the variety of subjects. For instance, there
is a list of some of the old-timers who had descriptive nicknames;
and some notes about the first "hospital" in Casper; a hilarious
incident about Sam Bass, when my father and some of the boys
framed Sam; notes about the "phantom ship" that sailed up the
Platte, and was visible for about two hours, having been seen by
116 ANNALS OF WYOMING
many people. ( It was just about the time of the spinal meningitis
epidemic among the children of early Casper). There are many
interesting details about Cattle Kate and Jim Averell and A. J.
Bothwell, the final item being that the skulls of Kate and Jim were
sent to a medical school for examination to see if they were
abnormal. (Those were the days of phrenology.) From the
details, and the source of the story, I am certain it was true.
Here is an instance of how fast and completely our way of life
has changed, and how the details of an earlier age can be lost
from our memories. A Casper woman wanted to refer to the iron
weight that was used in "horse and buggy" days to keep a horse
or team standing without being tied. You doubtless remember
seeing the driver get out of the wagon or buggy, lift out the iron
weight that was fastened to the bridle by a long leather strap, and
drop it on the street or edge of the board sidewalk, thus tethering
the horse. But what was it called? The inquiring lady asked many
people without getting an answer. She wished she could find an
old-time catalog of harness, saddles and other necessities of trans-
portation used in the pre-automobile era.
Do you remember those long, plodding string-teams that freight-
ed supplies from the railroad terminals to other isolated parts of
the State? Only a small number of people are now living who
saw that method of transportation and remember the details of
the intricate harness, the types of wagons, the long bullwhip that
snaked out across the backs of eighteen or twenty or more horses,
to snap at the lead team; the descriptive language of the freighter
when the wheels sank down into the heavy sand, and the horses
leaned into the collars and pulled until their sides heaved with
the strain - and the wagons would not budge. One summer after-
noon when I was very small, I attended a birthday party of a little
wind and sun-browned girl. Clutching a present, I remember
climbing up into the "cooster" wagon that was her home. The
wagons were "parked" on land now occupied by a fine business
establishment just south of the Trigood Oil Company building, on
South Center and Railroad. Fortunately for future researchers,
one of our historian-ranchers has been gathering on paper the
details of those freighters and their way of life.
Stories handed down by the earliest settlers in central Wyoming
have placed the Robert Stuart cabin in a slightly different location
from the site near Poison Spider Creek as interpreted by several
editors, from Stuart's Memoranda. The location pointed out by
the pioneers almost a century ago, appears logical and fits into
the pattern of distances traveled and of Stuart's description of the
scenery and surroundings. It will be a fine addition to our historic
landmarks if the stories from the early settlers finally determine
the exact spot of the first white man's cabin in Wyoming.
Word has come from the Esther Morris Commission that plans
are developing for placing the Esther Morris statue at the State
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 117
Capitol, and the Wyoming Historical Society will be invited to
cooperate with the Commission in planning and carrying out the
details of the ceremony. The date will probably be sometime in
June. It is expected to be an impressive event, exemplifying the
achievements of Mrs. Morris, and giving our people who visit
Cheyenne an opportunity to see a replica of the great work of art
that represents Wyoming in our national capitol. We anticipate
that the dedication will be one of the most important historical
events of recent years, and hope that it will be attended by all
citizens who are interested in Wyoming's proud history of equality.
Many incidents in the Esther Morris story were written and told
after the passing of time. They have, however, rounded out the
picture of those stirring events, and have added interest and under-
standing to the parts that were recorded during Wyoming's first
territorial legislature, emphasizing again how important it is that
each person should write down the stories he heard in earlier years
from the pioneers who helped in the building of Wonderful Wyo-
ming.
ftook Reviews
Recollections of a Piney Creek Rancher. By Fred J. Todd.
(Quick Printing Co., Sheridan, Wyoming. 1961. illus. 85
pp. $3.50.)
This is a story with around thirty photos of Hard Leather Rides,
Sagebrush Trails and other experiences of a typical cowhand who
came to Wyoming in 1901 to fence in a ranch, marry and raise
his family on Lower Piney Creek near Sheridan, Wyoming.
Gladys Wilcox who was to be his bride was a young school
teacher who left Missouri to come West. They were married in
November 1906 and after a short honeymoon in Missouri returned
to Wyoming in February 1907 to establish their ranch home.
It is an excellent story of their humble beginnings, the trials and
tribulations encountered in those early days of ranching, and it
should be most interesting to all who read it, not just the folks
who happened to have lived on or near Piney Creek.
Because the book spans fifty-four years of happily married life
there is much to tell of many celebrations, hard work, violence,
outlaws, long winters, roundups, runaways, stage coach trips,
rodeos, "Odds and Bits," along with some interesting things about
two of Wyoming's Ghost towns, Ucross and Ulm.
Fred and his wife Gladys were of the plain ordinary stock of
pioneer homesteaders who settled the hills of northern Wyoming
during the first half of the century, and he felt his greatest accom-
plishment of all was the happy life with his wife and seven children.
This is the type of writing we are happy to see and hope that
it may encourage others over the state of Wyoming to write about
their families and early life in their respective communities.
The first edition of this book, which started out only as a private
printing, has completely sold out. It proved so popular that the
Sheridan Library has limited its lending to one week. A second
edition is to be printed with only a few stories added to the "Odds
and Bits" section and should be on sale sometime in May. It may
be purchased at the Sheridan Stationery Store in Sheridan, Wyo-
ming, or The Buffalo Bulletin office in Buffalo, Wyoming.
Che\enne Ruth J. Bradley
BOOK REVIEWS 119
The Family Band. By Laura Bower Van Nuys. (Lincoln. The
University of Nebraska Press. 1961. 256 pp. $4.50.)
Music made by the members of Calvin and Keziah Bower's fam-
ily band echoed from one boundary of Dakota Territory to the
other. Having migrated from Wisconsin to Vermillion, D. T. in
1 870, the Bowers and their eight children, comfortable and fairly
prosperous, considered themselves settled until in 1881 two events
occurred which changed their lives completely. One was the great
flood of the Missouri in April which wiped out nearly the whole
community including the Bower home and possessions. The other,
which had, perhaps, an even greater influence on the family, was
the marriage of their beloved oldest daughter, Od (Rhoda Alice),
to Joseph B. Gossage, proprietor of the Rapid City Black Hills
Journal.
With little left to bind them to Vermillion and a desire to be
near Od drawing them toward the hills, around June 20, 1885, the
family, having said their many goodbyes, turned westward via
covered wagon loaded with a minimum of worldly goods. A
melodeon was one of the few articles of furniture they carried
with them.
Northwest through the Crow Creek Indian Reservation to Pierre
and thence west to Rapid City they journeyed, traveling slowly.
At Tripp they picked up the Rose family whose mother, Maria,
was Keziah Bower's sister. There were six Rose children. From
this time, the evening camps were more delightful than ever with
games and much music and singing.
They stopped in Rapid City only long enough to be welcomed
by Od and her husband, then headed for lower Battle Creek thirty-
five miles south and a little east to Papa's claim. As many close
relatives either followed or preceded the Bowers to this vicinity,
they had a well "related" community.
It took fortitude, ingenuity and a great deal of tolerance and
good humor, not to mention back-breaking labor, to weather the
next few years, but weather them they did. The catalytic agent
was the family band which included even Laura, the drum-beating
youngest. It took some juggling of the family finances to get the
band ready to perform, for without presenting a concert they could
not become known, yet they could not possibly play a concert
with old, dented instruments. Father finally solved the problem,
procured the instruments, and practice sessions went on every
spare moment. The extra money they earned helped considerably
but one feels they would have had the band whether it had profited
them or not. It was a source of pleasure to family, friends and
relatives.
The writer, Laura Bower Van Nuys, was the youngest child.
120 ANNALS OF WYOMING
She gives an endearing picture of the closeness of her family life,
the personalities of her parents, brothers and sisters, as well as
many fascinating moments of the early history of nearby places —
Rapid City, Custer, Sheridan, Keystone and Hot Springs — as var-
ious members of the Bower clan lived in these towns. Her story
reminds us that while pioneer life may have been a struggle for
survival, it was also a time of celebration, gaiety and sociability
which made the hard work and sorrows of living somehow worth
remembering.
The Family Band is Volume V in the Pioneer Heritage Series.
Newcastle, Wyo. Elizabeth J. Thorpe
These Were The Sioux. By Mari Sandoz. (New York: Hastings
House Publ. 1961. 118 pp. illus. $3.50.)
If the white man could have understood the Indian mores, cer-
tainly he could have learned much from him and perhaps benefited
in his own customs and beliefs had he accepted some of them.
Certainly such an understanding might have made unnecessary
much of the tragic history of the Indian wars on the western
frontier. The Indian, far from being a wild man, had an unwritten
law and a fine nomadic civilization of his own which is seldom
understood.
Mari Sandoz, who lived among the Sioux as a child, learned
much from them, and as she grew older she developed a deep
respect for these people.
In this small volume Miss Sandoz covers the customs and
beliefs of the Indian, particularly the Sioux, from birth to death.
In simple and understanding words she states the belief of the
Indian and gives an explanation of the why and wherefore of his
belief. No one who wishes to study Indian character and life can
afford to overlook this study.
The book is attractively illustrated with sketches from the works
of Amos Bad Heart Bull and Kills Two, both Oglala Sioux.
Cheyenne Lola M. Homsher
BOOK REVIEWS 121
Wagons, Mules and Men. By Nick Eggenhofer. (New York:
Hastings House Publ. Inc. 1961. index, illus. 184 pp.
$8.50.)
Born in Gauting, Bavaria, in 1 897, Nick Eggenhot'er came to
the United States as a youth in 1913. By 1919, after working at
various trades, having gained experience as an apprentice litho-
grapher, and taking evening art classes, he began drawing illus-
trations for popular magazines. Gaining knowledge and exper-
ience through study and travel, his work became in demand and
he began illustrating books and stories on the west. His works
should be familiar to all who have read much on the West in
recent years. His illustrations are, like those of Russell and
Remington, startlingly real and accurate.
In this work Mr. Eggenhofer has turned author as well as illus-
trator. His subject is transportation before the era of the motor
car, with emphasis on the West. He has woven together history,
detailed description of types of vehicles and the paraphernalia
used, beautifully illustrated with his own detailed drawings.
He covers the subjects of horses and mules and their saddles,
pack saddles and other appurtenances, all types of drawn vehicles
as the conestoga wagon, freight wagon, cart, army vehicles, sheep
wagon and buggies, illustrating his narrative with details of their
construction and use. Mr. Eggenhofer has made certain that such
details will not be lost for posterity.
Mr. Eggenhofer has recently changed his residence from New
Jersey to Cody, Wyoming. Wyomingites welcome him to his new
home and hope that he will, in his new surroundings, be inspired
to record many other aspects of our frontier period.
Cheyenne Henryetta Berry
The Cattle Kings. By Lewis Atherton. (Bloomington: Univer-
sity of Indiana Press. 1961. illus. end maps, introduction
and index, xii plus 308 pp. $6.95.)
The Cattle Kings should appeal especially to those already ac-
quainted with names such as Murdo Mackenzie, Richard King,
John W. Iliff, Joseph M. Carey, John B. Kendrick, Charles Good-
night, Dan Casement, Alexander Swan, Fred G. S. Hesse, and
others equally well known in the days of the Western range cattle
industry.
Believing that such men as these made cattle ranching the great
pioneer industry that it was, Author Atherton decided to give them
due recognition for the part they played in upbuilding the West.
Convinced that fiction writers had obscured the true history of
the West by giving cowboys, badmen, and super-marshals leading
122 ANNALS OF WYOMING
roles in fanciful dramatizations, while the real principals — the
rugged cattlemen — had been relegated to minor positions, the
author, two years ago, began intensive research. The result is
this book.
Dr. Atherton stresses the fact that western cattlemen — both
owners and managers — were men who recognized the value of
discipline and who enforced rules of order in the interest of good
business. For instance, some of the big outfits forbade their
employees to carry arms or to drink. Proof is cited of owners
and operators of large ranches who were careful to show respect
to small neighboring ranchmen.
The Cattle Kings is not just a collection of biographies. It is
basically a comparison of the personal characteristics, habits, re-
ligious beliefs, family life, successes and failures of individual,
outstanding cattlemen. The persons discussed become "colorful,
complicated personalities." Historical evidence shows that in
flesh-and-blood these cattlemen deeply impressed contemporary
observers, despite the fact that novelists often depicted them as
merely wooden "types" devoid of individuality.
One of the book's most interesting chapters is entitled, "Cattle-
man and Cowboy: Fact and Fancy." Says Dr. Atherton, "The
cowboy constitutes the best known and possibly the most signifi-
cant contribution of the cattle kingdom, and his fame grows even
greater as his environmental surroundings recede into history.
Ironically, the cattleman rather than the cowboy was the central
character on the ranching frontier. Without him there would be
no cowboys."
Among other chapter headings are: "Why Be A Cattleman",
"The Moderating Hand of Women," and "God's Elect."
Although the author's extensive footnotes indicate that the bulk
of his material was obtained from printed works, he did, during
a period of two years, also consult innumerable theses and un-
published biographies, interviews, newspaper files, and articles in
periodicals.
Dr. Atherton concludes his carefully documented, scholarly,
and entertaining work with a statement that since an ephemeral
and cosmopolitan frontier helped shape the course of American
life to a surprising degree, the time may come to pass when the
Cattle Kings will share in the acclaim showered on their currently
more popular employees — the American cowboys. "Certainly,"
he says, "thoughtful liberals and conservatives alike can find much
to admire in cattlemen's code of values."
Using forty-nine timely illustrations, the Indiana University
Press has produced an exceedingly fine piece of publishing. The
printing is clear; the binding, substantial; and the jacket is eye-
catching.
Denver Agnes Wright Spring
BOOK REVIEWS 123
Bonner's Guide. Written and published by Orrin H. Bonney and
Lorraine G. Bonney, (Houston 2, Texas, 1961. 136 pp.
$1.95)
Bonney' s Guide, Jackson's Hole and Grand Teton, a paper-back
•written and published by Orrin H. and Lorraine G. Bonney,
Houston 2, Texas, 1961, is strung on many strands — sixteen sug-
gested trips through the Jackson Hole country. Mileage from
each starting point is accurately given, and geological data, refer-
ence to early expeditions, and tales of early settlers inform the
tripper as he drives along. When used as a guide book to be kept
in hand for reference while making the suggested trips, it is a
most useful and informative book. If used in any other way, the
information and resulting conception of Jackson Hole is discon-
tinuous.
The stories about old-timers, necessarily gained by interviews
with the older residents in the valley, should be taken as about
fifty per cent fiction or legend. There are a number of inaccura-
cies: the Teton fault occurred about three million years ago during
the Cenozoic age, not during the Laramide Revolution of the Cre-
taceous age, sixty or seventy million years ago; the information on
John Carnes' Indian wife Millie does not check with the records
of the Ft. Hall Indian agency; Dr. C. W. Huff came to Jackson
Hole in 1913, not 1916; and ranchers do not summer cattle on
the National Elk Refuge. But these mistakes are few considering
the immense amount of industry and research that went into the
making of the guide. Not enough discrimination is made between
primary and secondary sources and just plain yarning. Though a
guide book may not justify footnotes, credits should be given
somewhere for material that has previously appeared in print. In
several instances this was not done.
Maps, drawings and many interesting cuts aid much in making
Bonney' s Guide, Jackson's Hole and Grand Teton the useful guide
book that it is.
Jackson, Wxo. Elizabeth Wied Hayden
America's History lands, Landmarks of Liberty. Prepared by the
National Geographic Book Service, Merle Severy, Chief.
(National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C. 1962.
illus. index. 576 pp. $11.95.)
This is a companion volume to America's Wonderlands, an
earlier publication of the National Geographic Society, which dealt
with our National Parks. The purpose of this publication is per-
haps best given in the words of Conrad Wirth, Director of the
124 ANNALS OF WYOMING
National Park Service, in his introduction to the book in which he
states, "A vigorous and growing nation such as ours must pre-
serve its historic heritage and pass it on to succeeding generations.
This heritage tells the story of America's growth, trials, accom-
plishments, and goals. It provides the key to understanding the
present and planning wisely for the future. How well we safeguard
and interpret this priceless legacy will determine the kind of nation
we shall be tomorrow."
The book is beautifully illustrated with a total of 676 pictures,
463 of which are in color. Thirty-eight maps, including 2 insert
maps, "Civil War Battles" and "Historical Map of the Contermi-
nous United States," enable the reader to follow the narrative and
locate sites of outstanding importance on the continental United
States.
America's Historylands is organized around major themes rather
than chronological or regional events for better continuity and
interest. It covers the period of American History from the first
explorers to the present, ending on the theme of the space age and
Cape Canaveral. Outstanding authors and scholars who have
keynoted and introduced sections of the book include Carl Sand-
burg, John Bakeless, Louis R. Wright, Donald Barr Chidsey, John
Anthony Caruso, David Lavender, Earl Schenck Miers, William C.
Everhart, Stewart H. Holbrook and Frank Freidel.
For an overall view of America's heritage, this is an excellent
volume.
Cheyenne Lola M. Homsher
Pioneer 's Progress. By Alvin Johnson. (A Bison Book, Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press. 1960. 413 pp. $1.85.)
Alvin Johnson was born in northeastern Nebraska of Danish
immigrant parents in 1 874. He was a remarkably talented man
and this is his interesting story of a long and active life.
After graduation from the infant University of Nebraska John-
son served in the army during the Spanish - American War and
went directly from the army to Columbia University from which
he ultimately received the Ph.D. in Economics. In the course of
his long academic career (ca. 1898-1945) Johnson studied under
and worked with many of the most famous people in the field of
the social sciences during that era. Nicholas Murray Butler, Thor-
stein Veblen, Charles Beard, John Bates Clark, Edwin R. A. Selig-
man - these and dozens of other names of equal calibre continually
appear in the course of this book. Johnson taught at Columbia,
Bryn Mawr, Nebraska, Texas, Stanford, Cornell and Chicago.
Johnson's interests ransed far outside the classroom. He was.
BOOK REVIEWS 125
at various times, editor of the "New Republic' ', editor of the
"Encyclopedia of The Social Science", head of the New School
for Social Research and head of the University in Exile in New
York during the second World War. In addition to all this he
found time to write widely and to serve as an economic adviser on
several boards and commissions for the federal government.
Wyoming readers will be interested in the chapter entitled
"Adventures in Land Reclamation" in which Johnson describes
his experiences as economic adviser to Elwood Mead in the 1920's.
Mention is made of the now controversial Riverton project.
It has often been noted that the West has historically been a
colonial area sending its natural wealth to the East and enriching
the nation while not enriching - indeed, while impoverishing -
itself. If this has been true in the case of coal, oil, uranium, gold
and silver, it has also been true in the case of western brains and
talent. The life of Alvin Johnson is an illustration of this some-
what lamentable fact.
Toning ton Walter L. Samson, Jr.
Treasure Coach from Deadwood. By Allan Vaughan Elston.
(Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1962.
224 pp. $2.95.)
Allan Vaughan Elston's latest western novel has as its authentic
setting Deadwood, South Dakota, and its environs. Once again
Mr. Elston has carefully researched into the background for his
story, and he includes such real personalities as Scott Davis, shot-
gun messenger for the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Co., and stage
employees Jesse Brown and Boone May, both famous in their own
rights.
This is the story of a gang of hold-up men and of buried treasure
which was not recovered. Should some readers read more fact
than fiction in this novel, the Wyoming State Archives and His-
torical Department may once again receive requests for stories of
stolen and buried gold. Such requests come in at fairly frequent
intervals, and this reviewer remembers one which is perhaps un-
forgettable. The writer, and from his letter and penmanship one
had to assume he had passed middle age some time ago, assured
us that if we could tell him within 200 feet where a buried treasure
was located, that whether it was gold, silver, or currency, he could
find it. The staff promptly decided that if we could locate such a
treasure that closely ourselves, we would take time out to go look
for it. At any rate we hope Treasure Coach from Deadwood will
not start another gold rush.
Cheyenne Lola M. Homsher
126 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Songs of the Sage by Mae Urbanek. ( Denver, Big Mountain Press,
1962 Illus. 242 pp. $3.50.)
This is a collection of poems on a variety of subjects, mostly
historical. Of these, several have previously been printed in the
Annals of Wyoming.
Part of the beauty of these poems is in their brevity. The
author condensed the life of Buffalo Bill into three four-line
stanzas, after she had studied three books about him. Yet this
twelve-line poem gives him plenty of stature and romance. The
last stanza reads:
"I, Pahaska, ride forever,
On old Brigham, swift and wise;
Westward to unbranded mountains,
Where the untamed eagle flies. "
Briefly beautiful is also the poem "John Colter," whose heroic
exploits are condensed into one page. This poem was especially
written for the annual meeting of the Historical Society held in
Cody, Wyoming, in 1957. Berneice Bird, a resident of Niobrara
County, did an excellent drawing of John Colter gazing in wonder-
ment at Old Faithful.
Songs of the Sage is a compilation of new poems and poems
previously published in the brochures: Niobrara Breezes, Wyo-
ming Winds, and Highlights of the Hills. It is well illustrated by
Elsie Christian of Lusk; Norman Evans of Gillette, and Berneice
Bird of Lusk.
The poems range from pre-historic "God's Sundial," known to
us as Devil's Tower, to the downright delightful "REA":
"So the waters light the prairies;
Every farm yard has its star,
On the hill tops, in the valleys,
Flouting darkness near and far."
Presidents, Indian chiefs, sky-pilots, cowboys, even homemakers
are included. There are also several songs with music: "Oh Pine-
Clad Hills" and "I Love A Garden". If "variety is the spice of
life" you will find it in Songs of the Sage.
Lusk Irma White
Nebraska Place Names. By Lilian L. Fitzpatrick. (Lincoln, Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 1960. 227 pp. $1.50).
This is an interesting little book. Besides giving, though often
sketchily, the origins of the place names in Nebraska, it contains
BOOK REVIEWS 127
many bits of history and many pleasant and often amusing details
of choices of names. The first portion, by Lilian Fitzpatrick, is
devoted to the origins of the names of Nebraska counties and
towns. The counties are arranged in alphabetical order and the
towns of a particular county follow, arranged also in alphabetical
order. To facilitate the use of the book there is at the end of
this first half an index of towns in alphabetical order, each town
followed by the county it is in. Unfortunately there is, however,
no listing of towns or counties by page number.
The only defect perhaps is that for too many names Miss Fitz-
patrick has either assembled only inadequate information or in-
cluded in her account the fewest facts possible. This would indi-
cate that she held back material she thought not important or
failed to follow her leads to the end — I say this in spite of her
statement in the preface that the study was as exhaustive as she
could make it. For example, she gives fairly full information
about Blair in Washington county: '"The history of Blair dates
back to 1 869 when the town was platted. It was named in honor
of John I. Blair (1820-1899), of New Jersey, the great railroad
builder and controller of railroad operations, who owned the land
on which the town is located. At one time Mr. Blair was president
of the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad Company. He was well
known for his philanthropic work. Blair is the county seat of
Washington county/' But she leaves Bushnell in Kimball county
up in the air: "Bushnell in Bushnell precinct, was named for a
civil engineer on the Union Pacific railroad. " For historical pur-
poses, Bushnell, whoever he was, is as important as Mr. Blair,
"the great railroad builder."
Other names that in themselves are intriguing are neglected —
for example, Tonic in Holt county. All Miss Fitzpatrick offers is
that it is "An inland village and a former post office in the south-
western part of Deloit precinct." Or Eclipse in Hooker county.
Miss Fitzpatrick writes: "The name was selected by three or four
ranchers meeting at the home of A. J. Gragg. It is thought that
the office was named independently, not after any other place or
person." It seems to me that she should have known more if she
knew that much — why would the name "Eclipse" or "Tonic" be
chosen? There was undoubtedly a story in the naming which
could have been found.
Some selections from J. T. Link's Origin of the Place Names
of Nebraska comprise the second half of this book. The sections
deal with the names of military establishments, rivers, lakes, topo-
graphical features, state parks, etc., thus complementing the work
done by Miss Fitzpatrick on the names of towns and counties.
The material he includes is adequate and often interesting, but his
presentation is less successful than Miss Fitzpatrick's. Her towns
and counties are listed in a kind of dictionary form — the name of
the place in heavy type followed by a paragraph of information.
128 ANNALS OF WYOMING
But Link has attempted to include his in connected paragraphs of
expository writing. As a result there are some dull stretches and
some obvious striving after connectives.
As a reference work, however, this little book will serve a useful
purpose for anyone interested in the subject it deals with. It is
worth owning and the modest cost makes that possible.
University of Wyoming Richard Mahan
The Old-Time Cowhand. By Ramon F. Adams, with illustrations
by Nick Eegenhofer. (New York, N. Y.: The McMillian
Company, 1961. 354 pp. $7.50.)
Here, at last, is the complete story of the cowboy; his ideas, his
ideals, his religion, his humor, his work, his equipment — in short,
whatever you want to know about the old-time cowhand you can
find out by referring to Mr. Adams' book.
It is to be hoped that this volume will be widely read for it is an
authentic and accurate presentation of what the old-time cowhand
was really like as compared with the idea of cowboys which the
public at large has which is, of course, based upon "western"
novels and stories and what may be seen at the neighborhood
movie palace or on the wee screen of the idiot box in the corner
of the living room.
For it is apparent that Mr. Adams has studied the subject in
detail and at length and, so far as this reviewer is concerned, what
he has to say about the old-time cowhand may be regarded as
correct.
Mr. Adams writes in the vernacular of the cowhand. He justi-
fies doing so as follows: "Book writin\ I reckon, should be
brushed and curried til it's plumb shiny and elegant. In writin'
this'n, 1 could maybe slick up my grammar some, but because it's
'bout the old-time cowhand I want to write it in his own language
jes' like he talked at the old chuck wagon. It seems more friendly,
and it shore gives more flavor." One's first reaction to this style
of writing may not be sympathetic but one is soon drawn in by
the skillful manner in which the author uses it and would have it
no other way.
The only shortcoming of the book is the lack of any index. Mr.
Adams defines and explains the origins of many, many words,
phrases, customs, and practices, many of which have become a
permanent part of American life. With no index, however, it is
difficult to track down a certain word or custom which, one is
confident, Mr. Adams has thoroughly explained somewhere in the
book, if one could only find it.
BOOK REVIEWS 129
Nick Eggenhofer's excellent drawings are liberally sprinkled
throughout the book and add much to its flavor.
All in all, it is a painstaking, thorough, and accurate picture of
the much misunderstood and caricatured cowhand. Anyone in-
terested in the history of the west will enjoy it.
Green River Vernon K. Hurd
The Second Man by Mae Urbanek. (Denver: Sage Books, 1962
Illus. 183 pp. $3.50.)
Did Laramie Peak which dominates the landscape in eastern
Wyoming and western Nebraska influence the lives of the pre-
historic and pre-Indian inhabitants of the plains? How did they
live? What God or Gods did they worship?
In the stony pits and huge stone dumps of the Spanish Diggings
located where Platte, Goshen and Niobrara Counties meet, is
silent evidence of the first organized industry in what is now
Wyoming. These pits, twenty to thirty feet deep, were mined
in quartzite with stone wedges. The brittle upper layers of these
purple and golden rocks were dumped in discard piles down the
hillsides. The lower layers were fashioned into crude tools.
Thousands of tipi rings, small in size, are scattered in village
groups over sections of adjoining land.
No Indians since the discovery of America worked so hard to
dig stone, or chipped such rough implements. These first makers
of artifacts needed the more easily worked quartzite for their
primitive efforts. Their pits were first discovered by cowboys
who thought the Spaniards had dug there for gold, and misnamed
them "Spanish Diggings." Scientists from several universities
explored these pits, picked up all available artifacts, and declared
them the workings of prehistoric people.
Inspired by the dominating presence of Laramie Peak, and the
sight of the now empty hills that once swarmed with busy people,
Mae Urbanek has written a novel revealing how they might have
lived, and loved, and worshipped. In The Second Man, Laramie
Peak becomes La-la-luma, the home of the Gods. Ula, an ambi-
tious young woman, who is filled with passion for progress away
from the primitive, superstitious ways of stone age culture, changes
the lives of Neesha's tribes. She steals the science of curing
sickness away from the Keela-Koo-Koos, the painted medicine
men. From Rumbo's hand Ula takes the great whip, symbol of
his ruling power, and replaces it with the bow and arrow.
This drama of man's upward struggle is told in simple, compel-
ling style that shows a keen understanding of human nature, spiced
with sly humor. A quotation follows:
130 ANNALS OF WYOMING
"Heavy fingers closed more tightly around the magic rock.
Noiselessly the naked arm withdrew into the shrubbery of the
river bank. A pheasant cock stepped into the clearing, puffed
out his breast, and jauntily walked in circles. He did not see the
crouched hulk of the naked man, whose black eyes burned through
a mop of black hair streaming about his face Like a
catapult the arm of the man swung forward, releasing the rock ....
the rainbow bird fell .... the woman now came forward, carrying
the child. Easing her burden to the ground, she snatched the
denuded bird from the hands of the man; and slit it open with a
savage thrust of her small fingers. She ran back to the child, knelt
and held the quivering liver to its mouth. The child showed no
interest in food. Its eyelids fluttered, but did not open; fluttered
again and then stilled forever."
The book is filled with a great love of nature and the open plains
dominated by Laramie Peak. Quoting again: "Ula reached the
crest. With a dull thud the heavy robe fell. She straightened and
stood free, the wild wind catching her tangled hair and blowing
it back from her face. The sky was glory-brushed with more spirit
fires than Ula had ever seen. Calmly in the midst of all their
blazing beauty rose La-la-luma, the sacred blue hill, filling the
distance, a living, quivering thing calling, calling, ever
calling."
Using all known facts and conjectures about these primitive
'■first" people, Mrs. Urbanek has written this colorful novel filled
with action, mother love, and romance. In the ever-powerful
presence of La-la-luma, Laramie Peak, is told the first great love
story of Wyoming, The Second Man.
Lusk Irma White
Contributors
Olga Moore Arnold, one of Wyoming's nationally recognized
writers, was born in Buffalo, attended schools there and in Sheri-
dan, and received her B. A. degree from the University of Wyo-
ming. She has published two books, Windswept and /'// Meet You
in the Lobby, and has had short stories published in many maga-
zines including the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal,
Good Housekeeping and McCalls. One story was filmed by RKO
as "You Can't Beat Love". Her husband was the late Carl Ar-
nold, former dean of the University of Wyoming law school. He
was later associated with the Federal Communications Commission
in Washington, D. C. Mrs. Arnold makes her home in Washing-
ton where she writes for the United States Information Agency.
Dick J. Nelson was born in Mitchell County, Kansas, in 1875,
and came to Crook County, Wyoming, with his family in 1888.
His father, a rancher, was a member of the first board of county
commissioners of the newly created Weston County. Dick Nelson,
in addition to ranching, worked for the C. B. and Q. Railroad
for 45 years, retiring as division superintendent at Sheridan in
1939. He has since lived in San Diego, Calif. He is the author
of several historical booklets on Wyoming, "Only a Cow Country",
"Wyoming and South Dakota Black Hills", "The Old West and
Custer's Last Stand", and "Wyoming's Big Horn Basin of Merit".
More information about him is included in the story of May Nel-
son Dow in this issue of the Annals.
Laura Nelson Harl has lived in Wyoming since 1888. Her
parents, the Alfred Nelsons, were among the earliest settlers in
present Weston County. Her first job was as a printer's devil
for her brother Frank, who put out a newspaper in Tubbtown.
now a ghost town near Newcastle. She married James Franklin
Hart, who, in 1914, became the first automobile dealer in northern
Wyoming. They later operated a cattle and dude ranch near
Riverton, which is still owned by her son. After her husband's
death, Mrs. Hart moved to Lander. She is interested in Wyoming
history, archaeology, anthropology and geology. Several of her
poems and historical articles have been published under the pen
name of Shelia Hart. She is a sister of May Nelson Dow, whose
story appears in this Annals of Wyoming.
Burton S. Hill, Buffalo attorney, is a native Wyomingite. He
is a graduate of the University of Nebraska and received his law
degree at the University of Michigan. Hill is a veteran of World
132 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Wars I and II. He and his wife have two sons, Burton, Jr., of
Albuquerque, N. M., and Robert A., who is associated with his
father in the law firm of Hill and Hill, of Buffalo. The study of
western history is one of Hill's hobbies. He is a member of
Masonic organizations, the Elks and the American Legion.
Mabel Brown is a native of Colorado, but has lived in Wyo-
ming since she attended high school in Newcastle. Her husband,
Wesley Brown, was born in Cambria, and is a member of a pioneer
Wyoming family. They have two married daughters. Mrs. Brown
is a free lance writer and newspaper correspondent, and is a mem-
ber of the Press Women. A charter member of the Weston
County Chapter of the Wyoming State Historical Society, she has
served as president, and as chairman of numerous committees in
the chapter. She has been very active in 4-H Club work and has
received several awards in recognition of her leadership and par-
ticipation. As a qualifying candidate for Mother of the Year in
1959, she holds a special membership in the Wyoming Mothers'
Association. Her hobbies include history, photography, leather-
craft, nature study, collecting books on Western Americana and
collecting sun purpled glass.
Elizabeth J. Thorpe was born in Newcastle where she and her
husband, Dr. V. L. Thorpe, and their five children now make their
home. She attended San Diego State College and was graduated
from the University of Wyoming in 1941. She taught school for a
year before her marriage. She is a member of the Weston County
Chapter of the Wyoming State Historical Society, the Twentieth
Century Club of Newcastle and the P. E. O. Sisterhood. Her
hobbies are writing, history and painting.
Mrs. Thelma Gatchell Condit. See Annals of Wyoming,
Vol. 29, No. 1, April, 1957, pp. 120-121.
Elizabeth Keen. See Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 33, No. 2,
October, 1961, p. 240.
Mae Urbanek. See Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 27, No. 2.
October, 1955, p. 251.
J. K. Moore, Jr. See Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 27, No. 2,
October. 1955, p. 250.
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
The Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department has as its func-
tion the collection and preservation of the record of the people of Wyo-
ming. Ft maintains a historical library, a museum and the state archives.
The aid of the citizens of Wyoming is solicited in the carrying out of its
function. The Department is anxious to secure and preserve records and
materials now in private hands where they cannot be long preserved. Such
records and materials include:
Biographical materials of pioneers: diaries, letters, account books, auto-
biographical accounts.
Business records of industries of the State: livestock, mining, agricul-
ture, railroads, manufacturers, merchants, small business establishments,
and of professional men as bankers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, ministers,
and educators.
Private records of individual citizens, such as correspondence, manuscript
materials and scrapbooks.
Records of organizations active in the religious, educational, social,
economic and political life of the State, including their publications such
as yearbooks and reports.
Manuscript and printed articles on towns, counties, and any significant
topic dealing with the history of the State.
Early newspapers, maps, pictures, pamphlets, and books on western
subjects.
Current publications by individuals or organizations throughout the
State.
Museum materials with historical significance: early equipment, Indian
artifacts, relics dealing with the activities of persons in Wyoming and with
special events in the State's history.
m
L^LAK "ft£
6 oinr
Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department
October J 962
WYOMING STATE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND
HISTORICAL BOARD
Fred W. Marble. Chairman Cheyenne
E. A. Littleton Gillette
Henry Jones Laramie
Mrs. Dwight Wallace Evanston
E. W. Mass Casper
Mrs. Wilmot C. Hamm ..Rock Springs
Mrs. William Miller Lusk
Paul Stadius 7 hermopolis
Attorney-General Norman Gray, Ex-Officio
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
STAFF
Lola M. Homsher Director
Henryetta Berry Assistant Director
Mrs. Ruth J. Bradley Chief, Historical Division
Mrs. Bonnie Forsyth Chief, Archives & Records Division
ANNALS OF WYOMING
The Annals of Wyoming is published semi annually in April and
October and is received by all members of the Wyoming State Historical
Society. Copies of current issues may be purchased for $1.00 each.
Available copies of earlier issues are also for sale. A price list may be
obtained by writing to the Editor.
Communications should be addressed to the Editor. The Editor does
not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by
contributors.
Copyright, 1962, by the Wyoming State Archives and
Historical Department.
Mnate of Wyoming
Volume 34
October 1962
Number 2
Lola M. Homsher
Editor
Ruth J. Bradley
Assistant Editor
Katherine Halverson
Assistant Ed i tot-
Published Biannually by the
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
Official Publication
of the
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OFFICERS 1962-1963
President, Charles Ritter Cheyenne
First Vice President, Neal Miller Rawlins
Second Vice President, Mrs. Charles Hord Casper
Secretary-Treasurer, Miss Maurine Carley -Cheyenne
Executive Secretary, Miss Lola M. Homsher Cheyenne
Past Presidents:
Frank L. Bowron, Casper 1953-1955
William L. Marion, Lander 1955-1956
Dr. DeWitt Dominick, Cody 1956-1957
Dr. T. A. Larson, Laramie 1957-1958
A. H. MacDougall, Rawlins 1958-1959
Mrs. Thelma G. Condit, Buffalo 1959-1960
E. A. Littleton, Gillette 1960-1961
Ednf.ss Kimball Wilkins, Casper ... 1961-1962
The Wyoming State Historical Society was organized in October 1953.
Membership is open to anyone interested in history. County Historical
Society Chapters have been organized in Albany, Big Horn, Campbell, Car-
bon, Fremont, Goshen, Johnson, Laramie, Natrona, Park, Platte, Sheridan,
Sweetwater, Washakie, Weston, and Uinta counties.
State Dues:
Life Membership $50.00
Joint Life Membership (Husband and wife) 75.00
Annual Membership 3.50
Joint Annual Membership (Two persons of same family at
same address.) 5.00
County dues are in addition to state dues and are set by county organ-
izations.
Send State membership dues to:
Wyoming State Historical Society
Executive Headquarters
State Office Building
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Zable of Contents
FORT LARAMIE'S IRON BRIDGE 137
John Dishon McDermott
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 145
Gordon S. Chappell
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 163
Howard Lee Wilson
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 175
PIONEER GEOLOGIST OF THE HAYDEN SURVEY
PAT1EE, THE LOTTERY KING 193
THE OMAHA AND WYOMING LOTTERIES
POEM-TO THE LITTLE BIG HORN 211
Hans Kleiber
SADDLES 2 1 3
A. S. (Bud) Gillespie
WYOMING\S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS ... 218
Elizabeth Keen
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL-TREK NO. 3 235
Trek No. 13 of the Emigrant Trail Treks
Compiled by Maurine Carley
BOOK REVIEWS
Branch, The Cowboy and His Interpreters 250
Whitman, The Troopers 251
Hine, Edward Kern and American Expansion 252
Laramie County Historical Society, Early Cheyenne Homes,
1880-1890 253
Collins, Great Western Rides 254
Moore, Souls and Saddlebags '.. 255
Thorpe, Brown, —and then there was one, the Story of Cambria,
Tubbtown and Newcastle 256
Mattes, Colter's Hell and Jackson's Hole 257
Smith, Cow Chips V Cactus 258
Bison Books and Yale Books Reprints 258-260
CONTRIBUTORS 260-261
ILLUSTRATIONS ACCOMPANYING ARTICLES
Sketch, Fort Laramie, 1860's Cover
Fort Laramie's Iron Bridge 136
The Bishop Who Bid For Fort Laramie 164
Albert Charles Peale 176, 181. 186
Pattee, The Lottery King 196, 202, 203
Saddles 212
Map: Overland Stage Trail-Trek No. 3 234
Jort Carattiie 's Iron Bridge
By
John Dishon McDermott
Before the completion of transcontinental railroads, emigrants
followed the rivers when they wound their way westward. Occa-
sionally, they found it necessary to cross from one side of a river
to another, and during flood season the maneuver was always
difficult and sometimes perilous. In the beginning, men with cattle
and horses usually swam the streams or built crude rafts to trans-
port women, children, and goods over them. A few enterprising
men established ferries and operated them for a price, and, finally,
there were bridges which made the crossings simple and comfort-
able.
One of these western bridges spans the North Platte River about
two miles from old Fort Laramie. Constructed in 1875, the bridge
is the oldest such structure in the state of Wyoming and is believed
to be the oldest existing military bridge west of the Mississippi
River.
Fort Laramie was about halfway between St. Louis and the West
Coast so most emigrants wished to stop there to replenish their
supplies, mail letters back to the states, and repair their wagons.
Those who wished to visit the post had to cross either the Laramie
or the North Platte depending on the trail they had taken through
Nebraska and southern Wyoming.
In the 1 840's, 50's, and 6CTs, most emigrants traveled on the
south bank of the North Platte and, consequently, had to cross the
Laramie to reach the post. A few pioneers, namely the Mormons,
blazed a trail on the opposite side which left the North Platte
between them and the fort. Since the greater number chose to
journey on the south bank, the first bridge builders concentrated
on spanning the narrower tributary. In 1851, two traders erected
a bridge over the Laramie and charged from $2.50 to $3.00 per
wagon.1 In 1873, a second bridge crossed the Laramie a little
farther upstream.2
Before 1 875, emigrants either forded or ferried the North Platte.
During the spring and early summer, the river was in flood stage
1. Merrill J. Mattes and Thor Borresen, "The Historic Approaches to
Fort Laramie" (1947), 30. Manuscript at Fort Laramie National Historic
Site.
2. Plan of Fort Laramie in 1873, Records of the War Department,
National Archives. Hereafter cited as RWD.
138 ANNALS OF WYOMING
and extremely difficult to cross without loss of property or life. In
June, 1850, at least six men drowned in attempted crossings, and
one pioneer described the river as being 250 yards wide and 12
feet deep.8
With the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 came
the end of the great covered wagon migrations. Interest turned
from spanning the Laramie to bridging the Platte, for Montana and
South Dakota produced gold and the Sioux settled temporarily on
reservations in northern Nebraska which had to be supplied by
wagons from Cheyenne and other U.P. stations.
The citizens of Cheyenne took the initiative in the movement to
persuade the government to build a bridge over the Platte near Fort
Laramie. Cheyenne served as the great freight outfitting capital
of the region. Between fifteen and twenty million pounds of gov-
ernment goods passed through the city each year, and freighters
purchased their supplies from Cheyenne businessmen before whip-
ping their teams over the dusty trail to the agencies and forts.4
In 1873, rumors swept Cheyenne that the freighters might move
their headquarters to the rival U.P. towns of Sidney and North
Platte because they found it difficult to ford the Platte on the
Cheyenne trail."' At first the townspeople tried to induce the
county to construct a ferry over the river, but the commissioners
declined.6
Next the townspeople hit upon the idea of a government spon-
sored bridge and enlisted the aid of their territorial delegate to
Congress, W. R. Steele. On February 24, 1874, Steele introduced
a bill in the House which read as follows:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled. That there shall be located
and constructed, under the direction of the Secretary of War, a gov-
ernment military bridge across the North Platte River at or near Fort
Laramie, in the Territory of Wyoming; and the Secretary of War is
hereby authorized to expend for the building of said bridge any sum
of money necessary therefor, not exceeding fifteen thousand dollars.7
Two days later, Steele wrote the Secretary of War, W. W. Bel-
knap, asking support for the bill. He reminded Belknap that the
bridge would enable the troops at Fort Laramie to control the
Sioux north of the river and facilitate the movement of men and
supplies should hostilities occur at Red Cloud or Spotted Tail
agencies. Steele suggested that Belknap write General Ord, com-
3. Mattes and Borresen. "Historic Approaches", 29.
4. J. H. Triegs, Historv of Cheyenne and Northern Wyoming (Omaha,
1876), 16.
5. Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 12, 1873.
6. Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 14, 1873.
7. House of Representatives Report No. 2178, 43rd Congress, 1st session.
FORT LARAMIE'S IRON BRIDGE 139
mander of the Department of the Platte, for further information
concerning the necessity for a bridge at that point. K
Following Steele's suggestion, Belknap contacted Ord who re-
plied to the proposal in the affirmative. He pointed out that the
North Platte was not fordable for two or three months every year
and the ferry was often carried away during high water, virtually
isolating Fort Laramie from the agencies. If a plan to establish
military camps near the agencies materialized, Ord felt the bridge
would be needed to transport men and supplies into the region.1'
Belknap wired the appropriations committee on June 4 and
requested $15,000 to build the bridge.10 Congress passed the bill
on June 23, and the following day Belknap ordered Lt. General
Sheridan, commander of the Division of the Missouri, to secure
plans and estimates.11
Sheridan referred the matter to the Department of the Platte in
Omaha which advertised for bids. The following notice appeared
in local newspapers:
Plans and estimates, with bids, for the construction of an open truss
bridge and roadway for heavy wagons, across the Platte river near
Fort Laramie, Wyoming, will be received at the office of Gen. A. J.
Perry, Chief Quartermaster, Department of the Platte, until 1 1 a.m.,
Monday, August 10th.
The distance from bank to bank is about four hundred and ten (410)
feet; from the deepest part of the river to top of bank is about fifteen
(15) feet: the bottom is coarse gravel and cobble stones; current swift
and unchangeable; water in deepest place is about three and one-half
(3Vi) feet, when at ordinary stage.
Bidders will submit their own plans, and separate bids will be received
for the substructure and superstructure. In awarding the contract,
the plans best suited for the purpose will be duly considered; each bid
must state the time required for the construction of the bridge, accord-
ing to the plans submitted, and will state the period within which the
bidder will complete the bridge, and the character of substructure
which should be of crib-work or piling resting on mudsills. Pine
timber in abundance is within forty-five (45) miles of the point.12
The Department of the Platte received eleven bids on August
10. Three of these were from regular bridge builders and con-
sidered worthy of a second look. Assistant Quartermaster Daniel
H. Rucker forwarded the papers to the Division of the Missouri on
August 15 and recommended that the bid of the King Bridge and
Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio, be accepted.18
8. Steele to Belknap, February 26, 1874, RWD.
9. E. O. C. Ord to Headquarters, Division of the Missouri, March 12,
1874, RWD.
10. W. W. Belknap to War Department, June 3, 1874, RWD.
11. W. W. Belknap to Lt. General Sheridan, June 24, 1874, RWD.
12. Newspaper clipping found in RWD.
13. Rucker to Assistant Adjutant General, Division of Missouri, August
15, 1874, RWD.
140 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Owned by Zenas and James King, the King Bridge Company had
been in business since 1858.11 John K. Manchester represented
the company and delivered the bids in Omaha. The King plan
called for an iron truss bridge of three spans which would total
420 feet. Priced at $25 per lineal foot, the bridge would cost
$10,500, and Assistant Quartermaster Rucker felt the $4,500 left
over from the appropriation would more than cover the cost of the
substructure and other additional expenses. Rucker also recom-
mended that an army engineer supervise all work done by the
contractor and the government.15
General Sheridan forwarded the bids to the War Department on
August 17, recommending that the King proposal be accepted,16
and on November 12, Chief Quartermaster Perry signed a contract
with the Kings for the bridge.17
After the contract had been awarded, one of the unsuccessful
bidders, Henry T. Clarke of Bellevue, Nebraska, wrote his con-
gressman and charged that undue influence had been used by the
King Company.18 He based his charge on a letter received from
another unsuccessful bidder, A. W. Hubbard of Omaha, who re-
counted a meeting with John Manchester on the evening of Novem-
ber 1 in the Grand Central Hotel. Hubbard stated that Manchester
told him that he was personally acquainted with the officers who
opened the bids and had "set up champagne" for them in return for
which they promised to do all they could for the King Company
proposal.19
Representative Crounse of Nebraska wrote Belknap and de-
manded an investigation. If undue influence had been used,
Crounse wanted the bidding reopened.20 In subsequent corre-
spondence between the War Department and the parties involved,
Manchester denied the accusation as did J. H. Belcher, an assistant
quartermaster who opened the bids in the absence of General Perry
of August 10.21 The War Department dropped the matter at that
point and confirmed the validity of the contract.
The King Company shipped the fabricated bridge by rail to
Cheyenne, and in early February, 1875, wagons filled with iron
beams and girders headed for Fort Laramie.22 According to the
14. Information supplied by the Postmaster of Cleveland, Ohio.
15. Rucker to Assistant Adjutant General, August 15, 1874.
16. General E. D. Townsend to War Department, August 21, 1874,
RWD.
17. Contract in RWD.
18. Henry T. Clarke to S. Crounse, December 10, 1874, RWD.
19. A. W. Hubbard to Henry T. Clarke, December 3, 1874, RWD.
20. S. Crounse to W. W. Belknap, December 15, 1874, RWD.
21. John R. Manchester to General A. J. Perry, February 10, 1875; J. H.
Belcker to General Perry, February 15, 1875, RWD.
22. Agnes Wright Spring, The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and
Express Routes (Glendale, California, 1949), 53.
FORT LARAMIE'S IRON BRIDGE 141
editor of the Cheyenne Daily Leader, work on the piers and abut-
ments would have to wait until after high water so the bridge would
not be completed until August or September. However, he assured
freighters that the Platte could still be crossed safely as the quar-
termaster of Fort Laramie was getting a ferry in readiness.-15
Fort Laramie's commanding officer received instructions from
the Assistant General of the Department of the Platte to quarry
stone for the substructure of the bridge when requested to do so
by the Chief Quartermaster.-4 Work on the substructure probably
began in late July when the level of the North Platte returned to
normal. Captain William S. Stanton of the Army Engineers super-
vised the construction.-"'
Operating under rather primitive conditions, workers ran into
considerable difficulty. One span broke loose and had to be
raised from the waters of the Platte.-" Most free hands in the
neighborhood found the prospect of panning for gold in the Black
Hills more stimulating than working for wages, and the army had
to furnish twelve men as laborers in mid-October to insure com-
pletion of the bridge.27
On November 20, the editor of the Leader proclaimed that the
bridge over the Platte should be considered a thing accomplished
for the second span had been raised on the 1 2th and the third span
would be in place by the end of the month. -s The editor reported
on the 30th that the army had finished the bridge except for the
approaches from each shore which he estimated would take another
six days. He stated that wagons could use the structure on Decem-
ber 8 and praised Delegate Steele for his "unyielding efforts" in the
state's behalf. He felt that Cheyenne was stepping into an era of
great material development, for the bridge would make the city
"the great entrepot for all who are in the new gold regions and all
others who propose to go to the Black Hills in the future. "29
During the middle of December, Engineer Stanton inspected the
bridge by leaving thirteen army wagons loaded with stone on each
of the arches for several days. According to the Cheyenne news-
paper, "the bridge stood this severe test without showing a sign
23. Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 22, 1875.
24. Assistant Adjutant General to Fort Laramie Commanding Officer,
May 10, 1875, Department of the Platte File Book 26, Records of Adjutant
General, Washington, D. C.
25. Maynard C. Allen, "1875 Bridge", in Engineers Bulletin (January,
1940), 1.
26. Interview of Johnny O'Brien by Merrill Mattes, Fort Laramie, June
28, 1946.
27. L. P. Bradley to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, October
12, 1875, Letter Book 70, Department of the Platte, RAG.
28. Cheyenne Daily Leader, November 20, 1875.
29. Cheyenne Daily Leader, November 30, 1875.
142 ANNALS OF WYOMING
of weakness."30 The army, however, didn't officially accept the
bridge until February.31
The completed bridge found favor in the eyes of emigrants and
soldiers. Three spans humped the river, and each was 140 feet in
length. The trusses were about 12 feet from center to center. The
three top chords were made of 8 inch channels riveted to two 3/8
inch by 10 inch plates while the bottom chords were common I
bars. Web members were cross shaped and adjustable. Workers
formed the piers out of four 8 inch I bars sloped from bottom to
top.32
The bridge bolstered the claim that the Cheyenne to Deadwood
route was the best one to the Black Hills, and assuaged the fears of
those who thought the government might not open the gold regions
for settlement. It had been one thing to sneak into the Hills on
foot, but it was an entirely different matter for wagons to rumble
across the new bridge and the sacred hunting grounds.33 Lt. John
Bourke commented on the increase in travel past Fort Laramie
soon after the bridge had been accepted:
From this point and on the road saw many adventurers journeying to
the Black Hills their wagons and animals looked new and good as a
general thing The reason the Cheyenne route is preferred is the
new iron bridge across the North Platte . . . which gives us secure
passage not found on the other trails leading out from Sidney, North
Platte and elsewhere. H4
The iron bridge also influenced the establishment of a stage line
soon to become immortal in the annals of the West.35 The safe
passage the bridge afforded lured stage magnates toward Cheyenne,
and on February 3, 1876, the first coach of the Cheyenne and
Black Hills Stage, Mail, and Express line rolled out of the territorial
capital and for eleven years carried adventures over the bridge and
into the promised gold fields.
Cheyenne businessmen, aware of outfitting profits, advertised
the route and assured customers that the road was well guarded.
The Union Pacific Railroad representative in Omaha added his
voice in agreement. The ticket agent, Thomas L. Kimball, pre-
pared a circular which praised the road over those leading from
30. Cheyenne Doily Leader, December 20, 1875. The newspaper may
have stretched the point a bit for John Hunton claimed that one of the piers
settled slightly under the tremendous weight and had to be rebuilt. L. G.
Flannery, ed.. John Hunton's Diary, 1873-75, Vol. I (Lingle, Wyoming,
1956). 52.
31. Spring, Cheyenne and Black Hills Sta^e, 42.
32. Allen, "1875 Bridge", 1.
33. Spring, Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage, 76-77.
34. Quoted in J. W. Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River
(Norman. Oklahoma, 1961), 16.
35. Spring, Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage, 42.
FORT LARAMIE'S IRON BRIDGE 143
Sidney and North Platte. Kimball mentioned the bridge and gave
additional reasons for advocating the Cheyenne route. He stated
that it was presently the main road to the Black Hills, four military
forts or encampments guarded its length, the telegraph which had
to be protected paralleled it, and stage companies had constructed
little stations about every ten or fifteen miles all the way to Dead-
wood. 3e He forgot to mention the fact that the railroad fare from
Omaha to Cheyenne was greater than the fare from Omaha to
Sidney or North Platte.
In the beginning, the army exacted tolls from non-government
users. The commanding officer of Fort Laramie felt that since
fully one-half of the travel would consist of citizens engaged in
freighting, and since the heavy wagons would cause a great deal
of wear and tear on the bridge, a fee should be charged. The
money collected could be used for making necessary repairs.
On February 17, the Secretary of War informed Congress that a
system of tolls had been established and requested that a law be
passed giving the post commander authority to use the money for
repairs on the bridge. Normally, fees collected by government
agencies automatically returned to the general treasury.37 Con-
gress denied the request.38
By May 1 , Chief Quartermaster Meigs and other high officials in
Washington agreed that it was a blunder to charge a fee for the use
of the bridge. General Sherman recommended that the toll be
abolished, the Secretary of War concurred on the 7th, and shortly
thereafter citizens crossed without charge. 39
The bridge served the army faithfully for fifteen years. By
1890, Fort Laramie had outlived its usefulness. Covered wagons
were a thing of the past, railroads bypassed the post, and Fort
Robinson dominated Indian control. On March 2, the last regular
garrison left Fort Laramie for Fort Logan, Colorado, and on April
9, the army sold the buildings and fixtures at public auction.40
On April 13, J. M. Carey, Wyoming's territorial representative,
wrote Redfield Proctor, Secretary of War, and asked that the iron
bridge together with two wooden bridges over the Laramie be
turned over to the county. Carey remarked that the bridges would
probably bring little if sold and they would be indispensable in the
movement of troops between Fort Russell and Fort Robinson.41
36. Circular attached as fold out to back page of Triggs, History of
Cheyenne and Northern Wyoming.
37. Senate Executive Document No. 27, 44th Congress, 1st session.
38. House of Representatives Report No. 829, 44th Congress, 1st session.
39. General Sherman to Secretary of War, May 1, 1876. RWD.
40. Leroy Hafen and Francis Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of
the West, 1834-1890 (Glendale, California, 1938), 394.
41. Mattes and Borresen, "Historic Approaches", 55.
144 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Proctor wired the Department of the Platte to request that the
bridges be withdrawn from sale.42 He received a reply on April 16
informing him that although the auction had already taken place,
the bridges had not been sold.43
Proctor wired the Secretary of the Interior, John Noble, on May
3, informing him that he planned to issue a revocable license and
wished to know if there were any objections.44 Secretary Noble
replied on May 1 5 supporting the move.45 Proctor sent the neces-
sary papers to Carey on May 20, and after the signatures of county
authorities had been obtained, the license was granted on June 5.4(i
The President of the United States transferred the Fort Laramie
military reservation to the Department of the Interior on June 10.47
The citizens of Laramie County wished to obtain more formal
control of the bridges and managed to get a bill introduced in
Congress for the purpose. On June 4, 1894, Congress passed the
bill which donated the bridges to Laramie County on the condition
that the county keep them "in repair and open, free of charge, for
the use of the traveling public and the military authorities of the
United States." If the county failed to conform to the provisions
of the law, the bridges automatically reverted to the United States.48
In 1911, when Goshen County was formed out of Laramie County,
the bridge came under its jurisdiction.
The bridge over the Platte functioned perfectly for many years;
in fact, automobiles and heavy trucks crossed the structure until
1958 when Goshen County constructed a new concrete bridge a
few yards north. On September 6, 1961, the Goshen County com-
missioners, in a public spirited move, waived all rights to the
bridge so it would revert to the United States. 4!l The bridge is now
under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service at Fort Laramie
National Historic Site where it will be preserved and protected for
the benefit of the American people.
42. Secretary Proctor to Quartermaster Gillis, Department of the Platte,
April 15. RWD.
43. Quartermaster Gillis to Secretary Proctor, April 16, 1890, RWD.
44. Secretary Proctor to Secretary Noble, May 3, 1890, RWD.
45. Secretary Noble to Secretary Proctor, May 15, 1890, RWD.
46. Secretary Proctor to Representative Carey, June 6, 1890, RWD.
47. General Orders No. 60, Headquarters of the Army, June 10, 1890,
RWD.
48. 28 Stat., 91 of June 4, 1894.
49. Original at Fort Laramie National Historic Site.
Zke fortifications
of Old fort £ a ramie
By
Gordon S. Chappell
In the turbulent years of peace following the War of 1812, the
leaders of the United States formulated new policies, both domestic
and foreign, which were to govern the Nation's actions for many
years to come. In the military sphere two new ideas developed
which were intended to encircle the country with a defensive ring
of fortifications.
The first of these ideas — coastal defense — was a reaction to
successful British landings on our shores in the recent war, in par-
ticular, the British invasion of Chesapeake Bay and the attacks on
Fort McHenry, Baltimore, and the Nation's capitol. New forts
were planned to guard every bay, inlet, and river that emptied into
the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
The second new facet of military strategy developed more slowly
as a result of more obscure events, but became equally fixed and
dogmatic in the Nation's mind. This was the concept, doomed
even before it was completely formulated, of a "permanent" west-
ern frontier centered along the Mississippi-Missouri Basins and
stretching from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. It was
partially a result of the equally ridiculous notion that all of the
land immediately west of this line, because it seemed to consist
largely of treeless, grass-covered plains and barren deserts, was
This article is a by-product of the author's work as a seasonal ranger-
historian at Fort Laramie National Historic Site in 1960 and 1961. It could
not have been done without the wholehearted cooperation of National Park
Service personnel. Superintendent Charles Sharp not only made possible
the research, which I did on my own time in addition to my formal duties,
but also provided great encouragement. Mr. Merrill Mattes. NPS Historian
for Region Two, based in Omaha, was kind enough to read the article and
provide many valuable suggestions towards its improvement. Vigorous and
stimulating discussions of architectural matters with Dr. Robert H. Gann
were, more than any other factor, responsible for my starting work in the
first place. Recent work by Fort Laramie Historian John McDermott pro-
vided new insight into many facets of Fort Laramie's history. Museum
Curator Rex Wilson afforded valuable archaeological assistance. I must
also mention Sally Johnson, William Jeffreys, Lois Woodard, and Slim
Warthen, all of whom played supporting roles in this endeavor. My sincer-
est thanks to them all.
— Gordon S. Chappell
146 ANNALS OF WYOMING
infertile or sterile, entirely unsuited to farming. The eastern farmer
and settler had found it necessary to cut acres of trees and burn out
the stumps; had found it necessary to clear the land before he could
farm. He equated fertility with virgin forests, sterility with treeless
ground. Now he faced a new land and was fooled by it; thus
Americans could ignore the fertility of the plains which was evident
in their rich though treeless growth. This western land, the people
and their shortsighted leaders decided, could be deeded permanent-
ly to the Indians, since it was inconceivable that Americans would
ever want it or could ever use it. Indeed, even eastern Indians,
such as the Cherokees and the Seminoles, could be forcibly moved
into this country, and a military frontier of strong forts could sep-
arate it from the civilized portion of the Nation.
Even as this policy was being implemented there were portents
of its failure in the Western fur trade, the rich trade across the
Santa Fe Trail with Mexico, and the growing American settlement
of Texas. And in Oregon Country, Americans discovered another
land like that they had known, a land of rolling tree-covered hills,
incredibly fertile, they believed, free for the asking and the cost
of the trip across half a continent. So wagons cut their way across
the fertile soil of the prairies, the alkali of the deserts, and the rocks
of the mountains, and the deepening scar on the land was called
the Oregon Trail.
By 1 846, ownership of Oregon Country was disputed by En-
gland and the United States. Congress quickly authorized three
military posts, Forts Kearny, Laramie, and Hall, along the Oregon
Trail. Their mission was to guard a military line of supply to
Oregon as well as to protect and encourage emigration. Congress
also established a special regiment of cavalry, to be known as the
"Regiment of Mountain Rifles", which was intended to build these
three posts, garrison them, and seize and hold Oregon against the
British.
Before this task could be accomplished, statesmen worked out a
temporary compromise with England, and at the other end of the
western border, failed to work out a compromise with Mexico.
The Mounted Rifles became involved in the Mexican War and it
was not until this war was concluded, in 1849, that the Rifles could
turn to their original task. The treaty with England had post-
poned, not resolved, the argument over Oregon, and meanwhile
there were emigrants to help and protect from the Indians.
This was a new Army, using new tactics; it had been tempered
and tested in Mexico, but though it had won, it still had faults. It
had an element of senility, and also the youthful vigor of Southern
gentlemen in its cadre of officers. Cavalry had been abolished
after the War of 1812 but had been reintroduced in 1833 in the
form of dragoons, and now the Dragoons and Mounted Rifles had
perfected their tactics and were effective and impressive. Yet
commanders did not know how to use their mounted troops against
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 147
the Indians. They believed that the dragoons and rifles should
march and patrol the wilderness in the summer, but return to
civilization and hibernate during the winter.
The old form of stockaded military post was no longer universal-
ly practical on the frontier. The old building materials — logs for
stockades and buildings — were seldom abundant at new military
sites. Fort Laramie was to be one of the first of these new military
posts in the Trans-Mississippi Frontier, and its evolution set, in
many respects, the pattern for the western military posts yet to be
built. Fort Laramie lacked permanent fortifications, and its con-
struction, particularly in the realm of defensive measures, provides
a general picture of the western frontier military post as well as a
fascinating view of men and ideas facing a new frontier.
On June 17, 1849, Major Winslow F. Sanderson, Regiment of
Mounted Rifles, rode up to the eroded adobe walls of the fur trade
post called Fort Laramie with troops for its first military garrison.
He knew that he was not the first Army officer to arrive there; he
knew that 1st Lieutenant Daniel P. Woodbury, Corps of Engineers,
had preceded him up the old Oregon Trail.1
These two officers were under orders to locate a suitable site
and begin construction of a new military post somewhere in the
vicinity of the existing American Fur Company establishment on
the Laramie River. Two days after his arrival at this decaying
center of the fur trade, Major Sanderson reported to the assistant
adjutant general in St. Louis: "'This was found to be the most
eligible (site) for a Military Post, and was purchased at my request
on the 26th Inst, by Lieut. Woodbury, at a cost of Four Thousand
Dollars from Mr. Bruce Husband, Agent of the American Fur
Company . . . ."2
The old fur company fort had been built in 1841 to replace an
even earlier cottonwood log structure, and was named Fort John,
after John Sarpy, a member of the fur company. Later it was
known as Fort John-on-the-Laramie, a cumbersome name which
either passers-by or a confused fur company clerk simply shortened
1. Daniel Phineas Woodbury was appointed to the Military Academy on
July 1, 1832, and graduated sixth in his class. Commissioned a 2d lieuten-
ant in the 3d Artillery on November 1, 1836, he was eventually attached
as a brevet 2nd lieutenant to the exclusive Corps of Engineers. Woodbury
was promoted 1st lieutenant in the Corps on July 7, 1938. Francis B. Heit-
man. Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army. Wash-
ington: Government Printing Office; 1903. When he came to Fort Laramie
in 1849, Woodbury was also in charge of the construction of Fort Kearny,
Nebraska. See letter from Asst. Adjutant General D. C. Buell to Maj. W. F.
Sanderson, in Fort Laramie Correspondence, 1849-1874. Typescript file at
Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming.
2. LeRoy Hafen and Marion Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of
the West, 1834 - 1890. Glendale: The Arthur H. Clark Co.; 1938. Pp.
141-142.
148 ANNALS OF WYOMING
to Fort Laramie. Fort John3 was situated on a small bluff or
plateau and the Laramie River, from which the fort tooks its later
name, ran around the south and east sides, flowing a mile down-
stream into the North Platte. Lieutenant Woodbury measured
Fort John and found it was 157 feet on an east- west axis and 111
feet wide, exclusive of the blockhouses on the northeast and south-
west corners, each about 12 feet square.4 Old Fort John's rec-
tangular adobe wall was about fifteen feet high, and by 1 849 it was
in very poor condition.
It was evident from the beginning that a post this small and in
such poor shape could not serve the Army as a military fort. Thus
the officers planned to use the old fort only temporarily as store-
houses, stables, and living quarters. Lieutenant Woodbury imme-
diately began to lay out a military post that would be much larger
than Fort John.
The first task was to supply living quarters for military person-
nel. The first permanent military building to be erected in 1849
was a two story double block of officers' quarters. Later used as
bachelor officers' quarters, the building was nicknamed "Bedlam".5
On September 1 8 of that year, a second engineer officer arrived
at Fort Laramie to relieve Lieutenant Woodbury of some of his
terrific work load. The newcomer was Brevet 2nd Lieutenant
Andrew J. Donelson.6 These two, Woodbury and Donelson, were
the military architects who in the next year and a half designed and
began construction of a far more impressive military fort than ever
3. Hereafter, the term "Fort John" will designate the remains of the
old adobe fur trade post in order to distinguish it from the rest of the
military post, though at this late date the old name was largely forgotten.
4. Plan Lar-2106 in the Fort Laramie N.H.S. map file. This plan of the
post was drawn up by Woodbury in 1851.
5. This building had quarters or "sets" for four bachelor officers, two
upstairs and two downstairs, but until 1867 the southern half served as
commanding officers' quarters and post headquarters. At Fort Leavenworth
and presumably at many other military post of that period, bachelors'
quarters commonly bore the sobriquet "bedlam" since they were often quite
noisy and boisterous. It was natural that soldiers coming to Fort Laramie
from Leavenworth should bring that nickname with them. The original
main block of Fort Laramie's "Bedlam" stands today. Further information
is contained in "Old Bedlam", by Jess Lombard, Annals of Wyoming, April,
1941, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 87-91, and in a manuscript by Merrill J. Mattes in
the National Park Service files, entitled "Surviving Army Structures at Fort
Laramie." At the present time, the National Park Service is restoring the
Old Bedlam structure and furnishings to its heydey of the 1860's.
6. Andrew Jackson Donelson was appointed a cadet at the military
academy on July 1, 1844, and graduated second in his class. On graduation,
his high standing entitled him to assignment to the elite Corps of Engineers.
Since at that time there was probably no vacancy in the Corps he was
attached as a brevet second lieutenant until there was a vacancy which per-
mitted his promotion to full second lieutenant, which occurred on October
16, 1852. Heitman, op. cit., p. 378.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 149
was completed. If Fort Laramie never completely deserved the
title "fort", it was certainly not the fault of the two engineer
officers!
In the overall plan for the post which they developed in the next
1 8 months, Lieutenant Woodbury and his subordinate envisioned a
wall or picket stockade around Fort Laramie. The northern adobe
wall of old Fort John corresponded with a portion of the southern
wall of Woodbury's plan, but Woodbury's fort was much larger,
enclosing an area 550 feet wide and 650 feet long, with the longer
axis running slightly northwest-southeast. In a letter Lieutenant
Woodbury wrote to explain his plan of the post, he said in part:
The enclosure may be made by a fence 9 feet high or by a rubble wall
of the same height laid in mortar, at the discretion of the commanding
officer. If a fence, the posts should be about 10 feet apart, average
12 inches in diameter and enter four feet into the ground. The boards
should be nailed on upright, close together, to three horizontal ribbons,
in pieces 4 inches wide, IVi inch thick, and pointed at the top.
If a wall the average thickness need not exceed 18 inches.7
tion. Each was to have a lower story with rough stone walls 17
inches thick. Only one doorway and one window opened into this
ground floor, both facing inside the stockade. Woodbury planned
a small powder magazine in each blockhouse, which he described
in the accompanying letter: "In the lower story the magazine only
Woodbury estimated the cost of this wall — "1200 cubic yards @
$10"— would be $12,000.
The engineers planned that the guardhouse would form the
northeast corner of the fortification, and this building was actually
erected in 1850. The lower story was stone and contained five
solitary confinement cells.8 In the upper story, of frame construc-
tion, were a court room and a guard room. Diagonally across the
post, there was to be no building at the southwest corner; but at
the other two, the northwest and southeast, the architects planned
blockhouses 40 feet long and 30 feet wide.!l
Woodbury submitted detailed plans for the construction of these
two blockhouses.1" They were to be identical, except in orienta-
7. This undated letter accompanied Woodbury's 1851 plan (Lar-2106)
and was received in Washington D.C. in August. A negative photostat of
the letter accompanies the plan in the National Historic Site map file. There
are two general plans for the post, both dated 1851, in that map file. No.
2105 was drawn by Lieutenant Donelson and No. 2106 was drawn by
Lieutenant Woodbury. Donelson showed the planned blockhouses with
their longer side running east-west, while Woodbury oriented them north-
south.
8. The brick outlines of these cells can be seen in the ruined foundations
of that building today.
9. Plan Lar-2106.
10. Plan Lar-2108 in the N.H.S. map file. Unless otherwise cited, the
description of the blockhouses is from this plan.
150 ANNALS OF WYOMING
is to be floored. The ceiling over the magazine must be made
perfectly tight and covered with several inches of sand. The walls
of the magazine must also be made tight."11 Each magazine was
to be 6 feet 5 inches by 12 feet IVi inches. Near the magazine, an
interior stairway would give access to the upper story.1-
The upper story was to be of frame construction and would
overhang the lower story on all sides by 20 inches. This upper
floor was to be divided into two rooms, one 18 feet long and the
other 19 3/4 feet. Each room was to have an artillery piece on
a casement carriage. The southeast blockhouse would have one
cannon to fire to the south, another to fire to the east, and the
northwest blockhouse would have cannon to fire to the north and
west.
In addition to the two cannon embrasures in each blockhouse,
Woodbury provided an ample number of loopholes for rifles.
These covered not only the outside of the fort, but extended all the
way around each blockhouse so as to cover the interior of the
enclosure as well. This made each blockhouse independent to a
certain degree, for if an enemy got over the wall and inside the
stockade, each blockhouse could protect itself from that quarter
also. In addition, this made the blockhouse a stronghold in case
the wall or stockade was never built.
The extra loopholes would also serve an important function in
providing ventilation, which would be quite a problem when sol-
diers were firing rifles and cannon within the structure. A great
deal of powder smoke would collect in the upper rooms. When
not needed, Woodbury wrote, "All the loop-holes, except one or
two on the sides without (cannon) embrasures, may be closed by
weather-boarding . . . which may be cut away when necessary.18
Thus he provided protection from the weather while leaving an
opening on each side for observation. The weatherboarding (by
this Woodbury meant the same type of siding he had used on
Bedlam ) would be nailed on the outside and soldiers on the inside
could knock it away from the loopholes with the butts of their
rifles when necessary.
Rifle loopholes and cannon embrasures were not the only means
of defense of these blockhouses. Between the floor joists where
11. Woodbury's letter to accompany the 1851 plan (Lar-2106).
12. Woodbury planned and built in 1850 a much larger magazine to
serve the post. As this main magazine appears on the same plans that show
the blockhouses, it is evident that the small magazine in each blockhouse
was intended to render each blockhouse independent of the main ammuni-
tion store. The larger magazine is another early building which survives
at the National Historic Site.
13. Woodbury's letter to accompany the 1851 plan (Lar-2106).
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 151
the upper story overlapped the lower, Woodbury planned "Machi-
coulis"14 or machicolations, a term applied originally to the open-
ings in ancient castles from which the defenders could drop molten
lead, stones, or burning oil directly on the attackers below. At
Fort Laramie these openings would serve a similar purpose as rifle
ports through which the troops could fire vertically down on any
Indians who attempted to gather under the overhang in order to
set fire to the upper floor from this supposedly protected position.
In addition, like the loopholes, these openings would provide
needed ventilation.
Although the upper story of both blockhouses was to be of frame
construction, Woodbury planned to fill the spaces between the
studding with adobe bricks.1"' This he had already done in
Bedlam, and some of the original adobe bricks remain today in the
frame walls of that structure. The adobe undoubtedly provided
some insulation from the weather, but it is also likely that it was
intended to insulate defenders from enemy bullets. Woodbury
did not rely on adobe alone for this purpose, for he specified on
his plans that the walls inside were to be covered with one inch
thick boards to a height of at least six feet.
Woodbury and Donelson had created a fine plan for Fort Lara-
mie, but in addition to the $12,000 wall, each blockhouse would
cost an estimated $2,500, and the total cost of Woodbury's pro-
posed structures he estimated would be $60,000. 1G At the time
this plan was completed, there were insufficient buildings to house
the garrison already stationed at Fort Laramie, and it was more
important to get a roof over the soldiers and their supplies.
Natural elements, not Indians, were the main enemy during Fort
Laramie's first years.
Lieutenant Woodbury's plan for Fort Laramie was traditional.
The main elements of the plan were the blockhouses and the
stockade, and these had been the main elements of frontier military
posts for a hundred years. But up to this time most frontier posts
had been built in heavily wooded country, where trees had to be
cleared and the stumps burned out before even post vegetable
gardens could be planted. Trees had always been handy for con-
struction purposes.
At Fort Laramie, lumber had to be hauled some distance. A
few trees did grow in sheltered ridges and bluffs along the rivers,
but none of these sources was very close. The nearest dependable
supply of timber was more than forty miles west on the slopes of
Laramie Peak.
14. Woodbury's spelling in Plan Lar-2108.
15. Plan Lar-2108.
16. Woodbury's letter to accompany the 1851 plan (Lar-2106).
152 ANNALS OF WYOMING
New conditions dictated new solutions. The garrison wall and
the two blockhouses were never built. It was possible to build
them, but it was neither practical nor economical.
There was an additional reason why the fortifications were never
completed. In November, 1850, responsibility for construction at
Fort Laramie was transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the
Quartermaster Department, apparently with Woodbury's whole-
hearted approval.17 Nevertheless, Lieutenant Woodbury contin-
ued work until he had completed his plans for the post, though
some of this was done in the East. It was a ruinous division of
authority to have planning in the hands of one department and
execution of plans in the hands of another. It is little wonder that
Fort Laramie never met the expectations of its original architects.
Since Woodbury's fortifications were never built, Fort Laramie's
only defense was the decrepit old adobe Fort John. At least it
could serve as a redoubt in an emergency. But for several years
peace continued, and there seemed no urgent need for defenses.
On the afternoon of August 19, 1854, a glory-hunting brevet
second lieutenant named John Lawrence Grattan took a detach-
ment of 29 infantrymen out of Fort Laramie to arrest an Indian
who had killed and eaten a Mormon's cow. Between the two of
them, Grattan and the drunken interpreter managed to precipitate
a fight in which the command was totally destroyed. That left a
garrison at Fort Laramie, about eight miles west of the battle site,
consisting of only 42 soldiers.18 Oddly enough, the Brule Sioux
chiefs tried to restrain their young warriors from attacking the fort,
fearing reprisal.11'
The day after the engagement, August 29th, L. B. Dougherty
wrote: "The old American Fur Company fort is fixed up for a
last resort. A small blockhouse is being erected which held by ten
men, will add greatly to the strength of the Post and protect the
frame buildings from being fired."20 If a new blockhouse was
built, it could not have been a very substantial structure, for it does
17. In a letter to General J. C. Totten, the Chief Engineer, dated August
2, 1851, Woodbury argued that the Quartermaster Department was prepared
to undertake construction of buildings in the far West, whereas in his
opinion the Corps of Engineers was not. He wrote that ". . . such assign-
ment of Engineer officers is not consistent with public convenience and
economy." This letter, incidentally, was written by Woodbury while he
was at Fort Macon, North Carolina. Fort Laramie Correspondence, 1849 —
1874.
18. Hafen and Young, op. cit. p. 231.
19. Heitman, op. cit., II, p. 401.
20. Hafen and Young, op. cit., p. 230. A typescript file of the Dougherty
Papers, including the rest of the letter which Hafen does not quote, is in
the research file at the National Historic Site.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 153
not appear on a plan of the post made only two years later.21 It is
more likely that one of old Fort John's blockhouses was hastily
repaired, although it is possible that the troops temporarily used
some other structure, such as the stone powder magazine, for a
redoubt.
The man who most likely became the backbone of any defense
preparations was Ordnance Sergeant Leodegar Schnyder, a re-
spected old soldier who was to serve at Fort Laramie for more
than 37 years.22
The Army retaliated for the Grattan affair with a strong expedi-
tion the following year under General Harney, and Fort Laramie's
garrison was substantially strengthened. Again old Fort John was
allowed to fall apart, and did so very quickly. Lieutenant Kelton's
plan of the post in 1856 shows huge gaps in the wall and crumbling
buildings. An 1858 photograph shows two of the walls still
standing, but one of them was heavily braced in four places. The
last portion of the fur trade post was demolished in 1862 and the
adobe bricks were supposedly used in other construction.23 During
the final years of the Civil War, Fort Laramie was without any
formal fortifications and did not have even a redoubt to which the
garrison could retreat in time of need.
After the Civil War broke out, the Regular Army detachments
at Fort Laramie gradually diminished and were replaced by volun-
teer troops. Fort Laramie was maintained by volunteer units from
Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, California, Michigan, Missouri,
and as far away as West Virginia. By 1 864 they had their hands
full, for the Indians were going on the warpath.
Fort Laramie's defenseless position was clearly demonstrated
21. Plan Lar-2109 in the Fort Laramie N.H.S. map file. This plan is
undated and was originally thought to have been drawn in 1854, however it
was signed by 1st Lieutenant J. C. Kelton. His promotion to 1st lieutenant
did not come until 1855 (Heitman, op. cit., I, 590), and he appears to have
been at Fort Laramie for the first time in 1856 (Fort Laramie Correspond-
ence).
22. Schnyder was born at Sursee, Switzerland, on April 29, 1813. He
worked as a draftsman and book binder until 1837 when he joined the 6th
Infantry and was sent to the Seminole War in Florida. Schnyder was 1st
sergeant of Company G when that company was sent to Fort Laramie in
1849. On Dec. 1. 1852, he was appointed Ordnance Sergeant for Fort
Laramie. See Louise Nottingham, Sergt. Leodegar Schnyder, 2 page typed
manuscript at Fort Laramie. Company sergeants and regimental sergeants
moved with their outfits from one post to another, but ordnance sergeants
were assigned to military posts and remained there until transferred or
discharged.
23. Schell, H. S., Medical History of Post, Records of the Office of the
Adjutant General. Typescript copy at Fort Laramie N.H.S. This portion
of the Medical History was written in 1868, largely from information sup-
plied by Ordnance Sergeant Schnyder.
154 ANNALS OF WYOMING
one day in late summer of 1864. A cavalry detachment returned
to the post after a three day scout of the surrounding country,
dismounted, and let their horses roll and play on the parade ground
while they returned the saddles and bridles to the stables. While
the soldiers reported to the commanding officer that there were no
Indians within 25 miles of Fort Laramie, a band of about 30
Indians dashed through and stole the horses right off the parade
ground, in the middle of the astonished garrison, and completely
escaped.1'4 This was not a serious attack, and there were no
casualties on either side, but it certainly illustrated the defenseless
condition of the post. Needless to say, a garrison wall or stockade
would have made that raid impossible.
After a fanatic colonel named John Milton Chivington attacked
a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians near the
Arkansas River in Colorado Territory in November, 1864, the
Cheyenne Nation went to war and with its allies started moving
north toward the hunting grounds of the Powder River country.
The hostile warriors sacked and burned the entire town of Jules-
burg, attacked nearby Fort Rankin, and generally tore up all
travel and communication along the Platte River.
On February 4, 1865, the Cheyennes and their Sioux allies
attacked the small telegraph station at Mud Springs, which at that
time contained nine soldiers and five civilians.25 The telegrapher
pounded out a call for help and the response at Fort Laramie was
immediate. The nearest help for Mud Springs was 55 miles away
at Camp Mitchell, near Scottsbluff. At Fort Laramie, 50 miles
further west, Colonel William Oliver Collins was the ranking
officer. Collins immediately telegraphed Camp Mitchell and
ordered Lieutenant Ellsworth to march with all the men he could
spare — 37 soldiers as it turned out.
Colonel Collins himself rode out of Fort Laramie at 7 p.m. that
evening at the head of a strong detachment of 120 cavalrymen.
The troops rode all night through the freezing cold, but had to rest
the next day. Collins then gallantly pressed ahead of his main
command with 25 picked men and after a forced march, arrived
at the station at 2 a.m. on the 6th of February. He found the
situation more serious than he had imagined, and shortly before
the Cheyennes cut the wire, he telegraphed to Fort Laramie for
reinforcements and an artillery piece.
Collins had left Major Thomas L. Mackey in command of a
24. Eugene F. Ware, The Indian War of 1864. Topeka: Crane & Com-
pany; 1911. Pp. 286-290. An officer of the 7th Iowa Cavalry at the time,
Ware witnessed the attack and took part in the pursuit of the Indians. The
pursuit was fruitless.
25. Agnes Wright Spring, Casper Collins. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press; 1927. p. 61.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 155
greatly reduced garrison at Fort Laramie, and Mackey took steps
to tighten up the post. The day after Collins left he relieved 17
men from duty that was not absolutely necessary and ordered them
to report immediately to their companies.-" He ordered company
commanders to see that each man was properly armed and supplied
with ammunition.27 On the following Monday, February 6th,
Collins' telegram was received and Lieutenant Brown left with one
of Fort Laramie's four cannon and a command of 52 men.2*
The departure of this second detachment left Fort Laramie with
a dangerously reduced garrison. Major Mackey decided to fortify
the post as well as he could. Commencing at once, his troops con-
structed in the succeeding days three battery emplacements, and
probably at this time linked the defense batteries together with a
defense trench.
One battery was constructed under the command of Ordnance
Sergeant Leodegar Schnyder, always a man who could be relied
upon in time of danger, and it was quite appropriately named after
him. Soldiers from companies "C" and "I", 1 1th Ohio Volunteer
Cavalry, began work on this battery on the same day that Collins'
telegram reached Fort Laramie. On the following day, Tuesday,
the battery was manned by nine men; it was apparently ready for
action. 29
Another artillery emplacement was built at the same time under
the direction of Quartermaster Sergeant J. C. Cummings, for whom
it was named. Like Battery Schnyder, Battery Cummings was
manned on February 7, by ten men.80
There is no indication who directed construction of the third
battery, which was ready a day later than the other two. It was
called Battery Harrington, however, and following the practice of
26. Orders No. 148. Feb. 5, 1865. In Fort Laramie Orders, Oct. 1864
to Feb. 1865. Typed file copy at Fort Laramie N.H.S.
27. Orders No. 147. February 5, 1865.
28. Orders No. 152, February 6, 1865. A howitzer battery of four
pieces was brought up from St. Louis with the 2nd Battalion of the 1 1th
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and was manned by Lieutenants Humphreyville
and Collins and 48 non-coms and soldiers. The cannon were commonly
parked southeast of the flag staff on the parade ground. Spring, op. cit.,
p. 146.
29. Orders No. 151, Feb. 6. and No. 157, Feb. 6. "Battery Schnyder"
was manned originally by Sergeant Walker and Privates Lagenby, Courtney,
and Shoemaker of Company L, and Corporal Plyly and Privates Plyly,
Mauery, McCierry and Heakman, Company C, all of the 11th Ohio.
30. Orders No. 158. February 7. Originally called "Ft. Cummings," this
battery was manned by Privates Berry, Hamerick and Botkin of Company
A; LaBorde, Williams, and Crips of Company I, Hugh and Whitesides of
Company L, and Corporal Smith of Company C, all 11th Ohio Volunteer
Cavalry.
156 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the other batteries, one may assume that the officer or sergeant in
charge was named Harrington.31
Teams of horses were apparently used to help move earth in
constructing either the batteries or digging the trench, beginning
on Monday.3- On Tuesday, Major Mackey ordered the acting
assistant quartermaster, Lieutenant Averill,
to furnish as many sacks of corn as may be required to form suitable
barricades at such point, within the Garrison, as it shall seem practi-
cable to protect in such manner: the precaution of erecting barricades
rendered necessary by the threatened incursions of hostile Cheyenne
Indians and the Post being weakened by withdrawal of troops upon
expedition to Mud Springs, and being wholly without fortifications.33
The exact nature of these battery fortifications must be deducted
from scanty evidence. During the Civil War, any small entrenched
field fortification consisting of one or more cannon behind earth-
works and fascines34 was likely to be called a "battery". More
elaborate earthworks were known as forts, and the naming of these
emplacements was informal and sometimes very capricious. Earth-
works might be strengthened by logs, by fascines, by bags of sand,
or by any other means handy. At Fort Laramie fascines would
not have been available, but it is clear that sacks of corn were used
in the manner of bags of sand. Isolated batteries were seldom
constructed; the common practice was to connect batteries and
field fortifications with systems of trenches. No trenches are
described in Fort Laramie orders, but it is very likely that they
were dug at this time.35
If the exact nature of these 1865 field fortifications is obscure,
their location is even more so. It seems likely from an examination
of the topography of the post that they were to the north. The
batteries certainly would not have been in the post proper, for the
buildings would obscure their field of fire. To the east and the
south, the Laramie River afforded a degree of natural protection,
and any attempted crossing of the river by hostiles could have been
31. Orders No. 160, February 8. "Battery Harrington" (also spelled
"Herrington") was manned by Corporal Lacke and Privates Lietzinger,
Donovan. Smith, Brown and Crawford, all of Company E, 11th Ohio
Volunteers.
32. Orders No. 154, February 6. "Lieut. H. E. Averill A.A.Q.M. will
instruct all teamsters having teams now at this Post in Q.M. Dept to report
with their teams without wagons to Sgt. Powell Co. "C" 11" O.V.C. imme-
diately."
33. Orders dated February 7th, number riot known.
34. A fascine is a long bundle of wooden sticks tied together which was
used primarily in military engineering for raising batteries, filling ditches,
strengthening ramparts, etc.
35. Without trenches full of infantry to support the batteries, mounted
Indians could outflank and surround each battery. Furthermore, trenches
definitely existed a year later.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 157
hotly contested. To the west the land drops suddenly behind
officer's row to form a large flat, evidently once carved out of the
bluffs by the river. Troops could see Indians while they were still
some distance off and take advantage of the natural height to repel
them.
But to the northeast, downstream along the river, the land is
level and low, with no natural defense; and to the northwest it
rises to a second plateau above the plateau on which the fort
proper is located. Here the enemy has the advantage of height.
Here, north of the post, is the area which most desperately needed
artificial fortifications.
Assuming one were to try to hold this upland, where would bat-
teries be most effective? If only three cannon were available, it
seems most logical to place one on each end of the line to be
fortified and one in the center, connecting all with trenches to
prevent them from being outflanked by mounted Indians.
The cannon on the left (west) end would command most of the
upper plateau as well as a portion of the low land to the west.
The cannon in the center would command all of the upper plateau.
The cannon on the right, near the river, would command the low
river bottom downstream as well as the road which came up from
the North Platte Valley and Camp Mitchell. This is exactly where
a line of earthwork fortifications appears on maps drawn two
years later.30
At the time it was built, this field fortification was a strictly
temporary measure. It was not the duty of the volunteer troops
to plan permanent fortifications for Fort Laramie. Their work
was immediate and entirely functional. It was designed to meet a
specific threat at a specific time, and the degree of maintenance of
the field fortifications was probably directly proportional to the
commanding officer's anxiety about Indian attack. It is clear from
the threat posed by the Cheyenne war that fortification was not
only justified but desperately needed.
After the Civil War, the volunteer troops were mustered out of
the service and in the spring of 1866, United States Regulars re-
turned to Fort Laramie. The new garrison consisted largely of
soldiers of the 18th Infantry and the 2nd Cavalry.
Responsibility for construction, as far as the Regular Army was
concerned, still rested with the Quartermaster Department, which
faced the same problems that it had faced in the 1850's — lack of
fortification, desperate need for new buildings, and distant sources
36. Plan Lar-2114. This general plan of 1867 is accompanied by de-
tailed floor plans and elevations of every military building on the post and
may have been executed in Omaha or Washington from measurements made
at the post.
158 ANNALS OF WYOMING
of construction supplies. The new Regular post quartermaster was
a captain and assistant quartermaster named George Dandy.37
Dandy found that the post lacked adequate quarters for its
garrison, and except for the temporary earthworks built by the
volunteers a year earlier, it was still defenseless.
Captain Dandy began planning improvements to the post includ-
ing, among the many new structures, barracks for five companies.
Two of the other new structures were designed and placed for
defensive purposes. The first of these was a new guardhouse
located east of the parade ground along the Laramie River.88 It
was a two story stone building set in the bank of the bluff. The
lower story could be entered only from the river side. Here there
were two doors and a window between them. Bars in the window
were made from old iron wagon tires, straightened out by a black-
smith. Two small wooden cells, their walls strengthened by iron
strips, served as solitary confinement while most prisoners were
kept in a larger room. The upstairs was entered from the west or
parade side by two front doors. Upstairs there was a room for the
officer of the day and one for the guard detachment. In this story
there was a window at each end of the building and there were two
windows on each side, in front between the doors. The substantial
stone walls were designed to make the building a stronghold in
case of attack.
Captain Dandy had promised the post commandant, Major
James Van Voast, that a new sawmill would turn out lumber by
August 1 , but the major was skeptical. Van Voast decided to put
the men to work on the stone guardhouse in the meantime. He
was right. The sawmill was not in operation when it was supposed
to be, but he was able to report on September 1 that the guard-
house "will soon be finished as far as Masons can finish it."39 It
was completed by October 6.4"
The second new unit of defense was a fortified adobe redoubt
which, when not needed as a fortification, could serve as a corral
for Quartermaster Department animals and as quarters for the
teamsters. By September 1 , adobe bricks were being made.41 By
September 13, 1866, every available man at the fort was on duty
37. George Brown Dandy attended the Military Academy from July,
1849 to July, 1852. He was commissioned a 2d lieutenant in the 3rd Artil-
lery on February 27, 1857. After 1875 he served with the Quartermaster
department. He was retired from active army service in 1894.
38. Letter from Major Van Voast to the Asst. Adjt. General, Dept. of
the Platte, dated Oct. 6, 1866. In Fort Laramie Letters From Sept. 1865
to Dec. 1866. Typed file at Fort Laramie National Historic Site.
3C>. Letter from Major Van Voast to the Asst. Adjt. General dated Sept.
1st. In Fort Laramie Letters etc.
40. Letter from Van Voast, etc.. dated Oct. 6. (See footnote 36.)
41. See footnote 38.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 159
with the Quartermaster Department, either on the guardhouse or
on the new redoubt. The redoubt was being erected by a fatigue
detail of the 2nd Cavalry. It consisted of an area of about 2 acres
enclosed by an 8 foot high adobe wall with two blockhouses.
These blockhouses, at the northwest and southeast corners of the
enclosure, were entirely unlike the earlier blockhouses designed by
Lieutenant Woodbury, and were probably much cheaper to build.
Each blockhouse was a perfect hexagon, and both were single story
buildings. Their adobe walls were more than three feet thick.
One side of each blockhouse was inside the enclosure and had a
door and a dormer window in the roof. The other five sides were
outside the adobe walled enclosure and each of these sides had a
single cannon or rifle embrasure. The roof was hexagonal also,
and was supported by a single center post and a system of rafters.
The blockhouses, if not the wall, were built on stone foundations,
and the whole redoubt was surrounded by a trench three feet deep
which served as drainage to keep water away from the adobe walls,
and also made it more difficult for any enemy to scale the walls.4"
There were three significant and revealing differences between
this redoubt and Woodbury's planned fortification — size, material,
and design.
The new redoubt was only a quarter the size of Woodbury's
planned fort. Woodbury's concept was to enclose and protect the
whole garrison, including almost all the buildings. This was
exceedingly expensive, particularly since the walls would require
a great deal of construction material that was not easily obtained.
Dandy's concept was more economical; he planned to protect
people, not buildings. His redoubt was to be a refuge, a last
retreat in time of need, a stronghold. He no doubt assumed that
the chances of a serious Indian attempt to destroy the whole fort
were rather small, for their tactic was to hit and run. If he was
wrong, his concept of defense would cost the government thousands
of dollars in destroyed buildings, but if he was right, he would
save as much money by not enclosing the whole sprawling post with
a wasteful, expensive wall. More important, a wall or stockade
enclosing the whole military complex would require a huge garrison
to defend it adequately. The small adobe redoubt Dandy was
building would be large enough for the people to use when neces-
sary, yet small enough to defend easily.
The new redoubt was constructed of adobe bricks which could
be made right at the fort. Woodbury had planned a wall either
of stone or wood. Large quantities of stone or timber would
42. The description of the blockhouses and the redoubt, unless otherwise
cited, is from Plan Lar-2125 which shows floor plans and elevations of the
structures. This is one of the plans which accompanied the general plan
of 1867.
160 ANNALS OF WYOMING
have to be hauled a good distance — the lumber particularly — at a
good expense. Furthermore, the lumber had to be cut; stone had
to be quarried. Adobe bricks, on the other hand, could be made
simply and easily nearby, creating no additional problem of trans-
portation.
This new redoubt had blockhouses that were much simpler in
design than Woodbury's. His blockhouses combined stone, lum-
ber, and adobe in a complicated fashion which required a skeletal
frame. Woodbury's walls were half stone and half framed lumber
with an adobe brick fill. Dandy's redoubt made use of the same
materials in a simpler fashion. The walls were entirely of one
material — adobe. Dandy used stone only for foundations and he
used lumber only for the roofs and their supporting rafters and for
the window or embrasure frames.4'1
Of course Dandy's redoubt was not as substantial or permanent
as Woodbury's proposed fort, for weather destroys adobe while it
only damages wood and largely ignores stone. But down through
the years a permanent redoubt was not really needed, and even the
adobe structure outlived its usefulness for so long that its original
purpose was entirely forgotten. Dandy's redoubt was more perma-
nent than the field fortifications of 1865, but only in relative terms.
Since there was no immediate and compelling need for this
redoubt — the post was not under siege or threatened attack — the
enclosure was used as a corral for Quartermaster Department
horses and mules and the two blockhouses served as teamsters
living quarters, with a temporary kitchen haphazardly tacked on to
one of them.44 The original intention of Captain Dandy in building
this redoubt is unmistakable, both from the design of the structure
and in the statement of Assistant Surgeon Schell two years later
that "The Qr. Mr's corrall encloses about 2 acres with an adobe
wall 10 ft high and 2 feet thick, it has strong bastions at two
diagonal corners and would serve as a stronghold in case of an
attack by Indians."4'"'
On the 1867 plan of the post, a long trench with two battery
emplacements or "lunettes" appeared in conjunction with this
redoubt.4'1 The puzzling question is whether this was the fortifi-
cation directed by Major Mackey in that time of peril in 1865, or
something new built by Captain Dandy in 1866 along with his
adobe fort. A plan of the post in August, 1866, executed by Lieu-
tenant Brent under Captain Dandy's direction, shows no such
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Schell, op. cit. Schell arrived in late 1866 and certainly should have
known what he was talking about.
46. Plan Lar-2114.
THE FORTIFICATIONS OF OLD FORT LARAMIE 161
trench or emplacements.47 But a month earlier, an emigrant pass-
ing through Fort Laramie entered in his diary under the date July
18 that "Laramie has no fortifications, except a ditch"*8 Regulars
had been stationed at Fort Laramie only since May of that year,
and there is no record in existing post files that they undertook
such work as digging a trench. It seems a safe assumption that the
earthwork with two battery emplacements which appears for the
first time on the 1 867 plan is the remnant of the field fortification
erected under the orders of Major Mackey in February 1865. No
third battery appears on the 1867 plan because by that time the
adobe redoubt or "Quarter Master's Corral" had been built on the
same site. Because the earthworks had been built only as a tem-
porary and emergency measure by the volunteers, the post quarter-
master saw no reason to include it in his August 1866 plan. As
Indian hostilities increased, Captain Dandy decided to make it a
more permanent feature and integrated it into his future plans.
Together, these earthworks and the adobe redoubt (or corral)
constituted the only real fortifications that ever were built at Fort
Laramie.
The old military post remained an important frontier installation
until 1877, but thereafter dwindled in importance as new military
posts pushed the frontier northward, and as the Sioux and Chey-
ennes were driven in ultimate and inevitable defeat to the reserva-
tions.
The earthwork defense with its two battery sites was maintained
only until the early 1870's. It appeared on an 1870 map of the
fort, but the following year was omitted.411 It had served during
the Bozeman Trail War, 1866-1868, but soon thereafter was re-
garded as unnecessary. It was not filled in — just abandoned.
After the new lime-concrete hospital was constructed near it in
1 873, a portion of the old trench was used as a dump for medicine
bottles and other trash from the hospital. In 1884 a new lime-
concrete barracks for six married sergeants and their families was
constructed right over the trench just west of the center battery,
and a portion of the ditch was filled in there. Eventually the army
built a water system at Fort Laramie, and the tanks were located
near the west battery emplacement. Ditches for water pipelines
paralleled and crossed the old field fortification."'"
The army abandoned Fort Laramie in 1890 and the buildings
47. Plan Lar-2112.
48. George Fox, "Diary." Annals of Wyoming, January, 1932; VIII, 3;
p. 589. Italics mine.
49. The 1870 plan is Lar-2140; the 1871 plan is Lar-2142.
50. The trench for water pipes is quite clear today both on the ground
and on aerial photographs. Furthermore, this shallow trench for pipe is
shown on Lar-2148, the plan of the post drawn in 1888.
162 ANNALS OF WYOMING
were sold to civilians. Some farmed the old post, but others merely
bought buildings for the lumber they contained and ripped them
apart, leaving gaunt concrete pillars reaching roofless towards the
Wyoming sky. Rains came and eroded a gully along the west
bluff, cutting through the old trench and exposing green fragments
of old medicine bottles once dumped in it.
But the ravages of time and man could not completely obliterate
the old trench. The State of Wyoming restored Fort Laramie
to Federal ownership in 1938, and on a 1940 aerial photograph the
part of the earthworks on the hill, even where once filled in near
the sergeants1 quarters, stood out as clear and sharp as on the 1867
plan. Even today, west of the hospital ruins, a long shallow de-
pression marks the work of the soldiers, and even today the visitor
can trace the angular outline of the west battery.
The old fortified adobe redoubt did not fare half as well. It was
never needed for the purpose for which it had been built. The
army called it "the old Fort"51 and by 1 876 its real origin was so
clouded and obscure that the wife of an officer wrote that it had
been "built by a fur company before the post was established."52
It continued to appear in photographs and plans until 1883, and
some time in the next six years completely disappeared. Perhaps
the flood of 1883 weakened or destroyed it; perhaps several floods
were required to do the job.
For 41 years the military post on the Laramie River sent its
patrols and expeditions out into the West. This important base
was the typical frontier military establishment, and yet it existed
as an often defenseless scattering of buildings on the Wyoming
plains. The term "fort" was misused. "Camp Laramie" or per-
haps "Laramie Barracks" would have been far more justifiable
titles.
51. Merrill J. Mattes, Indians, Infants and Infantry. Denver: Old West
Publishing Company; 1960. P. 188.
52. Cynthia J. Capron, The Indian Border War of 1876. (Reprinted
from the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, January, 1921.)
p. 4.
Zke bishop
Who Kid for Jort Caramie
By
Howard Lee Wilson
On November 27, 1915, the Right Reverend Nathaniel S.
Thomas, second Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming,
wrote the following letter to Mrs. J. Hall Browning of New York:
Dear Mrs. Browning:
I am writing to ask if you will consider laying the foundation of
the Browning School, at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, by the purchase, at
a cost of $57,500.00 to the founder of this famous Post with all its
buildings - the most historic in the United States, together with 1240
acres of fenced, irrigated irrigable land - which controls a range as
large as one of your counties, the same to act as a perpetual endow-
ment for the school.
I am overwhelmed over the opportunity to develop (sic) this great
project.
If interested at all - read the mass of material I am sending with
this - otherwise don't bother your dear head with the matter.
Affectionately,
N. S. Thomas
This letter, written by hand, and containing a few corrections of
composition, may have been typed by a secretary and sent on. If
so, Mrs. Browning did not bother her "dear head with the matter,'1
for there is no reply in the Missionary District's files, and the
Bishop began a carefully planned campaign to achieve the objec-
tive outlined in the letter to Mrs. Browning.
Bishop Thomas had already commenced preliminary inquiries.
He had ascertained that three ranches bordered upon and/or
included the Fort Laramie site.1 These were the Joe Wilde, John
Hunton and Neumann2 ranches. Both Hunton and Wilde were
willing to sell to the Bishop, and, according to reports submitted
to the Bishop, the Neumann ranch would go with the others since
all water rights were controlled by the Wildes and Huntons.
1. The properties in question largely consist of parcels in Sections 19-21
and 27-30, Township 26 Range 64 West.
2. Almost all of the correspondence refers to this rancher as "Newman,"
but a description of the properties from the County Clerk of Laramie
County (undated but presumably in the early Fall of 1915) lists the spelling
as "Neumann." I have used this spelling in preference. Many of the letters
in the file contain numerous misspellings.
FORT LARAMIE, 1916
Barracks Building
Commissary Store
'-'■--' - . lit
IhHI
Officer's Double Quarters, Quarters Occupied by John Hunton,
Original Post Trader's Store
Courtesy of The Venerable Howard Lee Wilson
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 165
The Bishop had heard that other interests were seeking to pur-
chase some of this land and he decided that the time for action had
come.
Already he had corresponded with Wilde and Hunton. Wilde's
reply of October 10, 1915 indicates that he was willing to make
considerable effort on the Bishop's behalf:
My Dear Mr. Thomas
I received your letter of the 7 and in reply will state if I was sure
you would take the place then I woulden minde if it took all winter
as I surely like to see you get it rather than to sell to any one ells,
but I have a chance to sell to other partys and I don't want to lose
the sale but if you will let me know and say you will take it I then
will hold it for you as to the time we can agree on that hoping to
hear from you at an early date
Respectfully yours.
Joseph Wilde
Bishop Thomas worked rapidly. He secured blueprints of the
area from the office of the State Engineer; sent Robert Toole of
Dixon (who was a brother to one of the Bishop's clergy in the
Little Snake River Valley) to look over the Hunton property;
checked with Cheyenne attorney John Clark concerning tax exemp-
tions for the project; received a written report from George Foxton
of Glendo regarding the present state and future possibilities of
the lands in question; and, finally, while on a trip to New York,
received a telegram from Cheyenne architect William Dubois esti-
mating the cost of renovating the original Fort Laramie buildings.
The cost reported was eighty thousand dollars!
The text of Dubois' telegram breaks down the figures:
BUILDINGS WORTH FOR SCHOOL TWENTY THOUSAND TO
RECONSTRUCT MAIN BUILDING FIFTEEN THOUSAND
THREE RESIDENCES TEN THOUSAND ARMORY TEN THOU-
SAND BEDLAM FIVE THOUSAND WATER LIGHTING AND
SEWAGE SYSTEM FIFTEEN THOUSAND STABLES AND
STORE HOUSES FIVE THOUSAND.
WILLIAM DUBOIS October 21, 1915 335 p.m.
Dubois followed this information with a portfolio of descriptions,
sketches and several photographs taken of the buildings as they
looked in 1915.
Later estimates by Harry E. Crane of Cheyenne suggested that
the sum of $47,645.00 would be required to purchase the necessary
lands which meant that some $130,000.00 would be needed to
acquire the land and to restore the buildings. The letter to Mrs.
Browning was an effort to begin by possessing and consolidating
the land.
Bishop Thomas now turned his attention to another phase of his
plan for a boys' school: the composition and curriculum of the
institution.
A series of identical letters were despatched beginning in April
166 ANNALS OF WYOMING
1916 to the headmasters of several of the well-known eastern pre-
paratory schools for boys — some of them closely affiliated with the
Episcopal Church.
None of the letters alluded to the Fort Laramie plan. The
Bishop's approach is that President Duniway of the University of
Wyoming has discussed with the Bishop the possibility of erecting
a Hall in Laramie where boys could live in a Christian atmosphere
and pursue their studies at the University High School.
The Bishop respectfully requests the opinions of the profession-
als in the field. "The idea is novel," states the Bishop, "and I am
by no means sure whether it is practical. What is your best judg-
ment on the scheme?"
The Rev. Dr. Endicott Peabody, of Groton School, Groton,
Massachusetts replies encouragingly on May 6, 1916. He merely
wonders where one would attract a headmaster for such an ar-
rangement, but hopes that the plan would be tried.
The Rev. William Thayer, D.D., of St. Mark's School, South-
borough, Massachusetts on May 8 asserts:
. . . Though I have no doubt that such a school would be of value
and meet a need, I advise strongly against your undertaking it . . .
>St. Mark's School with its buildings given and with charges of $900.
a year has hard work to make both ends meet. ... If, on the other
hand, you can get President Duniway to assume all financial respon-
sibility or get any other men to stand behind the school, you might
go ahead, but with all due respect, I venture to warn you that you
are undertaking a costly experiment.
Dr. Frederick L. Gammage of New York's Pawling School
wastes no words in his answer of June 14. "Don't touch it," he
begins. He feared over-control and usurpation by the State and
recommends that the Bishop devise his own school, curriculum and
faculty.
The Rev. Drs. William B. Olmstead of Pomfret School in Con-
necticut, and H. G. Buehler of Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Con-
necticut, give a passing approbation to the plan.
The Bishop acknowledged all the replies. To Thayer he indi-
cated that he intended, "at least for the present, (to) dismiss it
from my mind." To Gammage: "Your view seems to be in a
majority, and I am about determined to act upon your recom-
mendation. I thank you for it."
Indeed, it only confirmed the Bishop's previous ideas and he
once again looked to an evaluation of the lands about Fort
Laramie.
On June 22, 1916, Mr. Harry E. Crane, a Bank Examiner in
Cheyenne, submitted to the Bishop an exhaustive 14 page report
in which he appraised not only the lands of Hunton, Wilde and
Neumann, but also recommended the purchase of small acreages
owned by a Mr. O'Brien and Mrs. Hattie Sandercock.
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 167
Of the O'Brien property (SWV4 of SWV4 of Sec. 22) Crane
reports:
This is a barren piece of land, has never had water on it, and is in
its natural state, but should you purchase this property I would rec-
ommend that by all means you get this piece. It is the original loca-
tion of the old Fort in the early thirties, or rather, late twenties.
Crane also notes that the "United States Government is building
one of their large ditches on the south side of the Platte River ....
This work. I understand, is costing about a Million dollars ....
Their canal is 45 ft. wide on the bottom, so you will see the magni-
tude of the proposition. "
Crane's report is not merely a recital of the facts and figures:
On the Wilde property that I spoke of regarding the old hospital,
a part of these walls still stand and it looks like the ruins of King
Solomon's Temple. They stand up as perfect as the day they were
built, — that is, the portion that is still left standing.
Crane was enthusiastic about the possibilities of the land for
purposes of cultivation and no doubt his report had much to do
with influencing the Bishop to hope that the profits from working
the land would offset a good share of the operating costs of the
projected school.
Returning to the academic aspect of the school, Bishop Thomas
had made an effort to secure the "right man" for the school as
suggested by Dr. Peabody. The original letter to the Rev. Remsen
Ogilby is not available, but his reply, written on the "Empress of
Asia," enroute to the Philippines supplies the details. Remsen
Ogilby was headmaster of the Episcopal Church's Baguio School
in the Philippines. Bishop Thomas, learning that he was in the
States, had invited him to stop off in Wyoming on his return home.
He was unable to do so and writes to say that he could not entertain
any possibility of taking over the Bishop's school in Wyoming:
I hardly see how I could take over your scheme and work it out;
for my idea is to transplant Baguio School back to this country
somewhere, when our work in the Philippines is over.
(The Baguio School is still operating, and Remsen Ogilby's son,
Lyman, is Bishop of the Philippines).
In November 1916 Bishop Thomas rounded out his inquiries to
determine the number of accredited high schools in Wyoming.
Edith K. O. Clark, Superintendent of Public Instruction cannot
give him the answer. She states that she has written Dr. Butter-
worth at the University and has learned that the University has no
listing of accredited high schools in Wyoming.
The Bishop turns again to Dr. Thayer of St. Mark's School.
Although it was he who had given such dire warnings in reply to
the Bishop's original proposition, Bishop Thomas had a high
168 ANNALS OF WYOMING
regard for Thayer as an educator, and considered his school to be
the best of the Prep Schools in New England.
The proposal which Bishop Thomas makes to Thayer is as
audacious as his first bid for support from Mrs. Browning. The
Bishop requests Thayer to convene St. Mark's Board of Trustees
when he, the Bishop, will be in Boston. His hope is to interest
them in helping to build the school. Thayer answers to the effect
that he does not know if the Board can be convened for this pur-
pose but suggests that a meeting of the Standing Committee will be
held after the first of the year, at which session the Bishop
would be welcome.
The reply is a remarkable one. A conflicting engagement makes
it impossible for the Bishop to meet the Standing Committee, but:
If I cannot meet the Committee I should like to meet with you —
in fact. I must. Your Committee has never had a more important
proposition to consider since the founding of St. Mark's, and I am of
the opinion that it is quite worthwhile calling a special meeting —
For six months I have been gathering data and now have material
from architects, land agents, ranchers and others, of about 100 pages.
... To sum up what I want in just one word. I wish to purchase old
Ft. Laramie with all its history and romance, with 1000 acres of land
controlling a range of fifty miles on which enough cattle can be run
to endow the institution, and create a school of the highest order,
after the model of St. Mark's. I am audacious enough to hope that
you yourself will come out for one year and launch it, then put in
your masters and develop the greatest school in the West, using it as
the overflow for your own boys, sending thereto such boys as would
benefit by a change of climate, making it a school in the west for
eastern boys, as well as a school for western boys.
1 can demonstrate the need of such a school. There is no such
school in the State. I can demonstrate the advisability of making old
Ft. Laramie into such a school. It is historically the most important
spot in the West and possibly in America, as no one place has had so
much to do with the development of the nation during a period of
nearly 75 years, as has Ft. Laramie. In my library alone I have over
100 volumes referring to this marvellous fort. Read Parkman, for
instance, and Washington Irving, and all the rest.
I should not think of undertaking the school unless it can be the
most perfect school that can be made and my model is St. Mark's.
I have spoken to no one else and shall speak to no one else, for the
sort of a school I want is a St. Mark's and not a Groton or a St. Paul's
or a Pomfret.
1 am bringing with me my exhibit and should mightily like to make
a speech of an hour to your Board. It is a proposition which needs
not only inauguration but continued care. I should be willing per-
sonally to launch the scheme but I cannot take the responsibility of
developing the school of the sort I want. I am not a schoolmaster
and I know it and I want to keep my hands off.
It was over a month before Dr. Thayer made answer to this
fiery plea. Despite the confessed audacity Thayer says he is
interested in the project, but cannot arrange a special meeting.
The Bishop arranges a visit while in the East, and answers some
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 169
questions about the church at Dubois where Thayer visited during
the previous summer.
In preparation for his arguments for the school the Bishop then
wrote up a memorandum (probably in December of 1916. It is
not dated. ) which builds upon the enthusiastic vision described in
the letter to Thayer.
Besides amplifying the points made to Thayer by Bishop Thom-
as, one or two other opinions and predictions are worthy of note:
Whatever may be said for a girl's school, it is generally conceded
that a boy's school should be in the country. ... It should be well
located with reference to railroad transportation. In a western school
it should be in the eastern part of the State, as the educational drift
is eastward. It has been proven in Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota
and the Dakotas that it is difficult to get boys and girls living east of
the place where the school is located, to attend that school.
. . . The through line of the Chicago. Burlington and Quincy is not
only a trunk line from Puget Sound eastward but it goes through the
state diagonally, and traverses the richest portion of our State, and
one in which the greatest development of the future must lie. More-
over this portion of the State has the least educational advantages as
yet developed and would tap Montana, Northern Idaho and Eastern
Oregon, as no boys' school lies anywhere along this railroad for a
thousand miles more or less.
The Bishop had retained a clipping to the effect that on Dec. 2,
1916 a story of a projected relocation of the Union Pacific tracks
from North Platte, Nebraska to Medicine Bow, Wyoming via
Wheatland, was being aired.
Possibly this was a part of the exhibit with which the Bishop
hoped to secure Eastern capital for his project.
Along with statistical studies pointing the necessity of a school,
the Bishop further relates in his memorandum how he first saw
the site:
... In riding with the Rev. Mr. (Frank) Chipp, our missionary in
Torrington and Guernsey some time ago. I said to him, "I have never
seen old Fort Laramie. Would you mind taking me over there?" He
did. (and) I was never more surprised in my life. I had no idea of
the beauty of the place, as related to the country roundabout and as
I stood on the mesa overlooking the valley I could well understand
how Col. Inman in his "Great Salt Lake Trail" should have written
(and here the Bishop quotes at length). ... It came upon me like a
flash that this v/as the place for the location of the school which I
had so long had in my mind. Here sentiment and romance on the
one side and practical considerations on the other, unite.
There are two drafts of this memorandum showing that the
Bishop exercised particular care in making every word count
toward the attainment of his goal.
His final proposal is that a stock company be formed (he called
it the Fort Laramie and Livestock Company to start with) with the
school itself, as a corporation, holding fifty-one per cent of the
stock. The school would directly hold the 240 acres incorporating
170 ANNALS OF WYOMING
the fort site and would also control the ranch operation. The
Bishop estimated that $34,000.00 worth of calves could be sup-
ported on the land, thus providing the endowment.
A copy of this undoubtedly went to Thayer, but it was still not
persuasive enough to convene a special meeting of the Trustees of
St. Mark's. Thayer himself could and would meet with the Bishop,
however.
Somewhat resignedly Bishop Thomas accepts the situation (and
also hints at his own estimate of Thayer) :
. . . All right, I know you are the main push anyway, and am going
to talk to you. But I should have liked to have spoken to a group of
financiers as well as to the Thomas Arnold of America. (Jan. 20,
1917)
Some weeks later, the meeting between Thayer and Bishop
Thomas having taken place, Thayer writes his considered opinion
of the scheme which has been laid before him:
The more I think over your plan the more strongly I feel that it
cannot be worked out in the way you have suggested. Even if I could
bring the Trustees to a sympathetic hearing of your plan, I doubt
very much if it could be carried out in practice, nor do I think it would
be the best thing for your school if it could be done. I am a little
doubtful of the Fort Laramie scheme . . . which would bring the
expense I should judge up to the neighborhood of $75000. For that
sum of money I believe you could build new and appropriate buildings
which would be much more servicable and certainly more appealing
to parents than any made over buildings could possibly be. . . .
... if you could get such a man as Remsen Ogilby you would find
that Dr. Drury and Dr. Peabody would be sending boys as eagerly and
willingly as I should. These men, good friends of mine as they are,
would not be particularly interested in a St. Mark's School Annex.
The Bishop accepted this dictum in March but by July had taken
another tack. He sounded out Mr. George Brimmer of Rawlins
on the possibility of forming a Wyoming corporation to purchase
the land he desired.
His proposal was that ten men be secured to put up five thou-
sand dollars each. The Bishop and Mrs. Thomas would each
invest five thousand. Robert Toole, of Dixon, (who had made one
of the early surveys of the property) would also invest and further
would manage the operation.
Could Brimmer get Will Daley and George Bible together in
Rawlins to meet with the Bishop and discuss the matter? Brimmer
replied that Daley was out of town and that it would be some time
before all concerned could get together. Brimmer wanted to have
all the facts about the land and its capabilities before committing
himself.
But Bishop Thomas was not content to keep but a single iron in
the fire at a time. While continuing correspondence with Brimmer
(they never did get together, and Brimmer was reluctant through-
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 171
out) Bishop Thomas, on July 18, 1917 wrote to Mr. George C.
Thomas, Jr. of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.
He had heard from George's mother that George had planned to
purchase a ranch in California, then decided against it. The Bish-
op paints a glowing picture of his proposal for buying Fort Lara-
mie. He admits that this is no time to start a school (the country
is now at war) but he desires to gain possession of the land now
lest it be lost for the future.
He appeals to George Thomas' patriotism to use the ranch as a
part of the war effort and invites him to come look it over.
Thomas replies that he is busy at his mother's place and cannot
make the trip:
... at this time I am not only tied up with preparing specifications
for the greenhouses and gardens, hut also have some work I have been
doing for the Signal Corps in Washington.
In the midst of this feverish activity George has no time to sign
his letter. It is initialed by a secretary.
The Bishop responds courteously, stating that it is a "chimerical
proposition."
After one more failure to arrange a meeting with Brimmer,
Daley and Bible (who by now are of the opinion that the price for
the land is too high and the general plan unsound ) the negotiations
languish until May of 1918.
At this point another young man, Rollin Batten, of Caldwell,
N.J., comes to the attention of the Bishop and the proposal is made
again.
Batten indicates that he is interested, but his overriding desire is
to get a commission in the Remount Service, and will the Bishop
be good enough to furnish a character reference?
The Bishop now feared that John Hunton, being advanced in
years, would soon be gone, thus precluding any purchase from a
sympathetic party. He also tries to urge Batten that now is the
time to buy for there is rumor of oil being found in the vicinity and
action is necessary before land prices go out of reach.
None of these pleas is sufficient, however, and there is another
gap in the correspondence until January, 1919. The final bid by
the Bishop for Fort Laramie is about to be made.
From the Delta Kappa Epsilon Club in New York City Bishop
Thomas begins a note on the club stationery to Mr. Erie Reed,
Attorney, in Torrington. He starts to tell him that the money is
in sight for the purchase providing the Wilde, Hunton and New-
mann lands are still available for a fair price. Reed is to draw on
the Bishop's account for fee and deposit to obtain a ninety day
option. Then, in haste, the Bishop condenses it all into a telegram
and asks for the asking price to be wired him at the Hotel St. Louis
in New York. Reed answers by letter, stating that an agent for
some Chicago men have offered Wilde $33,000.00 for his land.
172 ANNALS OF WYOMING
He feels that Hunton's acreage is too large for the corporation to
purchase.
On January 17 Reed wires the Bishop that the Hunton land is
available and that he has an option on it until February 15. He
has also secured an option on the Wilde property. He feels that
Hunton's asking price (twenty thousand dollars for 600 acres) is a
bit high, but that Wilde's price (26 thousand for another 600
acres) is compensatingly low.
Reed follows the telegram with a letter stating his adventures in
chasing over Goshen County to confirm the options. He states
that although the Bishop had requested a 90 day option he could
only obtain options for 30 days in view of the fact that by March 1
the ranchers needed to make provision for tenancy or further sale.
This may have been the critical factor of this final phase.
On February 1 3 an agreement form was drawn up in New York
whereby a group of subscribers were to invest varying sums of
money and turn them over to a Trustee resident in Wyoming who
would act on their behalf to purchase land for the establishment
of a school at Fort Laramie.
It becomes clear that at least one of these potential subscribers
was William Robertson Coe, a friend of Bishop Thomas, a some-
time resident of Cody, Wyoming, and a benefactor to other Wyo-
ming Episcopal schools and hospitals, and to the University of
Wyoming.
On March 7, 1919 Coe writes the Bishop (who is in Fort
Myers, Florida) that the agreement is faulty to the extent that it
does not provide a limited liability clause to protect the subscribers.
He indicates that when this is done the matter may proceed. He
inquires as to who will be Trustee. They had hoped that it would
be John Hay of Rock Springs, Wyoming. The Bishop answers
that if Hay does not accept he will ask Coe to assume the title. Coe
apparently declines, for on April 17, 1919, Mr. A. H. Marble,
President of the Stockgrowers National Bank in Cheyenne agrees
to become Trustee, and his name appears on a revised copy of the
original subscriber's agreement.
But by this time the 30 day option had expired and the oppor-
tunity had passed.
On December 27, 1919 Bishop Thomas received a letter from
Albert Bartlett of Glendo who understands that the Bishop is
looking for ranch property and gives information on the Hans
Christiansen Ranch on Horseshoe Creek near Glendo.
The Bishop responds, but not with his former zeal. Only when
he understands (mistakenly) that the Town of Glendo will pur-
chase the ranch does his interest spark. When this proves to be
unfounded the Bishop terminates the negotiation. He is preparing
to leave for England to attend the Lambeth Conference of 1920.
But the Bishop's dream did not die completely. In June of 1920
THE BISHOP WHO BID FOR FORT LARAMIE 173
he is writing his friend Thayer again inquiring about setting up a
boarding school for boys.
In July appears the first correspondence from Mrs. Mary Sher-
wood Blodgett of Greene, New York. Five years later Mrs.
Blodgett gave a total of two hundred thousand dollars for the con-
struction and upkeep of a building to house 60 boys and complete a
dream of Bishop Thomas born ten years before. The building
now houses the Cathedral Home for Children and is located on
Cathedral Square in Laramie.
While this is a chronicle of an unsuccessful venture on the part
of the Rt. Rev. Nathaniel Thomas - at least to the extent of his
acquiring the Fort Laramie site - it should be clear that the Bishop
himself was a remarkable and creative person.
He was involved in organizing the building of hospitals at Jack-
son and Lander; developing the Cathedral School for Girls and
the Cathedral Flome for Children in Laramie; completing St.
Matthew's Cathedral in Laramie; securing the franchise for the
operation of one of Wyoming's pioneer radio stations, KFBU, with
the help of E. H. Harriman; and raising nearly a million dollars
for the construction of a complex of buildings on the Wind River
Reservation. Most of these plans were at some stage of develop-
ment while the Fort Laramie effort was being made.
Many were completed with the same careful planning and per-
sonal persuasion aimed at wealthy Churchmen in the East.
As can be seen from this narrative, the Bishop was to be found
in almost any part of the United States at a given moment, and yet
he kept his dreams and plans alive, and executed the greater part
of them. At the same time he continued to administer his
churches in Wyoming, served on National Committees and was a
preacher much in demand throughout the country. He was a man
of exceptional energy and ability.
The present writer cannot escape the temptation of wondering
for a moment "what if . . .?" Suppose the Bishop could have made
his financial arrangements complete? Suppose he had known Mrs.
Blodgett five years sooner?
To the Bishop's credit, I believe, he planned to restore old Fort
Laramie. He had a sense of history and his vision was an early one
concerning what could - and ought - to be done with the then
ramshackle buildings.
I suspect that he would approve what is now being done with the
fort, but I think he would have liked to try his school as well. It
might well have been a failure, but it would have been a glorious
one!
A Postscript: The source for this document consists of a file of corre-
spondence covering the years 1915-1921. There are a few letters missing.
174 ANNALS OF WYOMING
but letters in reply give a good indication of the subject matter of those
missing letters.
William Dubois' sketches and photographs plus a poster announcing a
July Fourth Celebration at Fort Laramie (to help observe the new irrigation
canal mentioned by Harry Crane) are included.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of this incident is the fact that no mention
of it appears in the official proceedings of the Convocations of the Mission-
ary District of Wyoming, nor is there reference to it in the contemporary
issues of The Wyoming Churchman.
Two possible explanations occur. First, that there were so many other
projects in process at the time that it would not have been advisable to add
another which even the Bishop himself (albeit in a time of frustration) had
referred to as "chimerical."
Secondly, it was probably wise to keep such a plan relatively secret lest
the intent become known generally and others be tempted to prevent the
transaction.
Surely Hunton and Wilde were well aware of what was intended, and
there was no effort made to classify the plan as "Top Secret." Perhaps
there were other motives, but on the basis of the evidence available, these
suppositions may be acceptable.
Albert Charles Peak
PIONEER GEOLOGIST OF THE HAYDEN SURVEY
By
Fritiof Fryxell
When Dr. F. V. Hayden, geologist-in-charge of the Geological
and Geographical Survey of the Territories, in the summer of 1871
undertook scientific exploration of the Yellowstone country, on his
staff was Albert Charles Peale, a young physician who had just
graduated from the Medical School of the University of Pennsyl-
vania. Dr. Peale served as mineralogist of the 1871 expedition,
and thus became collaborator with Dr. Hayden in the first system-
atic geological investigations within what is now the Yellowstone
National Park.
Albert Charles Peale was the great-grandson of Charles Willson
Peale (1741 - 1827), the eccentric but lovable portrait painter of
Revolutionary War times, and friend of Washington, Madison,
Adams, and other notables of the period. He was, therefore, scion
of one of America's most remarkable families, a family which
through generations contributed leaders to art, science, and other
cultural activities in America.1 Dr. A. C. Peale, unlike his illus-
trious great-grandfather and some of the other "Philadelphia
Peales," rarely made himself conspicuous in public affairs, seem-
ing, rather, to have shunned personal publicity. Yet Dr. Peale
experienced more of adventurous living than most of his family,
and his career entitles him to a significant place in western history.
Only one brief memorial to Dr. Peale was ever published, and that
long ago and in an obscure periodical.1' In view of his contribu-
tions to science and exploration, it is remarkable indeed that
1. The literature on the Peale family is very voluminous. Particular
mention may be made of two splendid biographies: Charles Willson Peale,
by Charles Coleman Sellers, a two-volume work published by the American
Philosophical Society in 1947; and Titian Ramsay Peale, 1799-1885, and his
Journals of the Wilkes Expedition, by Jessie Poesch, a volume of 214 pages,
also published by the American Philosophical Society, in 1961. The latter
work is well illustrated, and contains a comprehensive annotated bibliog-
raphy of published and manuscript sources. Important also is the article.
The Peales, by Oliver Jensen, which appeared in The American Heritage.
April, 1955. This article is profusely illustrated with reproductions in color
of oil paintings.
2. [Memorial to] "Albert Charles Peale, M. D.", Transactions of the
American Climatological Association, volume 30 (1914), pages xxiii-xxiv,
176
ANNALS OF WYOMING
further recognition of Dr. Peale's stature should not come until
almost a century after his initial work in the Yellowstone.
Dr. A. C. Peale was born in
Heckscherville, Pennsylvania,
on April 1, 1849. He was the
son of Charles Willson Peale
(1821 - 1871 )3 and Harriet
Friel Peale; and the grandson of
Rubens Peale (1784 - 1865)
(manager of the historic "Peale's
Museum" in Philadelphia) and
Eliza Burd Patterson Peale.
Young Peale was educated in
Philadelphia, receiving the de-
grees A. B. in 1868 and A. M.
in 1873 from Central High
School. After three years of
advanced study at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania he received
the degree M. D. in 1871. His
preceptor in the medical school
was J. Burd Peale, M. D.; his
thesis ( still in the library of the
University of Pennsylvania) was
on the subject, "Emotions and
Secretions." On December 23,
1875, he married Emily Wis-
well, daughter of the Reverend
and Mrs. George F. Wiswell. The Peales had no children, and
Mrs. Peale predeceased her husband. Dr. Peale died at the Ger-
man Hospital in Philadelphia, on December 5, 1914, following a
stroke, at the age of 65. He was survived by a sister, Mrs. Charles
K. Mills of Philadelphia, and by his mother, of Washington, D. C.
Such are the bare outlines of Dr. Peale's life, and for certain
periods of that life it is now difficult, after the lapse of almost five
decades since his death, to ascertain the details. For other periods,
C. Peale About
1872-73
Courtesy F. M. Fryxell
with portrait. The Transactions was evidently published in a very small
edition; the only copy of this volume known to the author is in the library
of the College of Physicians, at Philadelphia. The memorial, prepared by
Dr. Guy Hinsdale. Secretary and Treasurer of the Association, is based on
a typed two-page sketch of Peale's life that was written by George P.
Merrill on Dec. 23, 1914, at the request of Dr. R. Rathbun, Assistant Secre-
tary of the Smithsonian Institution, for use by Dr. Hinsdale. The typewrit-
ten sketch and correspondence relating to it are on file in the Office of
Correspondence and Records of the United States National Museum, at
Washington.
3. Dr. A. C. Peale's father was no doubt named after the famous Charles
Willson Peale of colonial times. (See Sellers, op. cit., volume 2, page 420.)
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 177
however, the record is surprisingly complete. This is particularly
the case with the eight years that Dr. Peale spent on the staff of
the Hay den Survey - and for Dr. Peale, as for many another man
who participated in Hayden's western work, this was the happiest
period of his life. The results of his scientific endeavors are duly
recorded in technical papers published, for the most part, in the
annual reports and bulletins of the Hayden Survey. The human
interest side of these years is set forth in a series of very readable
accounts that Dr. Peale contributed, from the field, to the Phila-
delphia Press, the Christian Weekly, and the New York Times.
These appeared anonymously, being signed simply "Mineralogist. "
An intimate personal record is to be found in several of Dr. Peale's
diaries and field notebooks that, happily, were preserved.4 There
are also a large number of Peale's letters, in the National Archives
at Washington, D. C. and in other collections - letters distinguished
by their graceful penmanship, flawless composition, and dignified,
courteous tone. Finally, mention may be made of the recollections
of those few contemporaries of Dr. Peale who were still living
when information for this account was obtained. Thus it is pos-
sible to reconstruct an authentic sketch of Dr. Peale, and the
emerging picture is one that commands thorough respect for the
man and his work.
As was commonly the case in the last century, A. C. Peale
entered upon a career in natural science through the corridors of a
medical school. Though he became a physician, there is no
evidence that he ever intended to devote his life primarily to the
practice of medicine. However, his diaries show that he was not
infrequently called upon to use his medical training while in the
field, sometimes in emergency cases; and the sub!ect that became
one of his major scientific specialties, the study of mineral waters,
clearly reflected his early medical training and interest in thera-
peutics.
Nothing very specific is known about the time and manner in
which Peale's interest in natural history was awakened; however,
the intellectual climate among the Peales encouraged curiosity
about every field of knowledge, not least so science. Undoubtedly
he must have received inspiration from the example of his gifted
granduncle, Titian R. Peale, who, when a youth of barely twenty
(in 3 819 - 1820), accompanied the expedition of Major Long to
the Rocky Mountains as assistant naturalist, and later (in 1841 -
1 842 ) was naturalist with the Wilkes Expedition in the South
4. Most of Peak's 1871 diary and his 1872 diary are in the library of
Yellowstone National Park. Part of his 1871 diary, his field notes from
1873 and 1875, and his 1878 diary are in the Field Records File of the
United States Geological Survey at Denver.
178 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Pacific."' It is quite certain, however, that the particular direction
given to Peale's bent toward science resulted from his contact with
Dr. F. V. Hayden, at the University of Pennsylvania. After the
Civil War, Dr. Hayden - then 36 years old, already the veteran of
eight years of western exploration (1853 - 1860), and recently
brevetted Lieutenant Colonel for his meritorious service in the
Union Army as a Surgeon of Volunteers - was appointed Professor
of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Here, so far as is known, the paths of Hayden and Peale first
crossed. This was Hayden's first and only professorship; it did
not last long, nor did it, evidently, interfere greatly with what had
been, and continued to be, his consuming interest: scientific
investigations in the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. At
the first opportunity, in the summer of 1866, Hayden resumed
his western work by returning to one of his favorite haunts, the
Dakota badlands, under sponsorship of the Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia. A year later, acting under direction of
the General Land Office and with an appropriation of $5000 from
Congress, he began his work as "U. S. Geologist" in Nebraska,
and in so doing, as George P. Merrill has stated, "laid the founda-
tion for the U. S. Geological Survey as it exists today." For years
Hayden had labored indefatigably, and largely alone, in the West,
despite great physical hardships and dangers; it is not surprising
that now, having won federal recognition and financial support, his
Survey prospered to the extent that it soon demanded his undivided
attention, so that in 1872 he resigned from the University. Hayden
was afterward more often addressed as "the Doctor" than as
"Colonel" or "Professor," though all these titles appear in his
correspondence.
That Hayden was successful during his brief career as a pro-
fessor might be expected, in view of his rich field experience, his
boundless enthusiasm, and the intensity with which he threw
himself into his enterprises. In letters to Spencer F. Baird of the
Smithsonian Institution and others, he wrote with characteristic
optimism about his academic work, and tangible evidence of his
effectiveness as a teacher may be found in the fact that A. C.
Peale, the young medical student, found geology contagious and
chose to follow in Hayden's footsteps. Appointment of Peale to
the Survey in 1871, following his graduation from the university,
is indicative of the regard that Hayden had formed for this youth.
The esteem was reciprocal. The collaboration and friendship
between these two men, one twenty years the senior of the other,
proved to be lifelong. Indeed, Peale came to be closer to his chief,
in a personal way, than any of the other "Hayden men;" his loyalty
5. Jessie Poesch, op. cit.
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 179
amounted to filial devotion that never flagged and that was touch-
ingly manifested on many occasions.
Though a full-fledged doctor of medicine, Peale was only 22 in
the spring of 1871 when he first took to the field and became
campmate with a group that included, besides other new appoint-
ees like himself, a score of men already seasoned in the western
work. Among them were James Stevenson, Hayden's genial and
resourceful administrative assistant; Cyrus Thomas, entomologist;
Anton Schonborn, topographer; Henry W. Elliott, illustrator; and
William H. Jackson, whose photographs of the West had already
captured favorable attention, and, during his years of association
with the Survey, were to make him famous. Those getting their
first taste of life in the West included a guest artist, Thomas Moran,
who also was to be influenced profoundly by the experiences of
this summer. With an appropriation of $40,000 for that year,
Hayden was able to maintain a field party of about thirty-five men
in the remote and still difficultly accessible Yellowstone region.
"It was with tremendous enthusiasm that we prepared for the
invasion of this wonderland,'1 Jackson wrote in an autobiography
nearly sixty years later. Other accounts, Peale's among them,
breathe this spirit. Like Jackson and Peale, almost all of the party
were young men from the east, eager and sensitive to the high
adventure of exploration in a region known to contain geological
features so extraordinary as to have unique importance.
To Hayden their entry into the Yellowstone was an event fraught
with deepest satisfaction; for in June, I860, as geologist with a
military expedition headed by Captain W. F. Raynolds, he had
been in a party that James Bridger had guided to within actual
sight of the Yellowstone plateau, only to be stopped from entry
into the fabulous region (already familiar to Bridger and other
trappers ) because the expedition's rigid schedule would not permit
time for finding passage through the snow barriers of the adjacent
ranges. Raynolds had to report, "we were compelled to content
ourselves with listening to Bridger' s marvelous tales of burning
plains, immense lakes, and boiling springs, without being able to
verify these wonders." Raynolds' disappointment at being so
cheated was great; but Hayden's must have been even greater.
Verification of Bridger's vivid tales came after the Civil War - in
1869 by the private Folsom-Cook-Peterson party, and in 1870 by
the semi-official Washburn-Langford-Doane party - but the de-
tailed systematic exploration of the Yellowstone region by scientists
remained unaccomplished until 1871; eleven years after his trip
with Raynolds and Bridger, Hayden arrived on the scene with a
competent staff, well prepared for the undertaking.
Chittenden has stated that "with the close of the expedition of
1 87 1 , the discovery of the Yellowstone wonderland was made
complete," and that the chief value of the 187 1 work was "in the
large collection of accurate data concerning the entire region."
180 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Narratives and descriptions had already been given wide publicity,
but these were now supplemented by maps and technical reports,
sketches and photographs, and various kinds of scientific collec-
tions made for the Smithsonian Institution. Such materials "played
a decisive part in the winter of 1871 - 72," in the historic move-
ment to establish Yellowstone National Park, successfully con-
cluded on March 1, 1872, when President LJ. S. Grant signed the
bill that created the world's first national park.
The park bill, according to Chittenden, was drawn up by the
delegate to Congress from Montana, William H. Clagett, and
Nathaniel P. Langford, except for description of boundaries, which
was furnished by Dr. Hayden. "Dr. Hayden occupied a command-
ing position in this work, as representative of the government in
the exploration of 1871. He was thoroughly familiar with the
subject, and was equipped with an exhaustive collection of photo-
graphs and specimens gathered the previous summer. These were
placed on exhibition, and were probably seen by all members of
Congress. They did a work which no other agency could do, and
doubtless convinced every one who saw them that the region where
such wonders existed should be carefully preserved to the people
forever."
Obviously the large measure of credit which Chittenden and
other historians have given Dr. Hayden must be shared also with
the members of his 1871 staff. The geological data were of major
importance, and it is well to remember that these were the product
of the joint efforts of Hayden and Peale. They were incorporated
in Hayden's Annual Report for 1871 (the fifth in his series of
annual reports, and the only volume in the series to be printed in
quarto as well as the usual octavo form). The volume includes a
chapter entitled, "Preliminary Report of Dr. A. C. Peale on
Minerals, Rocks, Thermal Springs, etc. of the Expedition." This,
Dr. Peale's first scientific publication, marked not only the begin-
ning of his own studies of thermal springs, but also the starting
point for the investigation of these phenomena in Yellowstone
National Park.
Work of the Hayden Survey in succeeding years can be touched
on but briefly, and only as it has bearing on Dr. Peale. Success of
the 1871 season was so great that the next annual appropriation
for the Hayden Survey was nearly doubled, amounting to $75,000,
and this figure was matched in each of the succeeding years, until
the Survey was terminated, with the exception of one year, 1876,
when the amount was $65,000. With augmented funds, Hayden's
program became increasingly comprehensive, his organization cor-
respondingly more complex, and his staff much enlarged.
In developing the program of his Survey, Hayden continued to
manifest what certainly was one of the main reasons for his suc-
cess: an uncanny knack for searching out promising young men,
and, while entrusting them with responsibility, giving them also
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE
81
great freedom to express their talents and specialized skills, to the
advantage of all concerned. The roster of the Hayden Survey
came to include many names, besides those already mentioned,
that added luster to American science: for example, the remark-
ably versatile genius, William Henry Holmes, who served the
organization with great distinction as geologist, ethnologist, arche-
ologist, artist, and editor; the geologists Archibald Marvine, Orestes
St. John, F. M. Endlich, and Charles A. White; the topographers
Henry Gannett, James T. Gardner, and A. D. Wilson; the orni-
thologists Elliott Coues and C. Hart Merriam; and the botanists
John M. Coulter and T. C. Porter. Such men - and more could be
named - were Peale's associates during the following years; and
from 1871 to 1879 Peale's story is, very largely, the story of the
Hayden Survey.
In 1872, Hayden continued investigations in the newly estab-
lished Yellowstone National Park and nearby areas. For the
performance of the work he divided his staff into two parties. The
one, under his immediate direction, returned to the park region
to develop the studies begun in 1871 . Dr. Peale was in this party,
again as mineralogist; with it also, and beginning their long and
notable connection with the Hayden Survey were W. H. Holmes
and Henry Gannett. The other and larger party, under James
Stevenson, approached the park from the southwest, making a
survey of a route which followed, in general, the Snake River.
On August 16th. according to prearranged plan, all of the members
of both parties united in the Lower Fire Hole Basin in Yellowstone
Park. This grand reunion brought together for a few days about
sixty men and more than a hundred horses and mules. At the
conclusion of the season, Peale prepared for the 1872 Annual
W. H. Jackson, Dr. A. C. Peale, Dr. Turnbull, Dixon (photographer's assist-
ant). Probably Taken in 1871 or 1872, the Only Year These Men Were
Together
Courtesy F. M. Fryxell
182 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Report a section of nearly one hundred pages. Besides presenting
new data on the thermal springs and related features of the park,
this section also dealt with such problems as geologic structure and
stratigraphy, which, during the next few years, were especially to
engage his attention.
In 1873 investigations were transferred to Colorado, in part
because of Indian hostility in the Yellowstone region. Study first
was focused on the eastern portion of the mountainous part of
Colorado, and in the three subsequent seasons, 1874 to 1876, was
extended throughout other portions of the state. For each season
from 1873 on, Hayden followed a plan of operations that was
increasingly perfected. The area to be surveyed was subdivided
into several divisions, and a party was assigned to each. Key men
in each party were the topographer, responsible for mapping the
division, and the geologist, who worked closely with or followed
after him, in order to delineate the geology on the map - a pro-
cedure that essentially is that still followed by the United States
Geological Survey. Assigned also to the various parties were other
scientists, such as botanists, zoologists, and meteorologists. Jack-
son's photographic division had a roving assignment that took it
from section to section as necessary, and there were the members
of the administrative staff, correspondents, and special scientists,
too, whose duties cut across divisional lines.
In 1873, the area was divided into three units. Dr. Peale was
appointed geologist of one of these, the South Park division; the
other divisions were investigated by Archibald Marvine and F. M.
Endlich, geologists new to the Survey. In 1 874 Peale investigated
a division south of the Eagle and Grand Rivers; Marvine, Endlich,
and Holmes served as geologists of other divisions. In 1 875 Peale
was geologist of the Grand River division, but his work was halted
on August 15th by Indian trouble, which cost him all of his col-
lections. That year Endlich and Holmes again served as geologists
of other divisions; Marvine's absence from the ranks was due to
illness, which a few months later claimed his life when he was only
28 years of age, prematurely terminating a brilliant career. In
1 876 Peale was back in the Grand River division, and his geolog-
ical colleagues assigned to other divisions, were Endlich, Holmes,
and Charles A. White.
The field work in Colorado was now completed, and the data at
hand for compilation of the Atlas of Colorado, published in 1877
and reissued in a second edition in 1881. This work, which is still
of monumental importance in western geology, won unstinted ad-
miration, even from competitors and critics of the Survey. Turn-
ing its pages, one marvels at the imagination, careful planning, and
industry which it entailed, and particularly the close team-work
required to produce it by administrators, topographers, geologists,
and others. The six sectional geological maps bear the names of
the five geologists who accomplished this huge job of reconnais-
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 183
sance mapping; and the names of Peale, Holmes, and Endlich
appear on no less than four of the six maps.
Long after this period, Professor Charles Schuchert of Yale
University observed, "Doctor A. C. Peale never geologized in the
Rockies without having in his outfit a copy of Dana's 'Manual of
Geology, ' and each night he identified as best he could by the aid
of this book the fossils he had gathered during the day. And Peale,
even as a pioneer geologist on the Hayden Survey, made no glaring
errors. "e
For 1877, operations of the Hayden Survey were shifted to the
region lying north of th,at investigated by the 40th Parallel Survey
under Clarence King, and thus were conducted in Utah, Idaho, and
Wyoming. The geological work of various parties was headed by
Peale, Endlich, and Orestes St. John. Peale's assignment was the
Green River division in southern Wyoming; Endlich's the Sweet-
water division; and St. John's, the Teton division. In 1927, G. R.
Mansfield of the U. S. Geological Survey published a detailed
report on the geology of part of southeastern Idaho, and in his
volume appraised the work of Peale and St. John as follows: "This
work, though of reconnaissance grade, was of a high standard . . .
For much of the region covered by these [Mansfield's] surveys
the reports of Peale and St. John still constitute the principal
sources of information."7
In 1878 the work was conducted entirely in Wyoming, Peale
and Holmes being reassigned to Yellowstone National Park, to
round out the survey of that region, while St. John and White
worked in areas farther south. In the Park, Peale completed his
studies of the geyser basins and hot spring localities, and Holmes
devoted his attention to general geology. The Annual Report for
1878 was not published until 1883; by far the largest of the twelve
annual reports of the Hayden Survey, it comprises two large octavo
volumes, with a total of more than 1300 pages, and an accompany-
ing portfolio of maps and panoramas. Volume II is devoted en-
tirely to Yellowstone National Park; it contains the geologic con-
tributions of Peale and Holmes, and a section on topography by
Henry Gannett. The beautiful illustrations (many of them chro-
molithographs) by Holmes, "the greatest field artist America has
produced, "s make the volume exceptionally attractive.
The greater part of this volume, almost four hundred pages, is
6. "The Relations of Stratigraphy and Paleogeography to Petroleum
Geology," by Charles Schuchert. American Association of Petroleum Geol-
ogists, Bulletin 3 (1919), Page 289.
7. "Geography, Geology, and Mineral Resources of Part of Southeastern
Idaho," by George Rogers Mansfield. U. S. Geological Survey, Professional
Paper 152, 1927, page 5.
8. "Cope, Master Naturalist," by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Princeton
University Press, 1931, page 200.
184 ANNALS OF WYOMING
devoted to Peale's final report on "The Thermal Springs of Yellow-
stone National Park," a work that always will hold an important
place in Yellowstone literature. In Part I of the monograph, Peale
tabulated and described the springs and geysers of the park - over
2000 of the former, and 71 of the latter. Of this section, Hayden
wrote, "It ought never to be necessary to repeat this preliminary
work in the Park. What remains to be done is to start a series of
close and detailed observations protracted through a number of
consecutive years, with a view to determine, if possible, the laws
governing geyseric action/' In Part II Peale dealt with "the
thermal springs of the globe, tracing their connection with volcanic
action, dwelling more particularly on the Iceland and New Zealand
regions.'1 In Part III Peale considered "the general subject of
thermal springs, the color of water, sources of heat, etc., comparing
Yellowstone Park with other hot-spring areas/' Additional chap-
ters relate to "the analyses of the waters and deposits from the
springs of the Park," and "the special consideration of geysers,
giving the theories and treating of the peculiarities of their erup-
tions and the influences modifying them." Finally, the biblio-
graphical appendix cites references on the Yellowstone National
Park, Iceland, and New Zealand, and authorities for thermal
springs throughout other parts of the world; the mineralogical
appendix lists minerals of the park and the analyses of several of
the great variety of igneous rocks found within its limits.
Since the period of the Hayden Survey, the hydrothermal phe-
nomena of Yellowstone National Park have held perennial interest
for scientists, and have received much attention. Most important
of later studies are those made by E. T. Allen and Arthur L. Day,
under auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and pub-
lished in 1935. Concerning Peale's pioneer work, these authors
stated,1' "Peale explored a wide expanse of territory in a day when
transportation was slow and difficult; his observations are generally
accurate, and his statements are not exaggerated. His book
abounds not only in description but in measurements of tempera-
ture, in numerous and careful observations on geysers, and in
scattered information of other kinds which is of value, but on the
whole he lacked the systematic data necessary for the solution of
his problems. The time at his disposal, three comparatively short
summers, was inadequate for its collection ... it is clear from the
context of his report that Peale was fully aware of its preliminary
character. It is, in fact, the first attempt at definite location and
scientific description and the earliest guide to the thermal features
of the Park. Furthermore Peale's descriptions with Jackson's
9. "Hot Springs of the Yellowstone National Park," by E. T. Allen and
Arthur L. Day. Publication No. 466, Carnegie Institution of Washington,
1935. 525 pages. Pages 3-4.
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 185
photographs, Holmes' drawings and Mushback's sketch-maps, es-
tablish many points from which to judge the permanence or varia-
bility of hydro thermal activity during the last half century."
Though Peale published many other papers in subsequent years,
his final Yellowstone report stands as his most important scientific
work. It brought his contributions to the Annual Reports of the
Hayden Survey, during the eight years of his continuous service on
the staff, to a total of nearly 1000 pages. In addition he published
sundry papers in the Bulletins of the Survey and elsewhere.
The field season of 1878 proved the last for the Hayden Survey,
as thereafter it lost its separate identity when Congress consolidated
all federal surveys into one organization, the United States Geo-
logical Survey. Official termination of the Hayden Survey took
place on June 30, 1879. The political maneuvering that preceded
this event resulted in the appointment of Clarence King as the first
director of the United States Geological Survey. King took office
on July 1, 1879, and on July 8th he wrote to the Secretary of the
Interior, Carl Schurz, recommending a small staff to form the
nucleus of the new organization. Five men were appointed to the
rank of full geologist, and Hayden was one of these (the others
were Samuel F. Emmons, Arnold Hague, Grove K. Gilbert, and
Raphael Pumpelly ) . Peale did not become a member of the
Geological Survey immediately. Not much is known about his
activities from 1879 to 1883, though from a few letters it appears
that he resided at Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, devoting his time
to the Yellowstone report. Hayden, meanwhile, took up residence
in Philadelphia, near his wife's home and the Academy of Natural
Sciences, where the best of library facilities were at his disposal,
and he concentrated on winding up the affairs of his Survey,
particularly the publication of its final volumes. This was a diffi-
cult task, and with his failing health he could not have completed
it but for the aid of others, especially Holmes and Coues. Probably
Peale, too, assisted Hayden with this work, though to what extent
is not known.
After a year, King resigned as director of the Geological Survey,
and he was succeeded by the capable John Wesley Powell. The
staff of the Survey was enlarged rapidly, and in the "plan of opera-
tions" that he submitted to the Secretary of the Interior on June 19,
1883, Powell proposed placing in the Upper Missouri region "a
small party under Dr. F. V. Hayden, with A. C. Peale as assistant,
for the purpose of prosecuting the work formerly begun by Dr.
Hayden in Dakota on certain Cretaceous and Tertiary formations,
and making collections of the fossils of the same." From Hayden -
Peale correspondence it is clear that in this arrangement Peale
again willingly chose to cast his lot with Hayden; and so it came
about that in July, 1883, the two men journeyed to Montana for
field work together in areas long familiar to both. For Hayden it
meant a return to the very localities he had first visited in the
186
ANNALS OF WYOMING
X<w
i l ">'M.'h J^ ^.??^4*i;2' k -
>*
Kubel Sketches: Looking East From Camp, August 4, 1877
V/
J
<f*& iUtfT
^
:*-:*s
Deep Caldron, About 1800 Foot Slope and 3000 Feet Deep
Courtesy F. M. Fryxell
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 187
1850s, three decades before. Then he had traveled afoot, by river
boat, or on horseback, into regions unexplored geologically, where
warlike Indians were a constant threat, and bison still grazed in
immense herds. Now, as they went by train, it was through greatly
changed scenes. And Hayden, too, had changed; he was no
longer young, and he was ailing. When illness necessitated cutting
short his field work, and forced his return to Philadelphia in early
September, Peale stayed on to work alone. Hayden, though crip-
pled and extremely frail, was able to return to Montana with Peale
and work with him to some extent three more summers. It is of
great interest that in the summer of 1886, when Hayden made his
final trip to the West, his party included, as a young assistant,
George P. Merrill, who in later years became Head Curator of
Geology at the United States National Museum and, while in that
position, the historian of American geology. Hayden was long
bedfast, and his death occurred on December 22, 1887.1" Peale
continued the work in Montana, and in time completed his map-
ping. The main result of this field work was the Three Forks Folio
of the Geologic A tlas of the United States. Though this folio was
not published until 1896, and became number 24 in the series, it
had the distinction, according to Merrill, of being the first geolog-
ical folio to be completed in manuscript.
The Three Forks region, it may be noted, includes geological
features of great complexity, and it presents very difficult prob-
lems. In the most recent of many studies of the region, published
in 1961, the author, G. D. Robertson, nevertheless observed that
"A. C. Peale (1896) mapped virtually the whole Three Forks
basin, at a scale of 1 : 250,000. Many of his observations and ideas
on basin geology are still useful."11
Along with other types of research, Peale continued his study of
mineral waters, his investigations in Yellowstone Park having made
him an authority on the subject. For eighteen years (1883 to
1901 ) he contributed to the annual volumes on Mineral Resources
of the United States, and to the Annual Reports of the Geological
Survey, the sections devoted to mineral waters. Other papers re-
sulting from continued work on this subject are: The Classification
of Mineral Waters (1887); Lists and Analyses of the Mineral
Springs of the United States ( Bulletin 32 of the Geological Survey,
a volume of 235 pages) ; the Natural Mineral Waters of the United
10. All too little specific information is available about the period 1883-
1886, during which Hayden and Peale worked together in Montana. Their
letters make mention of the "friends in Bozeman," but the efforts of Dr.
J. V. Howell and the author to identify these friends, and fill out this part
of the Hayden-Peale story, have not been very fruitful. Students of Mon-
tana local history may be able to give valuable assistance in this search.
11. "Origin and Development of the Three Forks Basin. Montana."
Geological Society of American Bulletin, volume 72, (1961), page 1005.
188 ANNALS OF WYOMING
States ( 1 894) ; and Classification of Mineral Waters ( 1902 ) . Af-
ter affiliation with the American Climatological Association, in
1887, he was appointed to the Committee on Mineral Springs of
that organization, published several papers in the Transactions,
and came to be one of the valued members of the Association. In
1913, the Secretary of the Association, Guy Hinsdale, M. D., noted
in the Transactions, "We believe we are indebted to Dr. A. C.
Peale ... for the best and most comprehensive classification"
[of mineral waters]. Dr. Peale also continued to publish papers
on other subjects.
In 1898, Dr. Peale was transferred from the Geological Survey
to the United States National Museum, where he was put in charge
of the paleobotanical collections. Here he remained at work until
a few months before his death. As an illustration of Dr. Peale's
activities during this final period of his life, one of his projects may
be singled out because of its unusual nature. For the geological
exhibits of the Museum he prepared a "Structure Section Across
the North American Continent," based on data taken from various
surveys and reduced to common scales (the horizontal scale being
two miles to the inch, and the vertical scale 4000 feet to the inch).
This section, made along a line extending from San Francisco
through Colorado Springs and St. Louis to the Atlantic Coast (at
Pamlico Sound, North Carolina), was done in color and was over
125 feet long. Displayed on the north wall of the Hall of Fossil
Invertebrate Animals, it remained for decades one of the most
striking and informative geological exhibits of the Museum.
To Dr. Peale, as to his mentor, failure in health came all too
early, before retirement age. He suffered several strokes and,
toward the last, found walking increasingly difficult. A lonely
little man, who rarely spoke about himself or his past, and shuffled
to and from the laboratories of the Museum, he may have aroused
the interest and sympathy of those who noticed him; but it is
doubtful that many were aware that he was one of the country's
pioneer geologists, or had any realization of the fact that, in his
vigorous youth, he had participated in some of the most stirring
chapters of American exploration. But his erstwhile assistant,
George P. Merrill, was fully cognizant of this, and in gathering
information for his history of American geology, he had enlisted
Dr. Peale's intimate acquaintance with men long gone and events
all but forgotten. And later he paid Dr. Peale this tribute: "His
work throughout a period of upwards of forty years of service was
characterized by enthusiasm and conscientious attention to detail
rarely equalled." Another colleague who admired Dr. Peale
greatly, the late Edwin Kirk, spoke of him in like terms, and de-
scribed him as "a gentleman of the old school" and "a true
scholar."
Dr. Peale never sought or attained the scientific leadership
achieved by some of his old friends, like Holmes, Gannett, and
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 189
Coues, but he had an extremely keen mind, and his interests were
exceptionally broad. This is evidenced not only by his affiliation
with the American Climatological Association but also with the
American Chemical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia (of which Charles Willson Peale and Titian R. Peale
had been active members before him), the Philosophical, Geologi-
cal, and Chemical Societies of Washington, the Cosmos Club, and
other organizations. An omnivorous reader, he was especially
interested in literature and history - and understandably so in
colonial and western history, as well as in the genealogy of his own
distinguished family. Delving into the records of his illustrious
forebears, he wrote biographical accounts of his great-grandfather,
Charles Willson Peale, and Titian R. Peale. For many years he
served as surgeon and registrar of the Society of Colonial Wars in
the District of Columbia, and he prepared the Register of that
Society, a beautiful volume published in 1904.
After Peale's death, his diaries for 1871 and 1872, together with
some of the correspondence between the Peales and the Haydens,
were saved from destruction through the thoughtful alertness of
Edwin Kirk. Dr. Kirk presented the diaries to Yellowstone Na-
tional Park, and made the correspondence available to the author.
This correspondence reveais how close and warm was the friend-
ship between the Haydens and the Peales. In the long period
during which Dr. Hayden was incapacitated by illness, Dr. Peale
faithfully kept him informed about their mutual friends in Wash-
ington, and supplied him with news from scientific circles in the
capitol city, subjects that keenly interested Dr. Hayden up to his
death. It was especially to Dr. Peale that Mrs. Hayden turned for
assistance when she was widowed. Many years later, in a letter
written on January 13, 1908, Dr. Peale had occasion to report to
Dr. Merrill, in all brevity, "I had to do with the closing out of Dr.
Hayden*s private matters, including the disposition of his books
and papers." This Dr. Peale did. to be sure, but he did far more:
setting himself to the task of writing Dr. Hayden's biography, he
painstakingly assembled the basic information (much of it gleaned
through several years by extensive correspondence ) and then pre-
pared a memoir suitable for publication. Instead of publishing
this, however, he placed it at the disposal of others more prominent
than himself. Thus it followed that Peale's manuscript served as
the basis for the definitive biography of Dr. Hayden by Charles A.
White, published as a Memoir of the National Academy of Science,
and for that by J. W. Powell, published in the Annual Report of the
United States Geological Survey, as well as for other accounts.
Peale himself published only a condensation of his biography;1-
12. "Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden," by A. C. Peale. Philosophical
Society of Washington, Bulletin 11, pages 476-478 (1890).
190 ANNALS OF WYOMING
his larger manuscript was placed on open file in the library of the
National Museum, where it still remains. The incident well illus-
trates both Dr. Peale's self-effacing nature and his complete devo-
tion to Dr. Hayden.
Dr. Peale's generous and friendly ways, albeit retiring disposi-
tion, made him well-liked among his campmates and other col-
leagues, and these were pleased to bestow his name on the geo-
graphical features of several widely-separated localities. "Peale
Island'" is the most southerly island in Yellowstone Lake, Yellow-
stone National Park, Wyoming. "Mount Peale" (altitude 12,721
feet) is the highest peak of the La Sal Mountains ("Sierra la Sal"),
in eastern Utah, near the Colorado border.13 The "Peale Moun-
tains'* are in southeastern Idaho. Of these mountains G. R. Mans-
field wrote (1927),li "The largest mountain group of the subdi-
visions of the Idaho-Wyoming Chain represented in this region
[southeastern Idaho] is named in honor of Dr. A. C. Peale, chief
of the Green River division of the Hayden surveys, who first
sketched in broad outlines the geology of these mountains. The
group includes the Preuss Range and its numerous subdivisions,
Webster Range, and the outlying Grays Range, together with a
group of lesser ridges . . . Together they [the Peale Mountains]
occupy an area 65 miles in length and about 25 miles in maximum
breadth."
Dr. Peale gave little heed to popular acclaim, and allowed fame
to pass him by. Yet, as one reviews his accomplishments and sums
up his life, it is manifest that his record is one that stands firmly
on its own merits. He should be remembered for what he
achieved, and no less so for his personal integrity.
The unique relationship between Dr. Peale and Dr. Hayden,
too, deserves remembrance, and one may recall it with pleasure.
These two men — student and teacher to begin with, afterwards
co-workers and staunch friends through many years — were both
doctors of medicine who found their careers in the study of natural
science. They labored together in closest harmony, ardently pur-
suing the work of their choice. Wealth came to neither, but their
calling brought them other rewards: the enduring satisfactions to
be found in wholehearted dedication to creative and worth-while
endeavors.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is one of the by-products of a comprehensive study
that Dr. J. V. Howell and the author have been conducting, for a
number of years, relating to the history and personnel of the Hay-
13. "Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States," by Henry
Gannett. United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 258 (1905), page 240.
14. Mansfield, op. cit., page 24.
ALBERT CHARLES PEALE 191
den Survey. As such it has benefited from the financial support
granted the larger investigation by the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and
Augustana College.
The author is greatly indebted to Mrs. Elizabeth Mahan, Dr.
J. V. Howell, and Mr. Roald Fryxell, his son, for constructive
reviews of the manuscript. Dr. Howell, the leading student of the
Hayden Survey, furnished information on important points, and
provided the illustrations.
The figure of Albert Charles Peale, as here portrayed, owes not
a little to conversations the author was privileged to hold, many
years ago, with those splendid patriarchs of the Hayden Survey,
William Henry Jackson and William Henry Holmes; and, more
recently, with two senior members of the Geological Survey, Edwin
Kirk and John B. Reeside, - men now deceased. Dr. Kirk, who
had been closely associated with Dr. Peale, expressed great regret
that his memory had suffered unmerited eclipse, because of the
man's modest and reticent nature, and because in his later years,
when he was sorely stricken by ill-health and bereavement, few
co-workers got to know him with sufficient intimacy to appreciate
the true worth of the man. Dr. Reeside concurred in these views.
GENERAL REFERENCES
United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories ( Hay-
den Survey, 1867 - 1879): Annual Reports, Bulletins, and other publications.
Endlich. Frederich, S. N. D. - Pealite: A New Mineral Described in the
Sixth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey [Hayden Sur-
vey. Annual Report for 1872, pages 153 - 154]. Private publication, 2
pages. Circa 1873. Describes a mineral discovered in Yellowstone Nation-
al Park by A. C. Peale and named after him by F. M. Endlich. Pealite is
listed in Dana's System of Mineralogy, 6th edition, page 196, as a variety
of geyserite.
Powell, John Wesley - [Memorial to] Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden. United
States Geological Survey, Ninth Annual Report ( 1889), pages 31 - 38.
Peale, Albert Charles - Biographical Sketch of F. V. Hayden, M. D. With
Bibliography. Manuscript in library of United States National Museum,
Washington, D. C. Circa 1889.
White, Charles A. - Memoir of Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, 1839 - 1887.
Read before the National Academy, November, 1894. National Academy
of Science, Memoirs, volume 3, pages 395 - 413. 1893.
Peale, Albert Charles - Charles Willson Peale and his Public Services during
the Revolution. A paper read before the Society of the Sons of the Ameri-
can Revolution in the District of Columbia. Read December 15, 1896. 31
pages.
Kisch, Enoch Heinrich - Balneology and Crounotherapy. Translated by
A. A. Eshner. With notes for America by Guy Hinsdale, and an introduc-
tory chapter on the classification of mineral waters, with especial reference
to those of the U. S., by A. C. Peale. In: Cohen, S. S., Editor, System of
Physiologic Therapeutics (1902), volume 9, pages 297-503. This publi-
192 ANNALS OF WYOMING
cation by Dr. Peale is not listed in Geologic Literature on North America,
1785 - 1918. It is in the library of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia.
Schmeckebier. L. F. - Catalogue and Index of the Publications of the Hay-
den, King, Powell, and Wheeler Surveys. United States Geological Survey,
Bulletin 222 (1904). 208 pages.
Register of the Society of Colonial Wars in District of Columbia, 1904.
Prepared for the Society by Dr. A. C. Peale, the Registrar, and edited by
Dr. Marcus Benjamin, the Deputy Governor, under the Committee on Pub-
lications. 214 pages. Washington City, 1904. Genealogy of the Peale
family on page 144; portrait of Dr. A. C. Peale facing page 1 12.
Peale. Albert Charles - Titian R. Peale, 1800- 1885. Philosophical Society
of Washington, Bulletin 14 (1905), pages 317 - 326.
Merrill. George P. - Contributions to the History of American Geology.
United States National Museum, Annual Report for 1904, pages 189-733.
1906. Refers to Peale's work with the Hayden Survey; portrait on page
600; biographical note on page 708.
Obituary notices of Dr. Albert Charles Peale:
The Washington Post. Sunday, December 6, 1914, page 6.
Philadelphia Public Ledger. Sunday. December 6, 1914, page 5.
Who's Who in America. Albert Charles Peale is listed in volumes 1 - 8
(1899-1915); also in Who Was Who in America, volume 1 (1897-1942).
Nickles. John M. - Geologic Literature on North America, 1785-1918.
United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 746, Part I, Bibliography (1923),
1 167 pages. Bulletin 747, Part II, Index (1924), 658 pages. Lists most of
Peale's geological publications.
Chittenden, Hiram Martin - Yellowstone National Park, Historical and
Descriptive. 1924 edition, published by J. E. Haynes, Saint Paul, 356 pages.
1933 edition, revised by Eleanor Chittenden Cress and Isabelle F. Story,
published by Stanford University Press, 286 pages.
Merrill. George P. - The First One Hundred Years of American Geology.
Yale University Press, 1924. 773 pages. Refers to Peale's work with the
Hayden Survey; portrait on page 519.
Jackson. William Henry, in collaboration with Driggs. Howard R. - The
Pioneer Photographer. World Book Company. 1929. 314 pages.
Jackson, William Henry - Time Exposure. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940. 341
pages.
BeaL Merrill D. - The Story of Man in Yellowstone. The Caxton Printers,
Ltd.. Caldwell. Idaho, 1949. 320 pages.
Ewan, Joseph - Rocky Mountain Naturalists. The University of Denver
Press. 1950. 358 pages. Brief biographical sketch of Peale on pages 280-
281.
Howell. J. V. - Geology plus Adventure: the Story of the Hayden Survey.
Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, volume 49 (July, 1959),
pages 220 - 224.
Letters by Albert Charles Peale in records of the Hayden Survey, National
Archives; in George P. Merrill papers. Library of Congress; in Merrill Auto-
graph Collection, United States National Museum. All in Washington,
b. c.
Early records of the United States Geological Survey, in National Archives.
Pat tee, the Cottery King
THE OMAHA AND WYOMING LOTTERIES
By
Philip Gardiner Nordell
The lotteries run in Omaha in the early 1870's and those almost
immediately following based in Laramie City, as it was then called,
and Cheyenne,* form the chief episodes at the height of the spec-
tacular career of James Monroe Pattee, a prolific schemer with a
Midas touch. The word "based" is used because Pattee, an out-
sider, merely utilized Wyoming as a legal base for his countrywide
operations.
His Omaha lotteries, while showering him with additional riches,
seem to have been conducted for the most part without deception.
In contributing to worthy institutions they won the plaudits of
prominent citizens. To the contrary, the Wyoming Lottery and
the Cheyenne State Lottery, beyond payment of county license
fees, and amidst charges of fraud, wrought no public benefit what-
soever. Then, shifting to mining swindles among other things, and
embellishing his circulars with stories of imminent riches surpass-
ing those of the Comstock Lode, he utilized the tiny prizes won in
his lotteries as bait to lure the suckers a second time.
To place these enterprises of Pattee's in their proper niche, a
brief sketch should be given of the status American lotteries had
reached by that time. During the second half of the 18th century
and the early 19th, about 2000 of them were launched for a variety
of objectives. For example, excepting only the Quakers and some
minor sects, about 400 were set on foot by or for the Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, German Reformed, Congregationalists
and Baptists, including a few for other denominations, then small,
particularly the Catholics and Methodists. Frequently in the ap-
peals to buy tickets it was stated that their purchase would promote
religion. Each of the ten present-day American colleges that
taught at the collegiate level before the end of the colonial period
ran one or more lotteries — -five by Princeton, two of which raised
much of the cost of erecting its historic Nassau Hall. All of the
* I want to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Miss Lola M. Homsher,
Miss Henryetta Berry, Miss Jean Batchelder and Miss Mary Elizabeth Cody,
all of whom, some years ago, and more recently Mrs. Katherine Halverson,
gave me their enthusiastic cooperation in combing source material in Lara-
mie and Cheyenne for data concerning these Wyoming lotteries.
194 ANNALS OF WYOMING
topnotch Founding Fathers participated in lotteries in one way or
another. George Washington signed tickets, he bought tickets on
speculation, he had charge of a drawing and, when President, he
gave a ticket to a young child. Martha, when the first First Lady,
bought a ticket for a Christmas present.
While it is true, in later years, that a change in moral standards,
specifically in the identification of the lottery principle, not only as
gambling, but as the most pernicious type of gambling, did play an
important role in casting lotteries into bad repute, another essential
reason lay in their perversion by the very conditions that brought
them into being.
Each State authorized as many lotteries as it chose, regardless
of other States, and more often than not put no time limit on the
grants. The result was that by the mid-1790's a chronic glut of
tickets hung over the market. Sufficient tickets to insure a profit
could not be sold and when the drawings started they often were
stretched out for more than a year. Sapping away the strength of
the lotteries themselves, parasitical gambling became rife as to what
numbers would be drawn on specific days. Profits sank. Amateur
managers, no longer daring to take the risk, gave way to profes-
sional contractors. In the ensuing competition between them, not
only were hundreds of times as many tickets to raise a given sum
thrown on the market, with only a minute fraction of them sold,
but the percentage of money, which adventurers had paid for tick-
ets, returned to them in the form of prizes, sank from around 85%,
common in the 18th century, to two-thirds or a half.
During the 1820,s and early 1830's, lotteries were subjected to
such a heavy bombardment by the dedicated reformers that by
1834 they had been prohibited (but the purchase of tickets could
not be abolished) by some of the northern States, particularly
Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. But in other States
well managed lotteries supervised by State officials had their
defenders. And in the aftermath of the Civil War, hundreds of
them sprang up most everywhere, generally masquerading as gift
concerts or other forms of gift enterprises.
During the 1870's, covering the period of Pattee's lottery activi-
ties in Omaha and Wyoming, a growing revulsion gained strength
most everywhere against all forms of the gift enterprises as well as
against all the regular lotteries running as such. Several of the
latter were still operating on grants made in the 1830's, with only a
pittance of the profits going to the beneficiaries. The contractors,
buying and selling their vested rights among themselves, were piling
up fortunes. Having excluded lottery advertising from its columns
in 1873, the New York Times declared in 1879, "Gambling at best
is a disease, and if it cannot be wholly extirpated, the area of its
ravages can be limited. When this disease takes the aspect of a
lottery, it affects men, women, and children, and the pestilence
should be stamped out as though it were the Russian plague."
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 195
To fully understand the workings of the Wyoming lotteries,
something must be explained concerning a radical alteration in the
manner of drawing that had become common in the 1 8201s. In
practically all of the old lotteries run before that time, the tickets
were numbered consecutively from one to say 5000 or 50,000, or
whatever number of tickets was in the scheme. In the drawing,
as the number of each ticket on a rolled piece of paper was taken
from one wheel, simultaneously another paper was taken from a
second wheel, designating what, if any, prize had been won. Even
if only the slips for the prizes, perhaps a third of the total, were put
into the wheel, it was a slow process.
The new method was based on what was called the ternary or
3-number system, in contrast to the former single-number system.
Obviously, among the numbers say running from l to 75, many
combinations of three of these numbers can be made, as 9.23.74.
In a scheme based on 75 numbers, each of these combinations, in
this instance 67,525 in all, would be put on a different ticket. To
determine which tickets won certain prizes, the 75 numbers or
ballots, each rolled separately, were placed in a wheel and a few
drawn out, say 12. Depending upon what numbers were drawn,
certain combinations of three of them, previously published, would
win certain prizes. The whole drawing, then, instead of consuming
many hours spread out over weeks or months, would be over in a
few minutes.
For example, the person holding the ticket with the above num-
bers, 9.23.74, would quickly see if one, two or three of them were
among the few drawn. If in the rare chance they happened to be
the first three, not necessarily, but as a general rule, he would
win the top prize. If only one of his numbers was drawn, ordi-
narily he would receive a small prize, perhaps the cost of the ticket.
or even nothing if a comparatively few prizes were in the scheme.
In the 1 850"s the single-number schemes staked a revival and
thereafter, as a rule, a few of them were interspersed with the
commoner ternaries.
Born in 1823, the son of a New Hampshire farmer, Pattee,
having accumulated several thousand dollars as a writing teacher,
threw off such a slow method of making money and, at the age of
30, went west and quickly laid the foundation of a fortune in
successful land speculation.1 Back east, illustrative of his so-
1. Biographical sketch of Pattee through his second Omaha lottery
enterprise is in A. C. Edmunds, Pen sketches of Nebraskans with photo-
graphs (1871), pp. 362-5, but it is so eulogistic as to suggest the book is
one of those compilations soon to become common in which the write-ups
depended upon what was paid for them.
196
ANNALS OF WYOMING
termed restless, roving disposi- 1
tion, living successively in New
Haven, Philadelphia and New
York, the several directories of
the period list his occupations
as land speculator, gentleman,
publisher, printer, banker, brok-
er, "mining and "mer." (mer-
chant?). By 1868 he owned a
fine brownstone mansion at 322
West 56 Street, New York, and
there, presumably, his wife and
two daughters lived while he
engaged in successful mining
operations in California. While
in Nevada City in 1 870 and
1871 he raised, by means of a
"Grand Fair" type of lottery, a
sufficient sum to pay the debts
of the local school district and
thus enable the public schools
to reopen.-
With this experience in be- James Monroe Pattee, from Pen
coming, as described by the Sketches of Nebraskans, by A. C.
New York Times, "a speculator Edmunds
on the credulity of the public,"
in the latter year he moved on
to Omaha where, it is said, he became known as the Lottery King.a
His first Omaha enterprise, to help establish a public library,
consisted of a scheme of 90,000 tickets offered at $2, or 3 for $5,
from the proceeds of which, 2310 "gifts" totaling $100,000, from
one of $20,000 down, were to be distributed. It was drawn on
November 6 or 7, 1871, at the Academy of Music, crowded to
overflowing.
The next "Great Public Drawing," to aid the Mercy Hospital
operated by the Sisters of Mercy, was held on June 27, 1872, at
Redick's Opera House, presided over by Nebraska's Governor
Courtesy Philip Gardiner Nordeli
2. Same, p. 365. The enterprise seems to have been the Cosmopolitan
Benevolent Association of California Grand Fair, advertised extensively in
the Nevada City Daily National Gazette commencing Aug. 23, 1870, and
described as "in aid of Washington School and liquidating debt of the
Nevada School district." Names of managers do not include Pattee, but
he often employed front men.
3. Thus termed in Alfred Sorenson, The story of Omaha, 3rd ed. (1923),
p. 487. On p. 488 is a likeness of Pattee with dark and piercing eyes, prob-
ably touched up. I see nothing concerning him in the first edition (1876)
of this work and very little in the second (1889).
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 197
James, with an outpouring of prominent citizens on the stage in-
cluding former Governor Saunders. J. B. Geggie of St. Louis,
winner of the top prize of $50,000 in gold, received a check on
July 2 for $54,790, the equivalent in greenbacks.
Pattee's "Third Legal Enterprise," to erect the Nebraska State
Orphan Asylum, for destitute persons as well as orphans, was
drawn on November 6, 1872. The fourth, also for the asylum,
with a top prize of $75,000, was drawn on May 20, 1873. Adver-
tised frequently in the New York Herald, an indication of the
distance Pattee had thrown his net survives in the form of a legal
agreement entered into by ten Boston citizens, each of whom
bought a ticket, to share any prizes they might win.
Temporarily, Pattee appears to have run into trouble. While
his earlier enterprises seem to have been approved from the start
by the city council, this body on February 25, 1873, denied the
fourth had been endorsed by any of its members and declared it
to be fraudulent. Perhaps Pattee had assumed that the endorse-
ment of his first asylum drawing covered any future one for the
same objective. The matter must have been ironed out in view of
an apparently impartial account in a history of Omaha published
in 1 894,4 wherein it is stated this second asylum drawing, conduct-
ed at the opera house before a large audience, was supervised by a
committee including four members of the council and Judge John
R. Porter. General S. A. Strickland introduced Pattee, who re-
sponded with a speech.
The same volume states that a month later Pattee was arrested
upon a charge, by one of his clerks, that he had carried on a
fraudulent lottery by issuing duplicate and triplicate tickets, without
any hint in the book as to the outcome. In any event, Pattee in
August of the same year advertised in the Herald the "Grand
Temple Gift Concert," to be drawn at Omaha on the 30th. 5 Mean-
while an act prohibiting lotteries in the State, to take effect on
September 1, had become law without the governor's signature.
It appears the drawing never took place, probably from an insuf-
4. James W. Savage and John T. Bell, History of the City of Omaha
Nebraska (1894), pp. 145, 257-8, 303. Data on all four drawings in follow-
ing circulars: Omaha Herald Extra at Am. Ant. Soc. Worcester, Mass.:
The Times Illustrated in writer's lottery collection, hereafter designated as
PGN Col.; The Laramie News in Bella C. Landauer Collection at NY Hist.
Soc, hereafter designated as BCL Col., and in PGN Col. Other details on
individual lotteries as follows: (1) Library: Nebraska City Morning Chron
icle, Oct. 27, 1871; circulars in BCL Col. and at AAS. (2) Hospital:
Morning Chronicle, Oct. 31, 1871, Feb. 22, 1872; circular in BCL Col.
(3 and 4) Orphan Asylum: NY Herald, Jan. 1, 3, Feb. 27, April 22, May
13, 14, 1873; MSS. concerning Boston citizens in PGN Col.
5. NY Herald, Aug. 12 and fol., 1873.
198 ANNALS OF WYOMING
ficient sale of tickets, forcing Pattee to seek other ground where he
might exercise his talents.
$: :J: ^ :|c % >;: ^ s|«
Early in 1875 Pattee distributed through the mails a most extra-
ordinary circular, resembling at first glance a pictorial tabloid
newspaper. Entitled, The Times Illustrated, dated at New York
March of that year and issued again with the date changed to April,
but in both cases designated as Vol. II, No. 15, and ostensibly
published by The American Gold & Silver Mining Co. of Montana
with its office at 63 Wall Street, it consisted of a folded sheet mak-
ing four pages, each 19 inches by 12.(!
At that time a sensational scandal rocked the country. The Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher, whose pulpit had become virtually a national
platform, stood accused by Theodore Tilton of having had improp-
er relations with the latter's wife. At the top of the first page are
competently drawn likenesses of Beecher and Mrs. Tillon and at
the bottom of Tilton and Francis D. Moulton, described elsewhere
as the "Mutual Friend. " In the center is a cartoon depicting the
roof of Beecher's famous Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, upon
which three cats with arched backs and raised tails, labeled Beech-
er, Moulton and Tilton and lit by a smiling full moon, are yowling
at one another.
The back page is covered with an assemblage of participants
and others. There is Mrs. Beecher, apparently much older than
Mrs. Tilton; one Fullerton is depicted reading "the 'Nest-Hiding'
Letter"; a fashionably dressed young woman reporter from San
Francisco is there; and among other vignettes, a crowd of bustled
young women in the corridor of the courthouse are attempting to
rush by some policemen to gain admittance to the trial.
Elsewhere are several medical ads, one of pure Newfoundland
cod liver oil and another of Red Cloud's Great Indian Blood
Purifier, a sovereign remedy for venereal diseases, loss of memory,
lost manhood, consumption and fevers of every description. Or-
ders for the latter were to be sent to Messrs. Lohman & Co. at
Laramie City. (On July 28 the partnership at Laramie between
H. L. Lowman and Pattee was dissolved.7) An ad of the above
mentioned mining company cited "mountains of gold and silver
ore" and predicted an investor "may any morning wake up and
find himself independent for life."
Interspersed throughout are glowing accounts of Pattee's four
Great Legal Drawings (without any hint of their Omaha origin),
a long list of winners, and large ads of the Wyoming Monthly
Lottery and of the "Fifth Extraordinary Drawing" of the Wyoming
6. Both March and April issues in PGN Col.
7. Laramie Daily Sentinel, July 29, 1875. Presumably the medicine
man. The name is spelled Loman in the Laramie Daily Sun, July 31.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 199
Lottery (different divisions of the same enterprise), as if continu-
ing the Omaha series. Investors are directed to obtain tickets from
Pattee at Laramie City, where it was understood all of the draw-
ings would take place. A purported reprint from the "Daily
Union'1 eulogizes his successes. He is described as a man true to
his friends, perfectly reliable, whose "word is better than a bond
from one-half of mankind." By means of his keen perception and
wonderful foresight, it is stated he was then worth more than half
a million dollars.
The following year a similar pictorial circular entitled The Lar-
amie News* was distributed, containing sketches of the Centennial
buildings at Philadelphia, a likeness of Charley Ross (the kid-
napped Philadelphia youngster) and others, and again, medical
ads, laudatory references to Pattee's previous drawings and his
current Wyoming lottery schemes.
;•; $i sj« sfs 3js 5f: $z >|:
In the spring of 1 875 Pattee entered the office of a struggling
newspaper publisher in Laramie with a weekly payroll of $27,
gave him an order for 40,000 circulars, and hired from 1 5 to 20
clerks. Soon, Pattee had his mail collected from the post office
in a clothesbasket and, it was reported, he deposited up to $4000
or even $5000 a day in the bank. And he did not overlook con-
tributions to the local churches. 9
All of the major advertisements stated the lottery was authorized
by "an act of the legislature" of Wyoming, but, as it turns out, it
was not a specific act granted to him to accomplish a useful pur-
pose. In the course of a territorial act concerning county licenses,
approved December 9, 1 869, any person or company was per-
mitted to run a lottery upon payment to the sheriff of $100 for a
license good for three months. What the legislators no doubt had
in mind were small, short-lived affairs, the kind that sprang up
everywhere, confined to the local population. By paying only
$400 a year for the privilege,1" Pattee thereupon proceeded to sell
8. See note 4.
9. Wyoming State Tribune and Cheyenne State Leader, July 20, 1929.
2:2; MS article, Paul Armstrong, "History of the Post Office at Laramie,
Wyoming" (1936); Velma Linford, author of Wyoming Frontier State,
in a letter to me dated Aug. 2, 1950, attributing the clothesbasket item to
C. D. Spaulding, whose father worked in the post office at the time; record-
ed interviews with Mrs. Mary Bellamy, June 18, 1947, and Sept. 28, 1950,
made by Lola M. Homsher and in the Archives of the University of Wyo-
ming.
10. At the Albany County Courthouse in Laramie there are now no
records of licenses issued before 1878. However, it can hardly be doubted
Pattee's authorization originated in such a license. Not only did Mrs.
Bellamy in the 1950 interview (see note 9) feel sure he obtained one issued
by the county, but the Laramie Daily Sentinel of Dec. 15, 1875, cited as
200 ANNALS OF WYOMING
in the first year as many tickets as he could in schemes totaling
about $7,000,000. Late in 1875 Governor Thayer vetoed an act
that would have raised Pattee's annual license to $800, as a favor,
it was said,11 to his old friend.
Each of the Monthly schemes was based on the ternary or
3-number combinations described above, formed not among 75
or 78 numbers, as had been utilized in other lotteries for decades,
fixing the number of tickets at 67,525 or 76,076 respectively, but
among 150, thus raising the number of tickets to the vast total of
551,300! They were offered at $1 each, 6 for $5, or 20 for $16.
In each scheme there were 70,755 prizes totaling $200,000 in
some months and $275,000 in others.1- The ratio of the number
of prizes to tickets at first glance might not seem so bad, but
70,000 of the former were of only 50c each. Including a top prize
of $50,000 net, only 35 were above $100 each. During the heyday
of American lotteries, a scheme offering such a poor chance would
have been scorned and left to wither on the vine.
In what Pattee was pleased to number his 5th, 6th and 7th
Extraordinary drawings, to be conducted on the single-number
plan, there were 500,000 tickets in each at the same choice of
prices, with a top prize of $100,000 net.la With 51,025 prizes
totaling $350,000 in each of the 5th and 6th, 50,000 of them of
$1 each were to be decided, according to a then common expedient,
by the last digit in the number of the ticket winning the top prize.
As a mail order shark Pattee learned his lessons well. The more
agents the merrier for him, but why pay their commissions in cash?
Starting at the latest in early 1 876, he gave tickets to agents, in
place of cash commissions, for special all-prize schemes and adver-
tised one such agents" special scheme would be drawn in conjunc-
tion with each regular Monthly and Extraordinary drawing.
For instance, to adventurers who had already bought six tickets
for $5 in drawings not yet held, he mailed a circular and letter,
dated April, 1 876, 14 in which he confided to each of them he was
mentioned in my text the Governor's "refusal to sign the bill to raise Mr.
Pattee's license" from $400 to $800 a year. The NY Times article of Dec.
18. 1876, cited below in text, states that after Pattee arrived in Laramie
from Omaha "he immediately began to work upon the members of the
Territorial Legislature," soon won them over, "and they issued a charter
for the formation of a company to operate a lottery . . ." Without further
evidence, I feel this is guesswork based on the legend on the tickets, etc.:
"By authority of an Act of the Legislature." The article contains several
factual errors.
11. Laramie Daily Sentinel, Dec. 15, 1875.
12. The Times Illustrated; The Laramie News; broadside of scheme to
be drawn Aug. 30, 1875, in Yale Univ. Lib.
13. Scheme of 5th Extraordinary in The Times Illustrated; of the 6th in
Laramie Weekly Sentinel, Feb. 14, 1876. partial data in NY Herald, Feb.
23. 1876.
14. BCL Col. and PGN Col.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 201
anxious to have a large prize go into his locality. This was an old
trick, but here Pattee altered it. If the recipient would accept the
proffered agency and buy 14 more tickets for $10 down, leaving a
small balance to be deducted from the prizes, Pattee would give
him two agents' commission all-prize tickets and, if they should fail
to draw at least $100 in an Agents' Special Prize Drawing, he
would send five tickets free in the next Extraordinary drawing.
In this case it was the 7th, with a scheme of 500,000 tickets and
100.370 prizes, of which, however, 50,000 were of $1 and 50,000
of 5O0,1"' thus giving to each participant the chance of the prover-
bial snowball of making more than a few cents in profit.
Of course, such huge schemes were not devised to entice the
sparse local population. Mrs. Mary Bellamy, attending high school
in Laramie at the time of the lottery, was asked some questions
concerning it in 1947 and 1950, when her mind was still clear and
her memory, as seen from corroborative evidence, generally re-
liable. li: However, although it could be true, as she said in 1950,
that the license did not permit tickets to be sold in Wyoming, a
more plausible reason why none of them, certainly, were sold
locally and probably not in the territory, or possibly not even in
that section of the west, lay in Pattee's precaution to keep anyone
whom he might fleece at a safe distance.
In any event, Wyoming Territory served simply as a safe and
legal base. Apart from the widespread mail order business con-
ducted by Pattee in Laramie, frequent advertisements of the lottery
signed by him or by Allen & Co. at 79 Nassau St., N. Y., appeared
in the New York Herald.
Commencing, it seems, on May 31, 1875, if not a month earlier,
the Monthly drawings continued at least through that of June 29,
1876,17 while the 5th Extraordinary took place on July 28, 1875,ls
the 6th on February 28 (or 29), 1876,1!l and the 7th was scheduled
to be drawn on May 31 and may well have been.
15. The Laramie News. In addition to the Monthly, Extraordinary and
Agents' schemes, fragmentary data refer to some others. The NY Times,
Nov. 7. 1875. and the NY Herald, Dec. 1, 1875, state the lottery was cur-
rently drawing on the 15th and 30th of each month, and the latter paper,
Feb. 16. 23, March 1, 1876. indicates a scheme with 66,000 prizes totaling
$150,000 was drawn on Feb. 21 and another of the same size was sched-
uled for March 10.
16. See note 9.
17. The "Official Drawn Numbers" of the Monthly drawings were pub-
lished regularly in the Laramie Weekly Sentinel. The editor stated, March
6, 1876. he did not publish the prize list of the then last Extraordinary
because it would take up the whole paper, but said Pattee sent it to ticket
holders.
18. The Laramie News.
19. Same. Two advance ads, one in NY Herald, Feb. 23, 1876, state
the drawing would take place on Feb. 29.
202
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Gg£
If 21.6757 WYOMING LOTTERY/^
7th Extraordinary Drawing, U
\B^,.„y,/^y CAPITAL PRIZE, a* **.!*****.
. A
t iuentinixl u> such Prixe as may be drawn by HsN.m.t,.
fl*U|ltt£~ Tickets, SI Each, or 6 for 55.
|
!/;>TE&2AKIE CITY. ■WTCMINO. J. IE PATTEE, Manager, , jgS,
\ fttftt J^tfaordisnary'. ffirawing| , ;
rHr ' I'll '!!■ ' . r^H-i r ;' ' :
f
IJP"l"«B
/?y *.uti(fnri£y of am art */"
t Ltfitiaturc of Wyming;.
jj' Agents' Commission PWie Tidket
Of th« 9th Quarterly Drawing.
■ Bwy Ttek«* draw* a Prise.
T&» Tir.ket entitle* fliu hoMpr to sach'PrWe" as ai&y b4 ttta*tf Vy Ifr jtfvnfttXJrt "
J. M PATTEE, Manager,- •' - Uvapt^CM^, Wyoming. «,
](I^<^/4* ^QffiKii^CKSMNNCSBlM $f#^$
ty of mi Act of the Leyr
Capital Prize, $5o,
!'«vra»l "f Mwh Priw a* may he rlrawci l,y otoiv* S
l« inmnuiKt-.ltiv Hie
.//w,„i- -^A?» BANE OP CHE*©!?*
M Aft&HAl.l. K VIKK. /Vr.t Setts t)a*k. rhrymn: Wtftnni»g
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING
203
According to a federal statute approved in 1872, it was declared
unlawful for anyone to mail letters or circulars "concerning illegal
lotteries . . . intended to deceive and defraud the public," and then
on July 12, 1876, the act was amended by striking out the word
"illegal." Pattee had depended upon the legality of the county
license to see him through, but now, not eager to tangle with the
federal government as to whether or not he conducted his schemes
in a deceptive or fraudulent manner, he had to seek out a loophole.
In its August 21. 1876, issue, the New York Times carried an
article on the "new swindling device" by which Pattee, who some
weeks earlier had stopped his Laramie operations, proposed to
evade the new postal law. According to the paper, in a circular
letter mailed to the recent winners of both the small $1 and 500
prizes, he informed them that while he would send the prizes
higher than these by express, the express charges on the small
!tl|lllfa4
PRAWS MARCH 31st, 1876,
mmwffl
...'■'..■■■■■''
1WlSW9^m^999MW9,
Lottery Tickets
Originals in Collection of Philip Gardiner Nordell
Courtesy New York Historical Society, New York City
204 ANNALS OF WYOMING
prizes would cost the winners more than they had won. There-
fore, as a means of paying them, he had persuaded an "old miner,"
who had discovered one of the most extensive gold mines on the
continent, to organize the Bullion Gold and Silver Mining Co. and
to each such small winner he (Pattee) was enclosing as payment a
full share of capital stock worth $10, urging them to act as agents,
sell other shares at $2 each and obtain a free share for every five
sold.
As for the mining property (located in the Ferris Mountains
district of Wyoming), he pronounced it "the largest body of gold
ore on the continent" and in an enclosed circular said it seemed as
though the mine was "a mountain of rich gold quartz," some speci-
ments of which has assayed $47,000 to the ton. To make the story
plausible to the yokels, it was explained money had to be raised
to buy machinery to work the mine. And according to Anthony
Comstock, to be introduced later, the fancy stock certificates
flattered the recipients and the circulars beguiled them.
News of the article quickly reached Laramie by wire. Some
weeks later, on September 1 1 , the Laramie Weekly Sentinel de-
nounced Pattee's new mining enterprise as "a most abominable
fraud and swindle." A letter signed "Miner" in the same issue
declared the lottery was "one of the biggest swindles that ever
existed" and added that everyone there in Laramie knew Pattee
had "made an immense fortune in his lottery mill."
Pattee had moved over to Cheyenne late in July, where on
August 5 two commissioners supervised a "Great Special Monthly
Drawing" of the State Lottery. The official list of drawn numbers,
which they certified, was published two days later in the local Daily
Leader. It is seen there were 100,376 prizes, ranging from one of
$50,000 down to 50,000 of $1 and 50,000 of 500. But from out-
ward appearances, Pattee had no more to do with the affair than
as if he ha drocketed to the moon. According to a statement on
the tickets, orders were to be sent to Marshall S. Pike, president of
the "State Bank of Cheyenne," which guaranteed payment of the
prizes. And according to circular letters enclosing tickets mailed
from Cheyenne to prospective agents, suggesting to each recipient
he might win a prize of $1000, all communications were to be
addressed to the bank.20
Any one or two of several motives may have induced Pattee
to shift his lottery operations to Cheyenne : ( 1 ) In view of the
altered postal law, he may have decided it was high time to
abandon the Laramie affair he knew to be pockmarked with fraud
20. Broadside and circular letter in BCL Col.; different circular letter in
PGN Col.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 205
and operate a new one circumspectly so that he could again use
the mails safely; or (2) if he had no intention of running it hon-
estly, to hire front men willing to take the rap for him, a procedure
he uniformly employed from this time on in his many future ven-
tures. (3) There is the element of novelty. He must have accu-
mulated an immense mailing list, and the more attractive bait of
an enterprise run by the president of a "State Bank ' would lure a
larger catch of suckers, both old and new.
Commonly known later as the Cheyenne State Lottery, the
tickets and advertisements regularly asserted it was authorized
by the Wyoming legislature (probably by the same or another
county license) and managed by Pike. The complete record of
the schemes and drawings cannot as yet be told. Among others, a
drawing with $722,243 in prizes, as stated on the tickets, was
scheduled for December 30, 1876,1'1 and another was to be held the
following January 30. Presumably both took place. A surviving
ticket in the latter-- states the lottery "Draws Monthly."1 The last
known of the venture concerns an all-prize "Fourth Quarterly
Drawing*" and an all-prize agents' drawing, both scheduled for
March 26, 1877,2:i but stopped in their tracks, it seems, before that
day arrived.
Although, so far as has been discovered, Pattee's name never
appeared in the lottery's advertisements, etc. (and I for one am
sure it never did), it cannot be reasonably doubted he ran the
affair and merely used Pike and his bank as puppets. The first
actual State bank in Wyoming was not organized until 1893 and
hence this one must have been a private bank and the possibility
cannot be ruled out that it was a fly-by-night affair started by
Pattee, himself.
Several of Pattee's prominent contemporaries knew he pulled the
strings. The New York Times, for one, in a scorching exposure-4
of several of his "swindling devices," asserted, although he denied
the fact, that he was the "backer" of the Cheyenne lottery and went
on to say that by means of his "great wealth" he kept in his service
"the most skillful rogues that ever avoided State Prison."
Orange Judd, editor and proprietor of the American Agricul-
turalist, held equally positive views. For many years at this time
he had been including in the magazine a section called "Sundry
Humbugs." In the February 1877 issue he let loose against the
Cheyenne affair. "If any one supposes that the Wyoming lottery
21. As seen in reproduction of ticket in Anthony Comstock, Frauds
Exposed (1880), p. 137.
22. BCL Col.
23. Comstock (as in note 21), pp. 133-7, has reproduction of ticket in
the former and circulars of both.
24. Dec. 18, 1876, 8:1-2.
206 ANNALS OF WYOMING
is dead while Pattee still lives," Judd asserted, "he has small
knowledge of the nature of things. It still waves its banners, but
they are now inscribed The Cheyenne State Lottery.' '" And
finally he lamented, "Poor Wyoming, were not the grass-hoppers
enough? "'
If these statements were merely suppositions based on hearsay,
there remains one man who knew the truth from personal investi-
gation. To many persons nowadays the name of Anthony Corn-
stock conjures up the image of a fanatical and somewhat ludicrous
reformer, racing around New York City with a Bible in one hand
and a search warrant in the other, on a par with Carry Nation
brandishing her hatchet.
However, apart from his preposterous excesses as chief agent
of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, he was a
special agent of the Post Office Department and up to the time he
wrote his Frauds Exposed in 1880, had busied himself for seven
years in smoking out the sharpers and "beasts of prey" who used
the mails to plunder the public. In the book, excusably muddled
at times because he had to piece it together in odd moments, he
devotes more than 50 pages to some of Pattee's "bogus" mining,
lottery and banking schemes. He said he had no space to describe
many others.
Comstock, and he should have known, explained Pattee's meth-
ods at the time were ". . . . to open an office, in which he would
place as stool-pigeons, some of his old clerks. While he furnished
the money and the brains necessary to form these schemes, and
get them started, he had a corps of willing confederates, who did
the office work, and shared the profits. They were to take the
chances of arrest, and prosecution, and screen Pattee, while he was
to take the money and pay the bills, and their salaries, and provide
bondsmen and counsel for them, in case of arrest."-5
According to Comstock, the Cheyenne circulars and tickets were
printed in Maiden Lane, New York City, where the bulk of Pat-
tee's printing was done, and were distributed in part by Read &
Co., "brokers," of the city. Back in 1854 Pattee had married
Eunice D. Read, a member of a leading New Haven family. The
head of the firm was N. ("Nate") Sherman Read, his brother-in-
law.-1' Another main agency for the lottery in New York City was
Emory & Co.-7
As a result of exposures made by the Times, Comstock on
March 9, 1877, in conjunction with the police, raided numerous
lottery offices in the city. At Reed & Co. they seized 3000 ad-
25. Comstock, p. 132.
26. Same, pp. 115, 132-8; Edmunds (as in note 1).
27. An ad of the firm is in NY Herald, Jan. 2, 1877, and a broadside in
BCL Col. See note 28.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 207
dressed envelopes, 18,150 Cheyenne tickets and about 14,000
circulars, among which tickets and circulars may well be those
Comstock reproduced in his book. Both Read, and E. N. Carr
in charge of the Emory office, where similar material was seized,
were convicted of violating the postal laws and were compelled to
return all letters pertaining to the lottery to the senders. -s
Of course, these agencies violated the New York State laws,
but lottery offices in New York City through the years had a way
of rebounding from raids and reopening. In this case, however,
Comstock's seizures and arrest of Read, whom he termed Pattee's
right bower, may well have induced Pattee to drop the Cheyenne
enterprise forthwith, before the scheduled March 26 drawings.
Pattee, an industrious man, sometimes ran as many as three or
four enterprises at a time, each under an assumed name. By 1879
he had put his fertile brain to work and hatched another lottery,
the Royal New Brunswick Gift Soiree, and arranged for Nate Read
to run it, beyond Comstock's reach, at St. Stephen, just over the
Canadian border from Calais, Maine. By 1882 it had turned into
the Royal New Brunswick Distribution of Cash Gifts.-'* Running
full blast late in 1 884, according to the papers, it was, at least then,
a giant swindle, with no drawings held and no prizes paid, con-
tributing, however, nearly $40,000 a year from postage to the
Dominion revenue on circulars sent to the United States. At last
the Dominion government took action and, with the arrest of Read
on December 10 of that year, it was announced the lottery had
collapsed.'1" While Comstock had it from Pattee"s own lips he
started it,:il no evidence is available as to how long he remained
the power behind the throne.
Judd repeated in his August 1876 issue what a Kansas editor,
who had talked with Pattee, said of him: " 'He seems to delight in
boasting of his own villainy in swindling weak human nature. He
said his conscience did not trouble him, that the people wanted to
28. NY Times, March 10. 1877, 2:5-6, March 25. 7:1; Comstock. pp.
139-40. Comstock said that Pattee had a "clerk" named E. N. Carr. alias
"Emery & Co." at 31 Park Row, where he was arrested. Emory & Co. (the
correct spelling) was an agent for the Maryland State Lotteries in 1854
and for one of the two big Delaware lotteries in 1860, while E. N. Carr &
Co. was an agent for the other in the same year. While Carr may well
have been running the Emory firm in 1876, I believe he was at the time
an independent agent for the Wyoming Lottery and not a clerk in the
employ of Pattee.
29. Comstock, pp. 150-60, has reproductions of some circulars and
tickets; some original tickets and broadsides of schemes, 1879-84, in both
BCL Col. and PGN Col.
30. NY Times, Oct. 10, 1884. 2:3, Dec. 17, 3:5.
31. Comstock, p. 151.
208 ANNALS OF WYOMING
be humbugged, and it was his business to do it.' " This seems to
be a fair characterization, and yet not all of the charges made
against his management of the Wyoming Lottery can be substan-
tiated. Among them, the "Miner" in his letter cited above asserted
the lottery "never had a drawing" and the Times32 said a drawing
in it had never been officially reported and implied no prizes were
paid. The lottery was termed a swindle more than once, but it
must not be forgotten that in the eyes of the moral monitors of
that time every lottery was a swindle.
On the other hand, Mrs. Bellamy in the 1950 interview said,
"They had a big wheel that they turned to see who got the prizes"
and though she never saw it, it was "up where the men worked"
(on the second floor of the building at the southeast corner of
Second and Ivinson Streets). Month after month the 15 drawn
numbers upon which the prizes in the Monthly schemes were based
were published in the Weekly Sentinel. In a printed handbill33
of the April 29, 1876, drav/ing at Laramie, the "officially drawn"
numbers are given and attested to by two commissioners.
By itself, however, this evidence may well have been, and I
believe it was. just so much window dressing. As it turns out,
G. H. Hildreth, serving as a commissioner at least as late as the
above April drawing, may have been at that time one of Pattee's
employees, in view of the fact that in August of that year he became
secretary of Pattee's Bullion Mining Co. and signed the stock
certificates.34 And even if the numbers were taken from the wheel,
the bare fact means nothing. Pattee, a proven scoundrel as seen
from his mining operations, upstairs in his quarters, safe from
prying eyes, could easily have rigged the drawings to evade paying
any of the high prizes. The prime rule in any lottery is that the
numbers should be taken from the wheel in public under the super-
vision of responsible officials not beholden to those making a profit
out of it.
But it is not necessary to rely upon memory or conjecture. In
every ternary scheme honestly run, tens of thousands of them
before this time, besides the many brief excerpts of high prizes
and prices of tickets, the managers published, at least once, a
complete official full scheme of prizes, and underneath a complete
statement of which 3-number combinations on particular tickets
would win those prizes. An exact correspondence between the
prizes listed in the scheme and the statement always prevailed.
Adventurers, with faith in the management, would then examine
the subsequently published bare list of drawn numbers to see what,
if anything, they had won.
32. Aug. 21, 1876, 8:3.
33. Rare Book Room, Lib. Cong., portfolio 189, no. 39.
34. Comstock illustrates one of them on p. 126.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 209
But if Pattee ever published such statements with his ternary
Monthly schemes in advance of the drawings, none has survived.
He published the complete schemes of prizes, but, impressive as
they may have been to the uninitiated, without such a statement
the subsequently published bare list of drawn numbers would mean
nothing. Without it, an adventurer might see that one, two or all
three of the numbers on his ticket had been drawn, intimating he
had won a prize, but he would have no idea how much, if anything.
Assuming Pattee was cheating and had not already rigged the
drawing, or even if he had not held any drawing at all, he could
send to inquirers a subsequently prepared fictitious full statement
of the winning combinations, taking care the numbers assigned to
high prizes were those of tickets he held.
Even assuming Pattee had published in advance such statements
of which combinations would win, the fact remains that in his
complete scheme, announced for the Monthly drawings in 1876, a
total of 70,755 prizes are listed, whereas the surviving full prize
list for the April 29 drawing of that year, with not only the 1 5
drawn ballots but a full statement of the winning combinations,
accounts for a total of 150,305 prizes. This explicit total is not
given, but when, for instance, it is explained in the statement that
"all tickets with only one drawn number on them win 50 cents
each," the number of such prizes is easily determined by rigid
mathematical principles. It is evident, then, that the list of prizes
published in advance and the list of winning combinations are
utterly irreconcilable. Pattee could not have been unaware of
this. It is obvious something was rotten. Since he could not have
been so ignorant or thoughtless, the only reasonable explanation is
that he deliberately chose to play a crooked game.
A baffling piece of evidence consists of a printed circular letter8"'
dated at Laramie, August 31, 1876, signed by John W. Blake,
later a judge and member of the territorial legislature, along with
two others, all former employees of Pattee's. It was mailed to
numerous prize winners. The writers promised, on receipt of a
dollar, to send "a full and complete statement, showing how this
nefarious business has been conducted; the amount of prize money
actually paid, and the names of the lucky ones; the parties present
at the so-called drawings ... In fact, a most complete exposure of
this 'arch swindler's' manner of defrauding the public . . . and
especially how he proposes to foist upon those who have won good
prizes in' his last drawings, AMONGST WHOM WE SEE YOUR
NAME, certain stock certificates . . ."
Unfortunately, no copy of what would be this vitally important
testimony from insiders can be found. So many circumstances,
35. BCL Col.
210 ANNALS OF WYOMING
however, point to fraud in Pattee's management of the Wyoming
lotteries that in this field beyond a reasonable doubt he should be
labeled a swindler. And if only half of the charges concerning his
exploitations in other fields are true, he may have been, even
stronger than Blake put it, the arch swindler of his generation.
Only seldom did Comstock meet Pattee face to face. In 1 879
the latter and one Barrett organized the "old and reliable" banking
and brokerage firm of Simpson & Co., ostensibly to operate a
mutual fund in the stock market on a similar pattern to those com-
mon today. Having received orders to investigate the company,
Comstock paid a call and while talking to the bookkeeper noticed
"a little gray-haired old man with gold spectacles on," bob out of a
room and dodge back, closing the door. Comstock pushed it
open and, to let him describe what happened, "Lo! I stood face to
face with J. M. Pattee. He instantly reached out his hand to shake
hands, and becoming very much excited, repeated over and over
again . . . stuttering out, 'Well — I — am— devilish — glad to see
you.' "36
Comstock said Pattee was "a remarkably nervous man, and
seems to be always in fear; having at times a wild, frightened look,
as though he expected to be arrested every moment." In May,
1 879, Comstock, "a brisk little man with mutton-chop whiskers,"
went to Saratoga Springs to address the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church. Upon his arrival, ascending the hotel steps,
Pattee, out on the porch, espied him, ran "like a deer," darted
through the office, down the porch steps on the opposite side, and
fled down the main street "as hard as he could run." Convinced
at last that Comstock at the time meant him no harm, he returned
to his family and the two men occupied adjoining cottages.87
Not later than 1885 Pattee moved to a good neighborhood in
St. Louis, where he died on December 19, 1888. Comstock had
called him a "sly, sneaking old fraud." And yet, whether through
his "magnetic presence" or the power of his wealth, he made
friends easily. The Times regarded him as "hearty in manner, a
good talker, and altogether the sort of man who is usually described
as 'a hail fellow, well met.' "8S
Over the years there were numerous American lottery kings.
While it is true that Yates & Mclntyre, the Gregory partners, James
Phalen, J. W. Maury, Richard France, C. H. Murray, Z. E. Sim-
mons, John A. Morris and others vastly surpassed him in the
routine volume of business, and true that he never approached
36. Comstock, pp. 102-9.
37. Same, pp. 1 13-4.
38. As in note 24.
PATTEE, THE LOTTERY KING 211
Thomas Hope and Ben Tyler in the clever virtuosity of their adver-
tising, yet in the sheer audacity and effrontery of his lottery opera-
tions no one ever equaled Pattee. For a brief period he deserved a
crown, tarnished though it was.
Zo Zke Cittle %ig Mom
By
Hans Kleiber
Of all the clear streams that flow from the Bighorns,
Little Horn River, you come nearest my heart,
I love your green banks with their roses and hawthorns,
And the craggy, blue crests that mother your start.
In your evergreen forests deer and elk browse,
From your meadows I hear the lark's liquid lay,
And softly, shy mourning doves coo in the boughs,
While tramping beside you this balmy June day.
You plunge over rapids, you roar and you shout,
Then eddy and murmur in pools at the bends,
As I the refrain hum while casting for trout,
"This river and I shall forever be friends".
But gently, you wind in the valleys below,
Between shaded banks of old cottonwood trees,
While letting your waters their blessings bestow,
On pastures and hayfields that wave in the breeze.
Your days were not always as peaceful as this,
Many a brave warrior fought here and bled,
Til death touched their brows with a merciful kiss,
And put them to rest in their last earthly bed.
Of all the old hunting grounds in the far west,
Your country was treasured by red men the most,
When fate turned them down, after doing their best,
Stemming the tide of an invading white host.
Now red and white lovers tryst on your banks,
Who pay little heed to the warriors that fell,
Love with its tenderness old quarrels outflanks,
And where hearts beat as one, they peaceably dwell.
212
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Parts of A Saddle
1.
Horn
10. Fender
2.
Fork
11. Stirrup
3.
Seat
12. Stirrup leather
4.
Cantle
13. Front tie strap or cinch strap
5.
Skirt
14. Front jockey and seat jockey, one
6.
Back housing
or
back jockey piece
7.
Lace strings
15. Wool lining
X.
Dee rings
16. Rope strap
9.
Leather flank
girth
17. Pommel
Drawing by Christy Page
Saddles
By
A. S. "Bud" Gillespie
SADDLE'S USEFULNESS
The most prized possession of a cowboy is his saddle. Next in
order are his bed, boots, chaps, spurs, rope and yellow slicker.
People in the range could not operate without a saddle. It adds
much to the comfort of riding and as a security for a man remaining
on a horse's back when he is going through his bucking contortions.
Then a man has to have a saddle when he is roping the thousands
of calves to be branded during the year, as well as roping wild
grown cattle and horses. If he did not have the saddle horn to tie
to or take his "honka-dinkies" around he would soon be minus his
rope.
SADDLE STYLES CHANGE
On down through the many years that saddles have been used
the designs have been changed from time to time. There was one
saddle they had called the "form fitter". All a fellow had to do
was to get into it and "shut the door" to stay on a bucking horse.
The models they are making today are not easy riding saddles.
Neither are they made so a rider could sit down deep and keep his
seat when a horse is bucking. Most of the ones put out today are
known as roping saddles. Riders buy them whether they can rope
or not. They have a narrow fork and a low cantle, and are not
made so a rider can get a grip on a horse.
A man can ride the saddle that he learned to ride in. He can
learn to ride on his balance, and hook his spurs in the horse's sides
to keep him from slipping up and falling off.
SPANISH SADDLES A PROTOTYPE
The saddle makers in the range states adopted their ideas from
the Spaniards in Mexico. They brought their first saddles over
from Spain about 1519.
Those saddles as well as the Mexican saddles had a horn on them
as large as a saucer.
A saddle is made on a tree made of the best and strongest wood.
The tree is made in three parts and fastened together by screws.
Those parts are namely the fork or pommel, that is the front, cantle
or seat, and the side boards which rest on the horse's back. The
horn was first made of wood but later of steel and is fastened
214 ANNALS OF WYOMING
on the pommel with screws. Then the wood is all put together and
cowhide, or mostly bull hide, is soaked in water until it becomes
very soft, a pattern is made just the right size to cover the tree and
is cut out to exactly fit the tree, when it is sewed together. When
a saddle is made for heavy duty a double cover of rawhide is put
over the tree.
SADDLE RIG TYPES
The most important part of the saddle is the rigging. That
arrangement is made to hold a saddle on a horse and must be
secure. On the first saddles that were made the rigging was put on
top of the leather on the pommel. One strip of leather about four
inches wide went from one latigo ring to the other over the pommel
in front of the horn, and another was put along the side of the first,
but one wrap was made around the horn. That was for the front
cinch to be fastened to. For the back cinch a strip of leather about
four inches wide was taken from the rear latigo ring up over the
rear end of the saddle boards behind the cantle. The front and
rear latigo rings were fastened together by a double piece of
leather about one and one half inches in width. That was for a
double rig saddle or one with two cinches.
The rigging for a center-fire saddle was put on the tree the same
way over the saddle, but came together on both sides to one latigo
ring under the rider's leg. Not many saddle makers could make a
center-fire saddle that would ride on the horse's back. Those
saddles were most successfully made by D. E. Walker of San
Francisco, the Oregon saddles and G. G. Garcia of Elko, Nevada.
A later rigging was made by the Montana saddle makers which
was known as the three quarter rig.
Another saddle maker came up with a different idea for rigging
which was called the five eighths rigging. It did not prove so
popular.
The double rig which had two cinches was the best to stay on a
horse's back when doing heavy roping, or staying on a horse's back
when a rider was riding up or down steep hills, but it was the worst
to make cinch sores that were caused by the skin rolling over the
front when he was walking, or trotting. The three quarter rig was
really the best, especially before Hamley and Company of Pendle-
ton, Oregon, came out with a new rig which they called the flat
plate rigging. A person doing heavy roping would step off and
cinch up, but for ordinary roping he would never have to go to
that trouble. That rigging would not make sores on a horse's side,
neither would it cause white hairs to grow in the same place. Some
people who used double rig saddles would take off the rear cinch,
but that would cause the saddle to kick up behind and was hard
to ride when a horse bucked.
SADDLES 215
WYOMING SADDLEMAKERS
The first saddles made in Wyoming Territory were made by
T. R. Meanea, of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Later Frank A.
Meanea took over. He followed the saddlery business longer than
any other maker in Wyoming. He had demand for his saddles.
Most all of the riders for the Swan Land & Cattle Company used
Meanea saddles. So did the riders for the Diamond Cattle Com-
pany and many others. They had a good reputation far and wide.
None ever hurt a horse's back. The writer never knew of any of
the Meanea saddle trees or rigging breaking when heavy roping
was done from them. Meanea made the first saddle trees in the
United States. His plain saddles sold for $40 and the hand-tooled
flower stamped saddle sold for $55.
The first saddle maker around Laramie was little Bobbie Gard-
ner. He sold saddles as fast as he could make them. He was in
business in the 1880's and early 1 890's.
The next saddle makers in Laramie, Wyoming, were Lohlein
and Sigwart. They opened for business during the middle of the
1890's and closed their business in about 1908. Lohlein had the
best pattern for chaps and made the best angora chaps of any
maker. They made good saddles.
The W. H. Holliday Company followed them in making saddles
They kept saddles in stock for many years, and employed saddle
makers. Among them were Otto Steiger and Bill Doescher.
J. S. Collins and Sons opened up a saddle shop in Cheyenne,
in 1886. They got their share of the business as they made good
saddles.
Scoville Saddlery established a business soon after the turn of
the century in Wheatland, Wyoming. He built a well made saddle
with a good grip and seat. He operated at that location for many
years and did a good business.
Knox and Tanner opened up a saddle shop in Rawlins in the
1 890's. They made a very good saddle that met the favor of many
cowboys. They were engaged in business for many years.
FIRST SADDLES MADE IN U. S.
The first saddles the writer has record of being made in the
United States were made by P. Sickles, Saint Louis, in 1836. The
next were made in New Jersey in 1840, and by Collins Brothers
Saddlery of Omaha. Nebraska, in 1864.
E. L. Gallatin was another early day saddle maker. In 1860
E. L. Gallatin made the $350 saddle which was presented to
Colonel Leavenworth. Presentation occurred at Camp Weld, and
was made by his officers.
D. E. Walker made the best of all saddles. It was the lightest
and strongest and longer lasting. He trimmed the leather thin.
216 ANNALS OF WYOMING
doubled the leather and hand sewed it close to the edge. That kept
the jockeys, skirts and fenders from coiling up. He soaked the
leather in neafs-foot oil, which made the leather everlasting. He
used endless stirrup leathers which made them very popular. The
leather was hand tooled. Most all of the saddles he made were
full flowered stamped. He started his saddle business in 1876
in San Francisco. This company later was sold and exists today
as the Visalia Company in Sacramento and Calgary.
Gallup and Frazier of Pueblo commenced making saddles in
1870. Frazier had the honor of making the $500 saddle for the
Union Pacific Railroad Company to present to the world's cham-
pion bronc rider at Cheyenne Frontier Days.
Hamley and Company first operated their saddle shop in South
Dakota and in 1883 moved to Pendleton, Oregon, where the third
generation is still in the saddlery business. They were the first
to use flat plate rigging.
Victor Harden made saddles in The Dalles, Oregon, in 1890.
The Oregon saddles were made different from any other saddles.
The seat was closed. You had to take hold of the horn to throw
it on a horse. There were no holes below the horn to get your
fingers through to get a hand hold. Neither was there a place for
the stirrup leathers to come through.
E. L. Gallatin Saddlery operated in Denver in 1889, and was in
business there for many years.
N. Porter Saddlery operated in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1875 and
the firm is still operating under that name.
C. E. Cogshell operated in Miles City, Montana, in 1890 and
on into the next century. He built a deep seated saddle with a
high pommel and cantle. It had a good grip in it, and a man
couldn't fall out of it.
The Flynn Saddlery of Pueblo, Colorado, started making saddles
in 1875.
H. H. Heiser started making saddles in Central City, Colorado,
in 1853. In 1858 he established his business in Denver, Colorado,
and it is still operating under that name. That firm made a very
popular, serviceable saddle which is still being made, and the
Denver Dry Goods Company have their saddles made by this firm.
H. H. Heiser made many of the saddles that were used by the
Pony Express riders in 1861 and 1862.
Noble, of Hepner, Oregon, made a neat center-fire saddle in
1 895 and for years after.
Cornish and Watson Saddlery of Ogden, Utah, were early day
saddlers.
O. S. Snyder operated a saddlery in Denver, Colorado, during
the early part of the 1900's. There was a good demand for his
saddles.
A Mother Hubbard saddle is one that is completely covered
over with a solid piece of leather, excepting the horn.
SADDLES 217
Other South Dakota saddlers not mentioned before are E. C.
Lee Company of Pierre, Duhamel of Rapid City, and Streeter of
Buffalo Gap.
The saddle makers of Texas are as follows: Joe Edelbrock and
Sons of Fort Worth made saddles in 1876 until 1944, then Don
Ryon took over and that firm is still operating; Schoelkoph started
making saddles in Dallas, Texas, in 1 869 and after ninety-three
years the firm is still in business in 1962, and the Speedy Stirrup
Pin Company which made saddles in Salt Lake City, Post Office
Box 2527.
For reference to saddle types refer to the book. Cowboy At
Work by Fay E. Ward, page 195, and for reference to saddle trees
and rigs refer to the same book on page 199.
Wyoming 's frontier Newspapers
By
Elizabeth Keen
THE NEWSPAPER AS HISTORICAL RECORD
APPEARANCE AND CONTENTS
If judged by mid-twentieth-century standards, Wyoming's early
newspapers typographically seem dull and gray and atrociously
made up. Printers setting headlines used nothing larger than
eighteen-point type; very often they used much smaller letters. In
multiple-deck heads they mixed type faces with abandon, and it
was not unusual for a compositor to set the body of a news story
in almost illegible six-point with no leads between the lines to make
things easier for the reader. As many as five or six columns of
solid advertising were used on front pages, and more often than
not type faces were mixed without restraint within one advertise-
ment. Illustrations were limited to an occasional logotype in an
ad; it was not until the late eighteen-seventies that awkwardly
large woodcuts began to make an appearance. Nor was there any
variety in advertisements, which often appeared for months at a
time without change. Small advertisements known as readers,
which in today's newspapers are confined to the "classified" col-
umns, were scrambled in among news items with no warning at all
to the reader that the excellence of somebody's oyster house or the
fact that "Mrs. Dr. Frank will pay particular attention to female
diseases of all kinds no charges will be made for consultation,"1
were paid advertisements and not truly legitimate news.
Sports reporting was confined to describing, not always impar-
tially, town ball games held on the Fourth of July and sometimes
on election days. There were no comic strips or cartoons; instead
the reader was offered many columns of jokes, often stale, clipped
from exchange newspapers.- Crime news comprised lurid accounts
of street shootings, and laconic items of a line or two:
Dr's Calder and Finfrock report the man who was shot by Madam
Ledbetter, at Dale City, is recovering from his wound.8
Offenses against property, such as thefts, were often printed in the
advertisement columns. Men who deemed themselves falsely
accused sometimes wrote in to the newspapers in attempts at self-
1. Laramie Daily Sentinel, May 30, 1870.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 219
vindication. One of these men, who signed himself "Daniel Cun-
ningham," wrote to the Cheyenne Leader:
Having heard that I was implicated in a robbery that took place
some few days ago at or near Dale City, I wish to state that I have
been at North Platte, and have never been near Dale City for three
weeks, and why my name should be connected with any robbery is a
mystery to me; and I want it understood that any person circulating
any such reports about me will be persecuted with the utmost vigor
of the law.4
If the news content of the earliest newspapers was negligible, the
paucity of readable matter was doubtless due to the fact that fron-
tier editors in the beginning had a difficult time establishing them-
selves and their publications. Writing the news, clipping and
pasting up national events and the inevitable jokes, soliciting ad-
vertising, setting type, making up, printing and distributing the
paper, making out and collecting bills, and placating creditors
were all tasks sometimes performed by one man alone, or by one
man assisted in his multiple duties by his wife or by a printer's
devil. But as editors felt their roots taking hold, they tended to
improve their newspapers, so that as the life of a newspaper
lengthened, its news columns mirrored a clearer and more vivid
picture of the territory as a whole, and of various small communi-
ties growing up in the new country.
In one important respect, however, the territorial newspaper for
many years was defective as a reflection of frontier life: it afforded
scarcely a glimpse of women's activities. To cite the Laramie
Daily Sentinel as an example, the newspaper had ample space
during the summer of 1870 in which to print frequent references
to fishing trips with "the boys," to lodge meetings, baseball games,
and masculine parties "above the bakery." There was virtually
no news about women because to make the news columns in those
days women had really to exert themselves. One of the rare bits
of news concerning women to be found in the early Sentinel
was buried in a general story about the Republican election victory
of September, 1870. It was written by J. H. Hayford himself:
... A characteristic incident of the energy and pluck of our pioneer
ladies was illustrated by Mrs. J. W. Meldrum, who rode all the way up
here from Colorado, some sixty miles, on horseback yesterday, and
got here in time to put in a straight Republican ticket. . . .5
2. The earliest issues of the Cheyenne Leader contained matter clipped
from the Chicago Tribune, New York Herald, Denver News, Iowa State
Register, Boston Post, Denver Tribune, Dayton Journal, Montana Post, Cin-
cinnati Commercial, Omaha Herald, Grand Rapids Democrat, Springfield
Republican, and a number of other newspapers.
3. Fontier Index, March 6, 1868.
4. March 16, 1868.
5. Laramie Daily Sentinel, Sept. 6, 1870.
220 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Since Hayford was a fervent Republican, it is questionable, had
the lady been a Democrat, whether he would have thought her not
inconsiderable ride worthy of mention at all.
In another respect, too, the frontier newspaper editor tended to
cloud for later historians the clarity of the picture of those early
days: he was so enthusiastic about the riches, the beauties, and
the commercial possibilities of the new country, that he very often
wrote about them without restraint. In fact, he frequently bragged
to a degree that today seems comic if not, perhaps, pointless. But
there was a point: if eastern exchange newspapers reprinted stories
about Wyoming's untold wealth, a wealth that was awaiting devel-
opment, about the territory's "unsurpassed climate," about its
unmatched beauties and other virtues, eastern capitalists, as
financiers in those days were called, might be induced to go west
to the new country and there invest some of their millions. But
in extolling the wonders of Wyoming, the early-day editor, if he
hoped to be believed, sometimes overshot his mark. The Freeman
brothers of the Frontier Index were possibly the most hyperbolic
of all early editors. When the "Press on Wheels" put out the first
issue datelined Laramie City, the newspaper contained this char-
acteristic editorial:
THE CITY OF THE PLAINS
We have it — Laramie City; it has jumped into existence. The rail-
road towns between Omaha and the Rocky Mountains which have
been built up within the last two years, are alive and flourishing, but
none of them have one-hundredth part of the natural advantages that
Laramie boasts of. Look yonder . . . timber . . . iron and copper . . .
coal cropping out . . . splendid beds of gypsum . . . positive prospects
of rich gold and silver mines . . . attractive farming lands. . . . How
can Laramie get around being a permanent town of much wealth and
extensive growth? There is no possible way to dodge it; it will prosper
and become the pride of western people. Here we will have large
manufactories, rolling mills, quartz mills, saw mills, planing mills,
besides many other outside improvements; U.P.R.R. will be compelled
to build at this point.
Do you ask why it is necessary to put up all of these conveniences
and facilities at Laramie? We answer it is the most suitable location
on the road, and the only natural inexhaustible locality between the
Missouri River and Salt Lake. . . .
Laramie City has commenced its bold and promising career. The
young Nineveh is already lifting its steeples high above the encompass-
ing mountain chains, and will, in a few weeks, look definitely over
the crumbling peaks, and beckon eastern emigration — by thousands,
now searching new western homes — to come hither and shake hands
with freedom and fortune.
Laramie, beyond all question of doubt, is the great interior railroad
town.
The Freemans tended to distribute their eulogisms wherever they
6. April 21, 1868.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 221
paused to publish their migratory newspaper. Tribute followed
tribute until, as already noted, they arrived at Bear River City,
where, before their printing shop was sacked and burned, they
published one of their most imaginative panegyrics.
But others besides the Freeman brothers wrote in this fantastic
vein. Nathan A. Baker was one of many who printed gushing
tributes to the newly-opened frontier. Possibly smarting from his
abortive attempt to establish the Colorado Leader in Denver,
Baker managed to combine jibes at the Colorado capital with the
editorial bragging so typical of the period:
Perserverance and sweet oil will do more to abrade and even the
asperities of life, but mines of coal, iron, etc., and petroleum, will do
more to overcome the inconvenience of poverty for the fortunate dis-
coverers of these deposits, no less than for the country in general.
Another is added to the list of resources being almost daily devel-
oped, in the shape of oil springs, some eighteen miles west of Chey-
enne, discovered during the present week. . . . Mr. Rollins has shown
us a sample of the article, which is said to freely exude from springs
... in plenteous quantities. Who next? What next? Can't some-
body find some diamond deposits "in mass and position" underneath
Cheyenne? Denver, look well to your laurels, Cheyenne and adjacent
sections are outstripping you in all the developments of material
wealth. We will here incidentally mention that we can furnish that
burg with a neat and substantial tombstone upon its approaching de-
mise, and we will make it out of a fine quality of marble, recently
discovered in the Black Hills, specimens of which may be seen here
on application.7
Nor was editorial exaggeration limited to the earliest years of
frontier journalism. As late as 1887 the Cheyenne Daily Tribune,
on the reported discovery of copper, gold, and silver at Silver
Crown, not far from the capital city, printed the following com-
ment:
A time will come, perhaps, when the world will cease to wonder,
but that period is in the far future. For many years parties have pros-
pected and opened mines in the Silver Crown district with a moderate
yet satisfactory degree of success, but as evidenced by a discovery of
yesterday not one hundredth part of the wealth of the district is as yet
imagined. It has been a well known fact for the past two years that
beneath the eternal hills, which in their grandeur rise above the
"Magic City of the Plains," there lies enough copper to supply the
world, gold sufficient to adorn the breasts, ears and hands of our
50,000,000 people and silver enough to build bells to chime the
world. . . .s |
Farther north at about the same time E. H. Kimball was doing
his umtost to attract capital and settlers to Glenrock:
Many lots have been sold, some thirty or forty, since our last issue
. . . and numerous buildings are in process of erection, all of which
7. Cheyenne Leader, Oct. 3, 1867.
8. Sept. 14, 1887.
//
222 ANNALS OF WYOMING
tends to cause the new site to be taking on the appearance of a
booming town. Many strangers seeking an investment are arriving
every day, and dozens of buildings will probably be in process of
erection next week. Glenrock will surely be THE TOWN of this
section of country.
Come on. ye capitalists and speculators, and parties desirous of a
good business location! Glenrock has the inducements to offer, and
room for thousands of people."
In spite of editorial weaknesses and rumblings, newspapers of
the period reflect the growth of communities and of the territory
itself; and they mirror the preoccupations, the manners, the tastes,
and, sometimes, the emotions of the Wyoming pioneer.
THE RAILROAD ARRIVES
Construction of the Union Pacific railroad was the greatest
single factor in the opening up of territory that now comprises
Wyoming. The railroad's agents furthered the westward expansion
of empire by staking out towns along the right-of-way, and soon
thereafter the settlements were bursting with sturdy fortune-seekers
and the inevitable riff-raff, gamblers, cutthroats, and prostitutes,
who followed the construction workers. Only two newspapers, the
Cheyenne Leader and the Frontier Index, appeared ahead of the
railroad. The pages of both publications reflect the eagerness and
enthusiasm with which frontier people watched the Union Pacific's
rapid progress.
In its very first issue published September 19, 1867, the Chey-
enne Leader noted: "The track of the U.P.R.R. is finished to
within fifty-five miles of Cheyenne, and it is expected that it will
be completed to this point about the middle of October." But
although the construction workers at that time were laying between
five and six miles of track a day,10 they did not reach Cheyenne
until a month later. Meanwhile, the Leader joyfully announced
from time to time that "the Cars are coming," coming, coming.
Finally, when the first passenger train from Omaha steamed into
Cheyenne November 14, 1867, the Leader gave the following
picture of the historic and festive occasion:
A vast assemblage of citizens and railroad men convened . . . Eddy
Street and the City Hall were splendidly illuminated. The large
transparency near the speakers' stand bore the mottoes: "The magic
town greets the continental railway." "Honor to whom honor is due."
"Old Casement, we welcome you;" which last, if relating to the Gen-
9. Glenrock Graphic, Sept. 30, 1887.
10. Charles Griffin Coutant, The History of Wyoming from the Earliest
Known Discoveries, I (Laramie, Wyoming: Chaplin, Spafford and Mathi-
son. Printers, 1899), p. 679. Coutant points out that "when it is understood
that it took 2,580 ties, 352 rails, 5,500 spikes, 704 fishplates and 1,408 bolts
to complete a mile of road, the rapidity of the work will be appreciated."
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 223
eral's years, is certainly a misrepresentation; but if to the accomplish-
ment of a lifetime, few men have ever done so much. . . .
Speech-making was not his (Casement's) forte, and with a "Gentle-
men, good-night," he disappeared as nervously and suddenly as if
there was a night job on hand, of laying four or five miles of track.
We have not space even to name the distinguished speakers that
addressed the jolly, uproarious and jubilant crowd.11
In successive issues of the Leader and the Frontier Index the his-
torian can trace the progress of the railroad's westward construction
from Cheyenne to Fort Russell and Dale City, up the eastern slope
of the Laramie mountains to the peak of Sherman Hill, at which
point the outside world was informed by telegraph that the highest
eminence on the roadbed between the Missouri and the Pacific
Ocean had been conquered,11' down the western slope, and across
the plains to Laramie City, where the first train was welcomed May
4, 1868.13
The pages of both the Leader and the Frontier Index reflect, and
doubtless fanned, the bitter rivalry between Cheyenne and Laramie
City, born in the spring of 1868. Which town had the greater
future? Which would be chosen by the Union Pacific as the site
for its most important buildings? Which would eventually have the
larger population? The controversy was fought out in the pages
of both newspapers. Two weeks before the first train arrived in
Laramie City, Baker in the Leader noted with concern the decline
in Cheyenne's population that followed the westward construction
of the line,14 and he could not have read unmoved the exuberant
announcement of the Freeman brothers that "several railroad
chieftains" had arrived in Laramie City about that time to let
contracts for machine shops, round houses, and "other very ex-
tensive buildings to be built of stone and to compare with any other
R.R. buildings on the continent," that in the future Cheyenne
would be "solely dependent for her . . . greatness upon the Denver
branch road," and that the remains of the "Magic City" henceforth
would consist solely of "two saloons, two dance houses — and
another saloon!"15
The day after the first train puffed into Laramie City the Free-
mans gleefully noted that the town already had a population of two
thousand persons and that "several railroad buildings are in the
course of construction in this city, some of which are nearly com-
pleted."1<; Back and forth the battle waged: the Freemans taunted
the Leader with the most outrageous prophecies, while Baker in a
11. Cheyenne Leader, Nov. 16, 1867.
12. Ibid., April 8, 1868.
13. Ibid., May 5, 1868.
14. Ibid., April 24, 1868.
15. Frontier Index, April 28, 1868.
16. Ibid., May 5, 1868.
224 ANNALS OF WYOMING
series of editorials endeavored to assure his readers that Cheyenne
would remain an important town even if the Union Pacific were
torn up and never replaced:
We have faith in the place, and shall contribute all we can to make
it a permanent and prosperous settlement. We follow no railway
nor other excitements, but came to Cheyenne knowing it to be a
favored location, and with Cheyenne we are content to remain.17
Meanwhile, the cause of the controversy, the Union Pacific, the
Frontier Index its vanguard, rapidly pushed westward through a
series of settlements that no longer appear on any map and through
others that do — Rock River, Medicine Bow, and Green River City.
The Frontier Index in its issue of September 3, 1868, published at
Green River City, noted:
The Railroad Telegraph is completed to Green River, and the track
is now finished to within forty miles of the same place. Colonel
Wanless is getting ready for the bridge over Green River. The stone
taken from the extensive cuts at Carmichael's five miles east of here
has ignited from its own combustible matter and has been burning
for a number of days past. It is apparently sandstone, saturated with
petroleum.
As the railroad passed through and beyond Green River City,
someone, possibly Baker, who may have traveled west to have a
look at the new town, observed with characteristic disparagement
in the Leader:
The history of the rise and fall of Green River City is ready to be
written. To be both brief and logical this place is played out. Mon-
day next there will not be twenty-five persons remaining in this once
famous city. The business portion of the community consists of one
hash house, one whiskey well, a billiard table and an outfitting store
which is already packing up to leave. . . .
The end of the track is now beyond Granger's sixty-five miles west
of here, and going on at a lively rate. On Monday last Casement laid
seven and three-fourths miles of track, and would have completed
more were it not that the water in the tanks he was carrying gave out.
He had three dry engines at one time, it was impossible for a while to
move his train, besides getting one engine off the tracks he had bad
luck generally. For that day's work he allowed each of his men three
days wages.18
Working with feverish speed toward their goal, Promontory,
Utah, where the Union Pacific would join the Central Pacific Rail-
road, then being built eastward from the Sierra Nevada mountains,
the tracklayers pushed on beyond Granger, through Carter and
Fort Bridger, to Bear River City, a town of about two thousand
persons. Here was an unsavory settlement which both the Fron-
17. Cheyenne Leader, June 17, 1868.
18. Ibid., Sept. 26, 1868.
WYOMINGS FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 225
tier Index and the Cheyenne Leader pictured as full of cutthroats
and other ruffians.19
The burning of the Frontier Index by Bear River City rioters
November 20, 1868, as previously noted, had, of course, no effect
on the railroad's progress westward. However, for a description
of the ceremony May 10. 1869, when the Union Pacific and Cen-
tral Pacific railroads were officially joined as Leland Stanford,
governor of California, drove a golden spike into a tie of polished
laurel, the historian must look to newspapers then published in
Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah.-"
THE MINING BOOM
Even before the building of the railroad, mining fever had begun
to swell the population with a frenetic crowd in search of gold.
Miners were to contribute little to a stable territorial development;
the boom itself turned out to be an abortive business that ran the
course from prosperity to ghost town more rapidly than was usual
on mining frontiers. The newspaper picture of the Wyoming gold
boom is fragmentary because the rush began in the early eighteen-
sixties before the establishment of any long-lived newspaper in the
new country. South Pass town site was laid out in 1867 following
the organization there of the first mining district in what is now
Wyoming.-1 The following January Baker of the Cheyenne Leader
began trying to open the eyes of his readers to the possibility of a
lucrative trade with the new town and the surrounding Sweetwater
mining country:
Let us not sleep on this matter, but look at it seriously in the light
of dollars and cents. If, next fall and winter, a few hundred thousand
dollars worth of the precious metal finds its way into this place, there
will then be no indifference in trying to get hold of some of the shining
stuff.--
It is not, however, until an examination is made of existing
copies of the Sweetwater Mines that anything like a picture of the
early South Pass boom emerges. In the earliest issue extant, that
of March 21, 1868, the newspaper noted considerable building
activity and reported that already a large general store, a hotel, a
saloon, and a warehouse had been erected. A week later it pub-
lished a report of an impending large migration of fortune-hunters
19. Frontier Index, Sept. 30, Nov. 6, 1868; Cheyenne Leader, Nov. 14,
Nov. 15, Nov. 16, Nov. 18, 1868.
20. J. Cecil Alter, Earh Utah Journalism (Salt Lake City: Utah State
Historical Society, 1938), pp. 142-143.
21. Frances Birkhead Beard, Wyoming from Territorial Days to the
Present (New York: American Historical Society, 1933), I, pp. 126-129.
22. Cheyenne Leader, Jan. 16, 1868. Baker, as previously noted, found-
ed the South Pass News in 1869.
226 ANNALS OF WYOMING
and their pack animals bound for the Sweetwater mines from Salt
Lake City. The newspaper suggested that the venture might well
prove hazardous since the snow was still too deep for safe travel-
ing.-8
The Cheyenne Leader of April 1, 1868, announced that the
first shipment of gold had been made to the "Magic City" from the
Sweetwater country — ten ounces of the "shining stuff" sent in a
buckskin bag along with a letter to the editor:
I do not tell these things through excitement nor to excite you, but
I think there is no chance for this country to prove a "bilk."' Should
the placer diggings turn out good it will be a year or two before there
is much money in circulation here; during which time many that
come here with the expectation of making a fortune in a single night
will go away disappointed and damning the country, while those who
remain to do what they may will undoubtedly prosper. This South
Pass City has many resources besides gold and silver. It is generally
believed that the Union Pacific Railroad will run near this place, which
is really the centre of this mining country, and is surrounded by beds
of coal which with the agricultural resources of Wind river valley,
together with the oil springs which abound in that vicinity, can not fail
to make this the centre of those mines.
By June the Sweetwater Mines reported an acute shortage of
currency, although great wealth in gold had been taken from the
mines, and an immediate need of a broker who would buy the
shining dust with minted coins. The same issue of the newspaper
described the gala opening of the Magnolia Saloon where the main
attraction was a dazzling mirror costing fifteen hundred dollars.24
Toward the end of June power machinery was being used for the
first time to crush ore, and frenzied townspeople, high on cham-
pagne and beside themselves with enthusiasm, were prevented from
damaging the crusher only by the timely intervention of the oper-
ators' friends.-"' A week later the newspaper was reporting that
more than one hundred Sioux Indians had attacked a band of seven
miners prospecting along Big Wind River, and that only three of
the prospectors had escaped.-" All copies of the Sweetwater Mines
that have been preserved contain glowing accounts of the mineral
wealth of the region, reports that were doubtless intended to attract
more and more settlers and capital to the region. By the summer
of 1869 the community had become sufficiently important to be
included in the traveling circuit of the Carter Troupe, for one mild
June evening the company put on Lucretia Borgia and Our Gal
in the Overland Exchange Hall. The same issue saw a Mrs. Barber
ready to start a "select" school on Grand Avenue; the newspaper
23. Sweetwater Mines, April 1, 1868.
24. Ibid., June 10, 1868.
25. Ibid., July 3, 1868.
26. Ibid., July 11, 1868.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 227
observed that she was well qualified to teach both elementary and
higher grades.-7 It was at this point that the Sweetwater Mines,
because of financial difficulties previously noted, ceased pub-
lication.
While the South Pass News, the second paper published in the
mining town, reflected a picture of continuing prosperity in the
Sweetwater region, extant issues also mirror in considerable detail
the white man s attitude toward the warfare of this period between
settlers and Indians. One copy of the South Pass News is partic-
ularly noteworthy :-s almost entirely devoted to the "massacre"
March 31, 1870, of twenty-six Sweetwater miners and mill men by
Indians, it affords a typical example not only of the way the settler
felt about the Indian, but of the way in which he reacted to concern
in the East for some fair and peaceful settlement of the Indian
problem. Gold mining and the Indian at this time were inextri-
cably bound up in the eyes of miners and other settlers: they felt
that the government was pursuing a flabby and altogether shameful
policy in its dealings with the red man, especially when Washington
made treaties reserving certain lands — lands that might conceivably
contain rich gold from which the miner was forever barred — as
hunting grounds for the Indian. To the settler, it is apparent, the
Indian was not as other humans were:
It is now generally believed that the Arapahoe Indians committed
the murders. Capt. H. G. Nickerson, of Hamilton City, was in the
Arapahoe camp about the time of the commission of the outrages,
and states that most of the warriors were out of camp at the time,
and the Indians stated that they were hunting on Sweetwater. He also
states that most of the Indians wanted to kill him and it was only
through the intercession of Friday that he escaped. They said they
had been told that the whites were coming to fight them, that the
Capt. was a chief of the whites, and they stated that they believed he
was a spy. ... It will be remembered that a number of the chief men
of the tribe were, a few weeks ago, in our town professing friendship
with the whites and being feasted by our citizens. These professions
of amity were taken by our citizens with many grains of allowance,
and the result shows that they were right. All experience teaches that
the Indians only observes Lsic] his treaties and acts in good faith with
the whites when afraid to do otherwise. The Shoshones and Bannocks
are the only Indians in Wyoming that can be trusted, and the reason
is the terrible chastisement they received at Bear River . . . and their
great dread of their mortal enemies, the Sioux, which drives them to
seek the aid of white men for their own protection. The men raised
by Mr. [J.W.] Anthony under the authority of his appointment of
Lieut. Col. of militia, are now enroute for the Arapahoe camp, 200
strong, and if they succeed in reaching the camp before the Indians
take alarm and leave, there will be more work for . . . the Quaker
commission and more tears to be shed by our philanthropists in the
states on behalf of the poor abused Indian.21*
27. Ibid., June 19, 1869.
28. April 9, 1870.
29. South Pass News, April 9, 1 870.
228 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Another newspaper picture of mining fever, showing the way in
which men infected with the malady disregarded all obstacles in
the way of their goal, emerges in the files of the Cheyenne Leader.
In the autumn of 1869 reports were circulated in Cheyenne of
fabulous wealth waiting to be dug out of the Big Horn mountains;*"
that winter the Big Horn Mining Association was organized to
penetrate country which, by the treaty signed at Fort Laramie April
29, 1868, was legally reserved for the Indian.81 Gold-seekers
from as far east as Chicago began arriving in Cheyenne to join the
expedition, which postponed its departure past the middle of May
in hopes that the government would lend its approval to the
intended invasion of Indian territory. When official sanction did
not come, the prospectors decided to approach the Big Horns in a
roundabout way, and left Cheyenne May 20, 1870.82 The party
was a failure. It split up into factions, a number of prospectors
were killed by Indians, and only a small fraction of the original
expedition returned to Cheyenne August 22. 33 The government's
policy toward the Indian, rather than the absence of gold in the
Big Horns, was blamed for the fiasco.84 History was later to show
that 1870 marked the close of one period of the territory's mining
history.
COMMUNITY LIFE
A more promising picture of permanent settlement emerges from
the concern of early newspapers with the development of stable
communities — such as Cheyenne and Laramie. The first few
issues of any frontier newspaper reflect a preoccupation with such
material matters as the price of lots, the establishment of new
businesses, the endeavor to attract both settlers and capital to a
new and struggling country. But sometimes, too, a vivid glimpse
of the new town itself emerges from a buried paragraph, as in the
following item describing early-day trading in Cheyenne:
A multitude of arrangements are employed to facilitate business
operations in this city. Dry goods boxes are dumped from wagons
and their contents taken therefrom, and ranged to display upon the
boxes, on each business street of town. And this influx of merchants
is not of temporary sojourners, as might be inferred from the above.
Nearly all such, with whom we have conversed, are intending to
construct large commodious buildings as soon as lumber can be ob-
tained, and large stocks of goods are en route for most of these parts.35
High prices were paid by the consumer for these goods, for accord-
30. Cheyenne Leader, Sept. 13, 1869.
31. Ibid., Jan. 3, 1870.
32. Ibid., May 21, 1870.
33. Ibid., Aug. 23, 1870.
34. Ibid., Aug. 22, 1870.
35. Cheyenne Leader, Sept. 24, 1867.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 229
ing to the Cheyenne Leader of September 26, 1 367, cans of peach-
es and raspberries cost seventy-five cents each, "ships" were
twenty-five dollars a keg, candles were fifty cents a pound, and
nails brought a price of twenty-two dollars a keg. Since the great
influx of population poured into Cheyenne during the late summer
and early fall, there had been no time to plant vegetables for use
during the winter; accordingly in October the newspaper warned
its readers:
We notice the arrival, in our streets, of wagons from different por-
tions of the adjoining Territory of Colorado, loaded with vegetables,
such as potatoes, onions, cabbages, etc., and we would remind our
citizens that this is the proper time to lay in a supply of such articles
for the approaching winter, which may be long and dreary. Vege-
tables, which are so beneficial as antiscorbutics, may be difficult to
find and expensive to pay for. Fill your cellars. 36
There were other worries besides high prices and possible food
shortages to plague settlers:
High winds have prevailed for the last three days. On the morning
of Oct. 9th the storm had increased almost to a hurricane. The prair-
ies were on fire north of us, and the black masses of smoke whirling
away before the gale were well calculated to excite apprehension for
the safety of the city. The special police were out on duty and used
all possible precautions to prevent a calamity so fearful.
Later. The struggle of an army of our citizens to ward off and
subdue the rapidly approaching flames is at last decided. They were
driven back into the city limits and the danger of a general conflagra-
tion, for some time, was most imminent, but the gunny bag outfit came
off victorious and deserve the thanks of all who were not there to
assist, but who ought to have been.-'57
But alongside a preoccupation with survival and making money
there soon appeared in frontier newspapers a concern for the
education and general welfare of families who had arrived and for
those who were still to come. The first Wyoming editor to deplore
the lack of schools was Cheyenne's N. A. Baker. Less than a
month after he had given the town its first newspaper, he wrote a
page-one editorial urging the foundation of a school system:
We have been engrossed almost night and day with building shops
and preparing for the winter; we have strained nerve and muscle, and
have, for our reward, a beautiful city, not merely of '"magnificent dis-
tances," but of magnificent proportions! And now there is coming
upon us a population of families — let us welcome them, not only by
welcoming words, but by instituting those means that can only render
them happy, useful and intelligent. What is a town without schools
and churches? Answer, Julesburg. Is Cheyenne to be such a town?
No, sir. Families are what we want. Homes, with mothers and
children in them, to restrain, and give tone to our social fabric.
The American people demand schools for their children, and are
36. Ibid., Oct. 5, 1867.
37. Ibid., Oct. 10, 1867.
230 ANNALS OF WYOMING
unwilling to live where they are not to be had. It was long since
established by our fathers that the only solid foundation for permanent
prosperity is in the virtue and intelligence of the people; therefore,
every great free State, and almost every Territory, early directed their
attention to laying the foundation of the common school system.
There is scarcely any wisdom superior to this. . . ,38
Less than three months later, on January 5, 1868, nearly all of the
citizens of Cheyenne turned out to celebrate the dedication of the
first school building in Wyoming.
Another concern, that of preserving the public peace, is reflected
in early-day community newspapers. The Cheyenne Leader, for
instance while commending the city council for its action in for-
bidding the carrying of concealed weapons, warned its readers that
the burden of making the town a peaceful community "where the
humblest and weakest may go forth at any hour of the day or night,
unarmed and alone, and without fear or trembling," rested on
individual citizens. 39 It was a burden soon to be individually
assumed, but not in the way that the Leader meant. That winter
about two hundred outraged citizens organized themselves as
vigilantes, donned black masks, and set about maintaining law
and order among what were then called "camp-followers" of
Union Pacific construction workers. The vigilantes hanged sev-
eral men and forced others to leave town.40 The Cheyenne Leader
bitterly assailed the vigilantes for bypassing proper legal procedures
and taking the law into their own hands.41 At the same time, the
picture of Cheyenne that emerges from the Leader's columns is far
from pretty:
The modern institutions of crime and pleasure are on the increase in
this vicinity, and can stand a sharp looking after. Between bad whis-
key and the rule of the wantons, the sophisticated and unsophisticated
are fleeced with unerring regularity and system. Extraordinary in-
ducements are thrust forth to lure men with their money into these
plundering dens, where the vilest of both sexes do congregate, and
the luckless man, who escapes therefore without being cut, or shot or
beaten up, and minus his money is fortunate for the occasion.42
In the course of time Cheyenne was able to control its disorderly
element; as the years passed its newspapers reflected a picture of
the town's gradual metamorphosis into a peaceful city of homes
and gardens and fine state buildings. In a limited study of this
nature it is not possible to trace the development of one city
through each of the twenty-seven years comprising the period under
investigation. But it should be pointed out that in September.
38
Cheyenne Leader, Oct. 24, 1867
39
Ibid., Oct. 13, 1867.
40
Ibid., Jan. 11, Jan. 20, 1868.
41
Ibid., Jan. 21, 1868.
42
Ibid., Feb. 15, 1868.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 231
1885, the Cheyenne Sun brought out a special edition illustrated
with pictures of churches, schoolhouses, thirty-two fine homes,
and a number of "amusement halls. " Cheyenne, by this time,
boasted wide streets shaded by leafy trees and a library that
housed nearly a thousand books. The men of Cheyenne were
enjoying a brick club house that had cost forty thousand dollars
to build, and people who were sick could go to the county hospital,
which had cost twenty-one thousand dollars. Electric street-light-
ing kept Cheyenne bright at night, and a well-organized fire
department presumably guarded it from the kind of disaster that
in January, 1870, laid nearly half the town in ruins. The Wyoming
Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters had been fostering culture
for three years, and a territorial library had been started. A num-
ber of Union Pacific machine shops had been built, and so had
some small factories that produced boots and shoes, wagons and
harnesses; two breweries had gone up, and one enterprising busi-
ness turned native metals and stone into jeweled ornaments.
Over the mountains in Laramie City, the Sentinel was recording
a similar community development. The year 1 868 was full of
events: Patrick S. Seane, the town's first white baby, was born
June 21; Miss Jennie Wright started a Sabbath school July 15;
citizens formed a vigilantes committee in August to rid the town
of crime; Rev. Joseph C. Cook of Cheyenne in October established
the Episcopal church, Laramie's first. On February 15, 1868,
Miss Eliza Stewart opened Laramie's first public school. 4:s
By the spring of 1 870 the columns of the Sentinel were reflecting
a picture of a pleasant town with civic-minded citizens where
"A" Street ... is a beauty, now being lined with shade trees on both
sides, and also bounded by beautiful clear streams of spring water.
The force of its example is beginning to be felt, too. People on the
other streets see how much better it looks, and have gone to work on
their own.44
But two days later there was trouble in the Garden of Eden:
. . . the hogs in this city are becoming an unbearable nuisance. We
like hogs, they are a good thing to have in a family, town or commun-
ity. But here in the city where we want to keep our streets looking
decent, and our water courses clear and clean, so that the people can
use the water, and want to be let alone generally, fifteen hundred or
two thousand hogs rooting up the streets, wallowing in the ditches.
43. These facts are taken from a retrospective review published in the
Laramie Weekly Sentinel May 5, 1883, with Hayford's explanation that
since the files of the Sentinel for the first year of its existence had been
"badly scattered or destroyed," he had decided to gather "from the remains
of the files of the first year many historical events of public interest . . ."
Since this investigation has failed to turn up any copies of the Daily Sentinel
before that of May 2, 1870, Hayford's later account has been used of
necessity.
44. Laramie Daily Sentinel, May 11, 1870.
232 ANNALS OF WYOMING
converting our clear running spring brooks into disgusting mud holes,
destroying shade trees, and poking their noses into everything in reach,
is getting it in a little too thick for either profit or pleasure. We
understand the commissioners are authorized by law to put a stop to
it, and we frantically call upon those official gentlemen to stand be-
tween us and the hogs.4-1
The commissioners did indeed "stand between11 Hayford and the
roaming hogs; eleven days later the Sentinel ran a Board of County
Commissioners' order warning hog-owners that they must keep
their animals from "running at large" or risk a fine of one hundred
dollars.4'1
Toward the end of the following year the Sentinel's pages re-
create for the reader a picture of a frontier Christmas. For gifts
there were advertised mouth organs, accordions, wearing apparel,
and gems "both imported and home cut."47 To eat there were
new chestnuts, oysters, chickens, turkeys, corn-fed pork and mut-
ton, California and "foreign" fruits, and "pure sweet Michigan
cider. "4S Even the merchants by that time were going in for
Christmas decorations:
. . . Fox has gone to work and ornamented his market in a fitting
manner as becomes the holidays. The beef and mutton is as white as
the drifted snow with fat, and is ornamented with many colored
rosettes in truly national and patriotic style.49
The day after Christmas the newspaper reported that the biggest
holiday celebration had been a party at the Methodist Church,
where the Christmas tree "could not be made to hold one half the
presents brought there to be bestowed by friends upon friends"
for there were over twelve hundred presents in all. Then the Lara-
mie citizenry came in for some criticism. Finding them "altogether
too practical and utilitarian, lacking half enough of pleasure,
amusement, and recreation," the Sentinel prophesied that "if we
had and enjoyed a dozen such holidays a year, we would be better,
happier, wiser and wealthier.""'"
Severe winters produced conditions which affected the daily lives
of the people in Laramie and other Wyoming communities, al-
though an examination of the newspapers of the period shows their
tendency to suppress accounts of any climatic rigors, probably
because so many of the papers went to eastern and western ex-
changes. Occasionally, however, stories would appear revealing
how difficult the weather could be:
Yesterday morning. Superintendent Fillmore started from here at
45. Ibid., May 13, 1870.
46. Ibid., May 24, 1870.
47. Ibid., Dec. 22, 1871.
48. Ibid., Dec. 23, 1871.
49. Ibid., Dec. 23, 1871.
50. Ibid., Dec. 26, 1871.
WYOMING'S FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS 233
daylight with over one hundred men, to clear the road west. At mid-
night last night, they had reached to within three miles of the snow-
bound trains west of Carbon, and were still at work. By the time they
got through, the wind had risen and blown all the cuts full again
between here and there — fuller and harder than ever before. Now
they are working back this way, followed by the trains, but it is impos-
sible to tell just when they will reach here."'1
Three days later the Sentinel stated that "several large forces of
men'* had been sent off to dig out nineteen engines stalled by drifts
between Cheyenne and Rawlins, and reported that there was no
truth at all in rumors of stranded passengers suffering from hunger
because they "are at all points abundantly supplied with provisions,
mainly at the expense of the company. "■"'-
Laramie, in common with other Wyoming communities, con-
tinued to grow and to expand, although its development seldom
seemed to keep pace with the Daily Sentinel's prophecies. For
instance, in May, 1875, the newspaper was predicting that within
ten years the town would have extensive iron works, street rail-
roads, woolen mills, glass works, soda works, and competing rail-
roads. In June of that year Hayford wrote, "We have about three
years to go . . . and our prophecy may be realized."53
The town would not have the streetcars, woolen mills, or com-
peting railroads forecast by the starry-eyed Hayford. But even if
its growth was not spectacular, all newspaper accounts indicate that
it was steady, with farming, stock-raising, timber-cutting, and the
Union Pacific Railroad contributing to a modest prosperity. A
decade after Hayford's pronouncements the Laramie Daily Boom-
erang was proudly running large cuts showing Holliday's Opera
House, the soda works, the rolling mill,"'4 and the Laramie National
Bank."'"1 The eastern house of Studebaker was advertising "ranch,
freight, and spring wagons, buggies, buckboards & carriages," and
the Trabing Commercial Company was stocking its shelves with
tins and jars that by no exercise of the imagination could be con-
sidered staple pioneer fare: four kinds of imported champagne,
six different Rhine wines, claret, Gotha truffled liver sausage, fried
smelts, Vienna and Carlsbad wafers, Cross & Blackwell's calvesfeet
jelly, stuffed olives, Prince of Wales salad sauce, Batty's Nabob
sauce, anchovies in oil and salt, Hamburger asparagus, Cross &
BlackwelPs Yarmouth bloaters, pineapples, Roquefort and Edam
cheese. •"',;
51. Ibid.,Dec. 23, 1871.
52. Ibid., Dec. 26, 1871.
53. "Review of Laramie City from May 1, 1875, to May 1, 1876,"
Laramie Weekly Sentinel, June 16, 1883.
54. Established by the U.P.R.R. in 1875, the mill was destroyed by fire
in 1910.
55. Laramie Daily Boomerang, June 10, 1885.
56. Ibid., June 18, 1885.
.'V V 2J1 i £L&
J TA.H
Overland Stage Zrail- Zrek flo. 3
Trek No. 13 of the Emigrant Trail Treks
Sponsored by
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Sweetwater County Historical Society and Uinta County Historical
Society under the direction of
Paul Henderson, Lyle Hildebrand, Maurine Carley
Compiled by
Maurine Carley - Trek Historian
July 14-15, 1962
Caravan — 23 cars 69 participants
OFFICERS
Captain.... Col. Wm. R. Bradley, head of the Wyoming
Highway Patrol
Scout._ Paul Henderson
Guides John Dickson - Black Buttes to Green River
Adrian Reynolds - Green River to Ham's Fork
(Granger)
Charles Guild - Ham's Fork to Fort Bridger
Wagon Boss ..Lyle Hildebrand
Historian Maurine Carley
Topographer H. M. Townsend, U.S.G.S., Denver
Photographers Charles Ritter, Paul Henderson
Press Adrian Reynolds
Registrars Paula Waitman, Fred Hildebrand
Cooks. ..Elizabeth Hildebrand, Fran Heuton, Vera Ritter
NOTE: Numbers preceding M in the schedule indicate distances
on the OVERLAND TRAIL from Virginia Dale Stage
Station. We start with 245M at Black Buttes Station.
Most of this trek was made on oiled roads except from
Black Buttes to Rock Point and from the Green River
Crossing up through Rabbit Hollow to Lone Tree Station.
236 ANNALS OF WYOMING
This trek, approximately 130 miles, was on the old Overland
Trail as nearly as it was possible to travel from Black Buttes Sta-
tion to Fort Bridger. For the trail from Fort Bridger to Needle
Rock Station on the Wyoming-Utah state line, which was covered
by Trek No. 9, refer to Annals of Wyoming, October, 1959.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL
The Overland Trail, originally called the Central Overland Cali-
fornia and Pike's Peak Express, ran stages daily for about five
years. It was the greatest stage line on the globe carrying the mail,
passengers and express, and was also the safest, quickest way to
get across the western plains and over the mighty mountain ranges.
The first daily stages left St. Joseph, Missouri and Placerville,
California July 1, 1861. Both coaches reached their destination
on the 1 8th, thereby cutting off six days from the southern Butter-
field route. In September, Atchison, Kansas, fourteen miles far-
ther west, was made the starting point.
After Ben Holladay took possession of the mail route late in
1861 he became the "Stage King" and the route the "Overland
Stage Line." He employed the most skillful stage men in the
country; he bought the finest horses and mules suitable for staging;
he purchased dozens of first-class Concord coaches; he built addi-
tional stations, and added other features to make the long, tedious
overland trip (2000 miles) a more pleasant one.
After five years he sold out to Wells, Fargo and Company who
operated it until the iron rails were stretched across the continent.
DISTANCES BETWEEN ATCHISON, KANSAS AND
STATIONS IN WYOMING
Virginia Dale, Colo 752 Laclede 983
Willow Springs, Wyo 767 Big Pond 995
Big Laramie 782 Black Buttes 1009
Little Laramie 796 Rock Point 1023
Cooper Creek 813 Salt Wells ..1037
Rock Creek 824 Rock Spring 1051
Medicine Bow 841 Green River 1066
Elk Mountain 849 Lone Tree 1080
Pass Creek 863 Ham's Fork 1098
North Platte 889 Church Buttes 1110
Sage Creek 903 Millersville 1118
Pine Grove 913 Fort Bridger 1131
Bridger's Pass 922 Muddy 1143
Sulphur Springs 932 Quaking Asp Springs 1153
Waskie 943 Bear River 1163
Duck Lake 956 Needle Rock, Utah 1173
Dug Springs 968
Saturday - July 14
9:00 A.M. The breeze was brisk and cold as the caravan
assembled at Bitter Creek railroad station, which is thirty-two miles
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 237
west of Wamsutter on Highway 30, and seven miles south on an
oiled road.
9:30 A.M. After the introduction of officers, Mrs. L. C. Bishop
gave a short prayer in memory of the pioneers who traveled the
Overland one hundred years ago. The sun came out, promising
good weather for the trek, and we left on a country road which
formerly was the old trail.
9:45 A.M. One mile to the west we arrived at Black Buttes
Stage Station (245M) where partial walls of stone are still
standing.
BLACK BUTTES
By John Dickson
Black Buttes Station was laid out following the plans for all
stations - blockhouse, a powder house and a compound for the
horses. Here you see the crumbling ruins of the house made from
native sandstone and can trace the outline of the compound on a
level flat to the north. The powder house was across the trail to
the south. Such stations cost approximately $1,000.
This station was named for the large butte which stands dark
against the sky five miles to the west. It was there the men had to
go over the dry desert flats for fuel, and logs for the roofs of the
buildings and posts for stockade and corrals.
Bitter Creek ran close by the compound but its brackish waters
were so distasteful that oatmeal was often mixed with it to make
it drinkable. An old cemetery was located a short distance west
of the station but it can no longer be recognized as a train wreck
some time ago completely destroyed all evidence of the graves.
Bitter Creek country was the horror of the overland drivers.
For a distance of 100 miles it was one of the most despised regions
on the trail. The men and animals struggled through the beds of
soda and sand under a scorching sun by day and shivered with
cold at night in the 7,000 feet elevation.
From Bitter Creek west the Overland Trail, the Union Pacific
Railroad and the Lincoln Highway now form close parallel lines.
10:20 A.M. We left Black Buttes Station on a semi-graded
road that is generally in and out of the old trail. The country is
somewhat interesting with queer and colorful formations along the
way.
10:40 A.M. After 12.5 miles we arrived at ROCK POINT
STATION (266.5M) on the left bank of Bitter Creek at the pres-
ent site of Point of Rocks railway station. These buildings are
made from brown native sandstone and are partially ruined. Some
repair work has been done as they have been used as living quarters
and a barn. They stand at the lower end of granite that slopes
down and stops within 50 feet of the station ruins. (Rock Point
was the original name, Point of Rocks came with the railroad.)
238 ANNALS OF WYOMING
ROCK POINT STATION
By John Dickson
The builders of Rock Point Station were lucky, as rock was at
its very door step. Other stations had to gather material for miles.
Although more sturdily built than many of the others it is fast
falling into shambles.
Some old timers say it was once known as Almond Station but
that name was soon lost as Point of Rocks seemed much more
appropriate and descriptive. [Early listings of stage stations give
the name as Rock Point.] It was a relay point for the Overland
and one of the few stations where the stage and railroad met.
The bluffs on both sides of the place are coal rock or white sand-
stone with coal outcroppings. Bridger advised the Union Pacific
officials to locate the railroad through here and he also pointed out
the coal deposits. It is interesting to know that Bridger's judgment
was so sound that the tracks through here have never been moved.
Only two graves are still visible in the cemetery up on a nearby
hill. One has a fence around it and the other a small stone as a
marker, but no names can be found.
A red man who merits mentioning in connection with the Over-
land is Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshones. When the Sioux
and other warlike tribes tried to drive the white men from the
Oregon Trail, Washakie welcomed the traders here. His friendship
made it possible for the Union Pacific to plan its route through
southern Wyoming, thereby cutting through the richest coal beds
in the state.
The old 1867 Sweetwater Mines Road led northward from Point
of Rocks railroad station to Atlantic City in the gold fields.
1 1 :00 A.M. We left Rock Point Station on Highway 30 west-
ward. The surrounding hills are extremely interesting with varie-
gated colors and shapes. Coal outcroppings can be seen on the
sides of the bluffs.
An interesting story was told by Mrs. Walter Lambertsen as we
rode west of Rock Point. She had been told that many years ago
an elderly couple came from the East every year by train to a spot
a few miles west of Point of Rocks. When the train pulled to a
stop they stepped to the prairie, walked a short distance and placed
flowers on a grave, then boarded the next train from the West.
This ceremony was carried on for several years then suddenly
stopped. Who were they? What grave brought them so far on
their yearly pilgrimage? Who stopped two passenger trains on
this lonely prairie?
1 1 :30 A.M. Because of the heavy traffic on Highway 30 the
trek captain advised us not to turn left to the site of Salt Wells
Station (280M). However we pulled off the road and looked at a
green meadow a mile distant where the station had once been
located.
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 239
SALT WELLS
By Maurine Carley
It is almost impossible to find anything about many of the sta-
tions along the Overland. Unless something spectacular happened,
the history of many stations was lost. The days were monotonous,
the workers busy, the occupancy short and it all happened so
long ago.
The country surrounding Salt Wells Station is an uninviting
valley with water which is brackish and in places very salty. The
country is desolate and covered with greasewood and sagebrush.
Mr. James Knox Polk Miller made the following entry in his
diary on Oct. 4, 1 864. "Supper finished by 1 2 and started. Spent
the remainder of the night vainly endeavoring to sleep. Reached
La Clede head of Bitter Creek at two, 55 miles from Sulphur
Springs. Rode until 9 o'clock when 1 again tried to sleep. The
driver asserted that I snored tremendously. At Salt Wells 54 miles
from La Clede & 209 from Halleck, where we arrived at 4 o'clock,
made some cakes of flour and water. Fried some antelope meat
and this, with some salt wells water, constituted our Bill of Fare.
The water here is very strongly impregnated with salt, three wells
having been dug before finding one fit to use. The water is miser-
able and in many places can not be used, being fatal to man and
beast owing to the alkali beds through which it runs.
"Reached Rock Spring at about 1 1 o'clock, 1 5 miles from Salt
Springs. Bought a pint of whisky for which 1 paid $5 and spilled
3/4 of it. Weather warm. No people in mail station, no plant
but sage. We meet hundreds of people almost daily coming from
Virginia City out of provisions, some in starving condition."
Some general information which could be appropriate for any
station probably fits Salt Wells, too -
The drivers blew loud blasts on a bugle about three miles before
they arrived at a station so the relays would be ready. A driver
almost held his whip sacred, and hated to loan it even to his most
intimate friend and companion driver.
A mounted patrol accompanied each stage, and at each station
there was a corporal, or other non-commissioned officer, and from
6 to 10 privates who went along as a mounted escort to the next
station.
This popular poem was sent up and down the Overland Trail -
Dried Apple Pies
I loathe! abhor! detest! despise!
Abominate dried-apple pies:
I like good bread; I like good meat,
Or anything that's good to eat;
But of all poor grub beneath the skies
The poorest is dried apple pies.
Give me a toothache or sore eyes
In preference to such kind of pies.
240 ANNALS OF WYOMING
1 ! : 30 A.M. As we continued on west the hills closed in, mak-
ing a little canyon only wide enough for the trail, the railroad and
the creek. The rippled sandstone cliffs soon widened out and
framed an arid plateau which continued for miles.
12:00 P.M. We arrived at the site of original Rock Spring and
Station (294M).
ROCK SPRINGS
By John Dickson
Well over a hundred years ago early fur trappers searching for
beaver discovered a fine spring of water issuing forth beneath a
sandstone ledge on the Killpecker tributary of Bitter Creek. Sur-
prisingly this was good water, a rarity in this section of the country.
While seeking a route for a transcontinental railroad in 1850,
Captain Stansbury also mentioned this fine spring issuing from
beneath the point of a jagged ledge of rocks. From the reports of
Lieutenant Bryan, surveyor of the Overland Trail, early travelers
learned of this good spring, so made it a camping site.
When the stage line was planned in 1862 the government sanc-
tioned the establishment of many stations along the trail. Rock
Springs was a natural due to the good water and a proper distance
from the Green River.
Tn addition to the customary buildings the stage company built a
very primitive rock hotel to serve as a resting place for the passen-
gers. No trace of any of the buildings can be seen today, and the
spring has been dry for many years. The location of the old station
is shown by a marker which is on the edge of the present city of
Rock Springs.
12:30 P.M. For lunch journeyed into Rock Springs to the
city park.
2:00 P.M. We left Rock Springs on Highway 30 for Green
River, fifteen miles away, where we turned south at the second stop
light, and went under the railroad to stop at the Overland Trail
marker across Green River. The marker reads:
GREEN RIVER DIVISION
Station Site
350 yards East
1952
DEDICATION OF GREEN RIVER MARKER
By William Hutton
Members and friends of the Wyoming State Historical Society.
I feel greatly privileged to be here on this very special occasion
and honored that I was asked to participate in the dedication of this
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 241
marker designating the Overland Stage Station route which oper-
ated from 1862 to 1865. The Green River Division Station site
was about 350 yards east. This monument was erected by the
former Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming, the work
of which has been placed under the State Archives and Historical
Department.
I had driven an iron stake in this site many years ago when the
road was clearly visible so that in the future there would be no
question as to the center of the trail.
We are here today to dedicate this marker out of respect to all
those pioneers who passed this way seeking new frontiers, and to
Ben Holladay and his company for their decision in selecting this
route through our part of the country. It was inaugurated on
August 11, 1862. Our first claim to fame stems from the stage
coaches passing along this route. Therefore, the name Overland
Stage Trail and Ben Holladay are closely linked with the earliest
history of this section of Wyoming and we must not forget this fact.
The dedication of this marker could not have come at a more
appropriate time than during this trek across the Overland Trail,
and we, the citizens of Green River City, are happy to be a part
of this final trek over the trail.
3:00 P.M. We turned to the left a short distance to stand on
the site of Green River Station No. 2 (309M). This is an ideal
spot for picture taking with the river and Castle Rock in the back-
ground.
GREEN RIVER FERRY, FORD AND STAGE STATION
By Adrian Reynolds
If you want to be exact about such matters, Green River today
is Green River No. 4. Green River No. 1 was not even close to
present day Green River. You are now standing on the site of
Green River No. 2. Green River No. 3, north of the river, was
established before the railroad arrived and was incorporated as
Green River City, Dakota Territory, through resolution of the
county commissioners of Carter County, Dakota Territory, in the
summer of 1868, before the arrival of the railroad.
Green River No. 4, the Green River of today — really came into
being when the railroad moved its division point back from Bryan.
Files of the county clerk of Sweetwater county, Wyo., contain a
copy of a plat, filed by S. I. Fields, in 1 872. An earlier plat, 1 868,
in existence several years ago, cannot now be located. It had been
made in 1 869 by a member of the Major Powell river exploration
party.
Green River No. 1 was the famous Green River crossing and
ferry of the original emigrant trail, some 30 or 35 miles upstream.
It was there that the Pony Express and the original stage and freight
242 ANNALS OF WYOMING
lines crossed. This crossing can still be seen today, with scant
tracings of the old stage station buildings still existent on the west
bank. Also remaining is the stub of a telegraph pole. The military
telegraph line of the army from Ft. Bridger to Ft. Stambaugh was
used up to the time of abandonment of the latter post, and it has
been stated that the first news of the Custer massacre went out
over the military telegraph line.
But I mention the north passage because too many persons make
the error of referring to the Pony Express as having passed through
Rock Springs, and Green River. The Pony Express was non-
existent by the time the New Overland route was established.
Green River, as in the case of Rock Springs, came into existence
solely because of the Indian menace that had stopped operation of
the older route to the north. That history has been reviewed many
times in the treks covering this route, so needs no further mention
here.
This station, headquarters for the Green River division of the
Holladay lines, was apparently abandoned when the railroad ar-
rived and began serving the area with mail, freight and passenger
service. In the Frontier Index, at the time of the arrival of the
railroad in October, 1868, reference was made to the desire of the
Wells Fargo agent to have the station moved across the river to
the new town because of the inconvenience of getting passengers,
mail and express across the Green to the stage station.
Evidently a large number of persons and businesses arrived in
Green River No. 2 ahead of the railroad and expected the town to
be "end of the rails" for the 1868-69 winter. Persons attached to
the railroad in various ways apparently were selling the lots in
the townsite and when they found the land already platted here,
moved on to promote Bryan. But even Bryan was doomed for
disappointment, for the rails pushed on to the Bear river for winter
headquarters. Much of the town of Green River's population also
moved.
The famous pioneer photographer, W. H. Jackson, has told me
that when he preceded the rails to Green River one weekend, and
made the first and now famous photographs of the rock formations
you see across the river from where we are standing, the stage sta-
tion appeared to be a fairly large establishment. Apparently
Adobe Town, now covered by the huge cinder piles just north of
here across the river, was built during that period. Use of some
of these buildings continued until the late 90's, and the mounds
marking the deteriorated adobe building sites existed until the early
1 940,s, when they were covered by cinders from the railroad.
Many have given the impression that the Mormons operated the
"toll gate" just west of town. I must dispute this, as this toll gate
was operated when a stage line ran from Green River to South
Pass, up river. A granddaughter of the operator, Mrs. Lucinda
Bramwell, still resides here. According to her recollections as told
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 243
to the family, no toll was charged for mail stages. The gate, a
heavy chain across the road at a natural gate, was destroyed several
years ago in a highway change. In 1872, county commissioner
records show, a man by the name of Matthews was given permis-
sion to operate and build a toll road which went up the canyon
back of the present day high school. This route is still used. Per-
mission was granted to operate between Green River City and
Pacific Springs.
Overland travelers continued to use the Ferry and Ford at Green
River until 1896 when the first wagon bridge to bs built over the
Green River was completed as a joint venture between the town
and the county, each paying $2,500. This bridge later served the
original Lincoln highway, which followed the Overland trail west
and was not abandoned until about 40 years ago, when the highway
department built the US 30 bridge three miles west of town and
rerouted the highway completely. The bridge was still in use until
the mid-1950's after the concrete bridge over which you passed a
few minutes ago was completed. The old bridge was condemned
and then torn down by the county. For 60 years it was Green
River's only connection with the area south towards the Uinta
mountains. If you look upstream, you can still see the remnants
of one of the piers.
Around 1907, an attempt was made to navigate the Green with
a steamboat, the Comet. This was unsuccessful, except for excur-
sion trips near town. The hull lies buried in the sand somewhere
in the river just below the point upon which we now stand.
Green River's first century depended entirely upon transporta-
tion activities — the stage line, freight and mail service into the
Uinta mountain and Brown's Park areas, up river into the Big
Piney country and the lines to South Pass. Because of this it
figured also in the early livestock history and had as its visitors
famous outlaws. The next century is starting with a new birth in
the chemical, tourist and agricultural industry, "entirely alien to the
time that Green River was merely a stop on the river.
Oh, in parting, let me ask you not to confuse the present town
of Green River with the fur history. The first rendezvous of the
Ashley mountain men was on the Henry's Fork, 50 miles from here
— the Green River Rendezvous which made history were all on the
upper Green River. Compared to much of the West, our Green
River No. 4 has had a pretty peaceful history.
3:30 P.M. On the way up Rabbit Hollow, so named by Stans-
bury in 1850, we followed the old trail which became the original
Lincoln Highway. Not only must the emigrants have had a strug-
gle to get to the top, but also it is hard to understand how the early
cars made it. For sixty years, from 1862 to 1923, this winding,
steep road was a part of the transcontinental highway.
Half way up we stopped to view the Cream and Sugar Bowl
formations to the north. It was his picture of these fantastic rocks
244 ANNALS OF WYOMING
which made W. H. Jackson famous, and won for him the contract
to become the official photographer for the Union Pacific.
A stop was made on the divide ( 3 1 6M ) where the only thing we
could see for 100 miles in every direction was Pilot Butte, twenty
miles away to the northeast. In 1812 Robert Stuart mentioned this
same Butte in his diary as he saw it from the other side.
4:15 P.M. After traveling a short distance we came to a little
cemetery on Black's Fork which was once the site of Lone Tree
Station. Allen's Guide (1858) shows a crossing here but Mr.
Reynolds can find no evidence of it on the south side.
LONE TREE STATION
By Adrian Reynolds
As with many of the way stations of the Overland stage days,
there is little to say about Lone Tree, which records show to have
been 1,078 miles from Atchison and 12 miles from Green River
As we see, the only remains today are the little graveyard where
even the headstones have been destroyed by time and vandals. I
have seen some surmise as to a river crossing here or nearby, but
actual evidence does not bear this out.
As we came down the little canyon onto this flat, you could see
the vanishing traces of the stage road. It has been about 30 years
since I commenced tracing the old roads across this area — and all
indications are that the main road stayed north of the river. Until
time erased the crossings of some arroyas, this heavily marked road
could be followed to Granger. A short distance east of Granger
at least two pioneer graves were still to be found about 20 years
ago. I have not seen them in recent years. Because of its short
distance from Bryan, it is safe to presume that the stages picked up
their mail, express and passengers at that point, because of the
closeness to Lone Tree, during the short time that Bryan was end
of the rails. The only mentions of stage service to South Pass refer
to Bryan as the stage point on the railroad.
4:20 P.M. We took a little detour to the railroad station of
Bryan named for the Lieutenant Bryan who surveyed the Overland
Trail in 1856-57. This town was the end of track for only a short
time. Here mail was piled high for the stages to pick up and take
on west.
4:45 P.M. We returned to Lone Tree, then took an oiled road
to Highway 30 and on to Granger (341M).
HAM'S FORK - GRANGER STATION
By Mrs. George Graf
( Mail and stage stations were dotted throughout Wyoming in the
early days. Some of these were called home stations and some
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 245
relay stations. Ham's Fork Station, as this was originally known,
was a home station. The first site was four miles from here. Some
ruins have been discovered that are believed to have been part of
the old Ham's Fork Station. As the routes were changed, the
Ham's Fork Station was moved here. These home stations were
from forty to fifty miles apart. Drivers were changed, meals were
served and sleeping accomodations were available and supplies
carried for the thousands of emigrants who passed by each year.
Some of the home stations had gardens in the summer time so fresh
vegetables were available. Whether Ham's Fork Station was one
of these can only be guessed at as there is no record. As you can
see there is not much left of the buildings here. In 1 850 they were
built of stone and later covered with adobe mortar with the main
building having a lean-to shed.
The first record of this being called Granger Station was in 1 862.
It was on the first transcontinental stage line until the stage was
superseded by the railroad in 1869. It was also a Pony Express
station and later a telegraph station.
The first white men to use the route we are following were Wil-
liam Ashley and a group of his trappers in 1825. Fremont fol-
lowed the same trail in 1 843. In 1 849 a party of Cherokee Indians
headed by Captain Evans, of Arkansas, went to California over
the same route so afterwards it became known as the Cherokee
trail. In 1862 Ben Holladay purchased the contract and transpor-
tation facilities from Russell, Majors and Waddell. He was a man
with great business ability and determined to make his stage and
mail line the greatest on the globe. He bought the best mules and
horses, improved the stations and ordered the best stages available.
Some of his Abbott-Downing stages were large enough to carry
twelve to fifteen passengers besides the express agent, the mail and
the driver.
In November, 1862, when one hundred horses belonging to
trappers and traders were stolen between Granger and Ft. Bridger,
Colonel Connor began placing soldiers on east bound coaches for
the protection of mail, express and passengers. On December 2.
1 862, he decided to garrison Granger Station and Ft. Bridger and
did so until the following July. At that time the soldiers had a
new duty assigned to them at the Granger station, that of admin-
istering the oath of allegiance to the United States Government to
all persons leaving for the east as there was trouble in the Mexican
Territory at that time.
As this is the Centennial year for the name "Granger", we who
are making this trek today wish to pay special tribute to all the
brave men and women who passed this way.
6:00 P.M. Soon the campers were at home on a high mesa
overlooking Granger. Fires were lighted and supper was cooked.
The less hardy folk went to Little America for the night.
246 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Sunday - July 15
7:00 - 8:00 A.M. Everyone met at the campsite for a real
western-style breakfast, an annual courtesy extended by Albert
Sims, one of the organizers of the treks. Three cheers were given
for the cooks, for Mr. Sims and for Colonel Bradley for his expert
flapjack maneuvers.
After the dishes were done and the camp cleaned, Paul Hender-
son read a paper.
HAM'S FORK AND VICINITY
By Helen Henderson
Yesterday we followed a portion of an early stage coach and
wagon road commonly referred to as the Overland Trail. One hun-
dred four years ago, in July, 1858, the Sixth Infantry officially
opened it from the headwaters of Muddy Creek to Fort Bridger,
with restrictions that heavily laden wagons could not use the frail
bridges over Muddy Creek and several other smaller streams. In
those days it was not considered safe for the emigrant to pass
through the common war grounds of the Utah, Crow and Arapahoe
Indians that extended between the Medicine Bow River and
Bridger's Pass.
As compared with the older wagon roads leading west from the
Missouri River the Overland was somewhat a youngster, and it
only had a short span of life, as it was soon terminated by the
building of the Union Pacific railroad in 1869. However, during
its existence it was a very important link in the transcontinental
wagon road system, as it opened a western outlet for the new
settlements in the Colorado country, or at least brought them
nearer to the transcontinental mail service.
A number of ancient trails converged in this general area. When
the Overland road came into being it junctioned with the older
wagon roads near where we stand at the old Ham's Fork Station
on the South Pass road. The route of the Overland trail was
seriously considered as a line for the first transcontinental railroad
as early as 1850. From 1856 to 1858 the railroad surveyors were
quite active from the South Platte River to Fort Bridger, and it was
from these surveys that the Overland was adopted as a practical
stage coach line until such a time as a railroad would be built.
However, it was the long gradual ascent up the Lodgepole Creek
valley to the highlands of the Cheyenne country and on up to the
summit of Sherman Hill that cheated the old Oregon Trail, with its
South Pass, and the Overland Trail, with its Bridger's Pass, out
of a railroad line along either of their courses through the Rocky
mountains.
In 1862 the Overland Stage route was changed. Instead of
following the old Oregon Trail along the North Platte and Sweet-
water rivers through the South Pass and down to Fort Bridger, it
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3 247
came up the South Platte river from old Julesburg to Latham.
From there it turned northwestward to the Virginia Dale station
and continued on around the northern end of the Medicine Bow
mountains to take a westerly course through Bridgets Pass and via
the Muddy and Bitter Creek valleys to cross the Green River near
the mouth of Bitter Creek. From the river crossing it again fol-
lowed northwesterly to Black's Fork and on up to a junction with
the Oregon Trail about seven and one half miles east from Ham's
Fork Crossing (Granger).
From records we find that the Overland Trail crossed Black's
Fork thirteen miles after leaving the Green River, evidently at the
Lone Tree Station site. It then went ten miles farther to cross it
again, then two and one half miles to the junction with the South
Pass road, and then 5 miles to the Ham's Fork crossing and gov-
ernment bridge. Five miles east of here it came into the South
Pass road and a total of seven and one half miles east of here it
crossed to the north side of the stream, after having come ten miles
from its first crossing at Lone Tree Station.
Some say that the stage coaches went around the bend of the
creek and did not make these two crossings. It is possible that the
coaches did not follow the original survey in this particular case.
8:00 A.M. In good spirits the party left the camp on High-
way 30 for Church Buttes (353M), a spectacular arrangement of
rocks appropriately named. Charles Ritter read a paper.
CHURCH BUTTES
By Hazel Noble Boyack
The covered wagon Vanguard of Mormon Pioneers had left the
site of Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in early April of 1847 for the
West. The objective of this band of men, women and children was
to seek out a favorable location for a new home. They wanted this
new home to be in some unclaimed area of the Rocky Mountain
region. Thousands of exiled Latter-day Saints waited on the banks
of the Missouri River for the results of this quest.
Brigham Young, leader of the party, was credited with having
the best organized Company on the entire Old Emigrant Trail. A
president and two counselors presided over the entire band. After
this a captain of one hundred, a captain of fifty and then captains
of ten were chosen, all responsible to the head leaders.
This Pioneer cavalcade consisted of one hundred forty-three
men, three women and two children. The men were a skilled
group of artisans. There were carpenters, masons, wheelrights,
blacksmiths, brick layers, farmers, printers, scientists, educators
and doctors. The seventy-three wagons were heavily laden with
tools, farming implements, seeds and food. This caravan of
wagons was slowly drawn over the prairies by fifty-two mules,
sixty-six oxen and ninety-three horses.
248 ANNALS OF WYOMING
As these home-seekers slowly chartered their way over the
uneven landscape of western Wyoming, they passed the present
site of Granger, Wyoming. Beyond this point they directed their
course a little south and west. After a few miles in a westerly
direction, and on the south side of the Trail, there stood a curious
formation known today as Church Buttes. This huge mound,
streaked by winds and rain, stood alone in a sandy, sage brush
plain and made a conspicuous landmark along the Mormon Trail.
The Pioneers reached these Buttes early in July, 1847, possibly
between the 4th and 7th of the month. As the Pioneers never
traveled on Sunday no doubt one of these days must have been the
Sabbath because legend has it that religious services were held at
the landmark.
As the laboring animals drawing the seventy-three heavily laden
wagons lumbered by on the hard earth by the Buttes, the sounds
of travel must have echoed and vibrated through the grotesque
caverns within the mound, breaking the dead silence of so many
centuries. But many, many thousands more of Pioneers would, in
subsequent years, re-enact this scene and follow the roadway char-
tered by this hardy band.
Today nothing but a marker remains to tell the story of this great
western migration that once brought life to this silent and secluded
spot and aided so much in the settlement of the early west. The
road that passes by the Buttes was once a main segment of High-
way 30. A traveler today, as he views the countryside, the shifting
sands and arid stretches is led to exclaim, "What faith those home-
less exiles must have possessed". They traveled on, trusting in
their God to lead and guide them to a place of more fertile and
verdant acres.
For many years an old church bell stood atop the Buttes, having
been placed there by the owner of the landmark. In 1930 the
Latter-day Saint Church in Salt Lake City placed a bronze plaque
on the north side of the Buttes, near the roadway. The inscription
reads :
CHURCH BUTTE
Erected July 24, 1930. In Honor of The Mormon Pioneers
Who Passed This Point in Early July, 1847, And in
Subsequent Years.
8:45 A.M. The caravan departed from the unique, natural
landmark where pictures of the group were taken.
9:00 A.M. We turned to the right to cross Black's Fork and
visit Register Rocks, (355M) which were high vertical cliffs of
sandstone. During the 1860's many of the early travelers painted
their names on the rocks with axle grease which has resisted the
elements quite well, rendering them legible and suitable for photo-
graphing. Other early names were carved in the sandstone.
OVERLAND STAGE TRAIL— TREK NO. 3
249
This site proved a very interesting spot for all, as Charles Guild
pointed out segments of the old trail and extraordinary landmarks,
such as toad stools and balanced rocks on pinacles of black clay.
9:45 A.M. A halt was made to read the Bee Hive Monument
(360M).
10:00 A.M. Thickets of brush prevented a close inspection of
Millersville Station. (361M). However, Mr. Guild pointed out
the old road and the lay of the land so that every one gained a good
knowledge of the location of that station.
10:55 A.M. The caravan arrived at Fort Bridger (374M)
where all enjoyed visiting the historic buildings and taking pictures.
After lunch under the trees two resolutions were passed — (a) a
desire to follow the Bozeman Trail in 1963 was stated, (b) a vote
of thanks was extended to the Wyoming State Historical Society,
Sweetwater and Uinta Chapters for sponsoring this interesting and
informative trek.
1962 TREKKERS
Cheyenne
Col. and Mrs. W. R. Bradley
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ritter
Mrs. Clark Bishop
Mr. and Mrs. Grant Willson
and children
Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Lowry
Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Mclnerney
Maurine Carley
Jane Hunt Houston
Rosalind Bealey
Mrs. J. H. Carlisle
Katherine Townsend
Rawlins
Mr. and Mrs. Ward Cook
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lambertsen
Mr. Harry Lambertsen
Wamsutter
Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Ence
Douglas
Mr. and Mrs. Lyle Hildebrand
and Fred
Bridgeport, Nebr.
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Henderson
Mr. and Mrs. John Waitman
and Paula
Casper
Mr. Ed Bill
Mr. Richard Eklund
Evanston
Charles Guild
Denver, Colorado
Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Townsend
and Mark
Rock Springs
Mr. and Mrs. John Dickson
Mary Dickson
Green River
Mr. and Mrs. George Graf
Mrs. Don Heuton and Rae
Mrs. Ernest Nott
Mr. Adrian Reynolds
Mr. Willian Hutton
Eunice Hutton
Mr. and Mrs. G. E. Wright
Pinedale
Mr. Butler Hilton and family
Randy Reed
ftook Keviews
The Cowboy And His Interpreters. By Douglas Branch. New
York, N. Y., Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1961. 277pp.
$4.95.)
This interesting book gives a broad survey of the cowboy and
his depiction by writer, novelist and script writer.
To the writer, the books by Andy Adams and Will James ring
true in describing the motives and methods of the cowboy on the
range. The non-fictional stories of John Clay, along with those of
other authors, make it a delightful experience to read the Christmas
issues of the Breeder's Gazette at the turn of the century.
A recent book on the equipment of the cowboy and its use, by
Ward, is among the vanguard of much-needed factual information
on "how and why the Cowboy ticked". Recent cartoonists such as
Williams and Reid have added much humor and fact, in showing
the daily reactions of cowboys and stockmen.
Lomax made a singular contribution in handing down to pos-
terity the songs of the rangeland, in which the cowboy played a
leading part. Other writers such as Clark, Kiskaddon, Carr and
Thorp have given us the aspirations of the cowboy expressed in
verse as well as song.
To get back to the interesting book by Branch, there are some
errors of fact or omission which should be pointed out. Although
the writer has included the reference by Nimmo in his bibliography,
his treatment of the start of the cattle industry on the northern
ranges (page 107) does not agree with this reference nor with the
known facts reported later in the story of the Newman Ranches
(See Montana, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1961, pp. 28-36.)
Another statement plays up the sheepmen vs. cattlemen wars in
western Wyoming (page 114) and the total lack of footnotes and
references makes it difficult for readers to check further into these
interesting items. The episode attributed as reported by John
Clay (page 123) is another one which needs a reference.
Mr. Branch reports in a masterful way, the appeal and motiva-
tion of the western stories which during the past fifty years have
constantly been a popular article for the newstand frequenter.
A book of this type with a standard plot can be fitted to many
historical backgrounds.
One interesting series of such stories are those by Elston, many
of which have authentic Wyoming backgrounds. "Gun Law in
Laramie" is quite accurate in its locale, although the usual roman-
ticism has been sprinkled in for reader interest.
The book "The Cowboy and his Interpreters" has much valuable
BOOK REVIEWS 251
material on the motivation of different writers in giving their par-
ticular picture of the American Cowboy. Its serious defect for a
student of history is its lack of documentation and references.
University of Wyoming R. H. "Bob" Burns
The Troopers- An Informal History of the Plains Cavalry 1865-
1 890. By S. E. Whitman, with Drawings by Nick Eggen-
hofer. (New York. Hastings House. 1962. illus. index.
256 pp. $4.95)
When asked to review this book, I looked forward to it with
great anticipation. From a military point of view, and with an
obviously biased opinion in favor of Wyoming, I can sincerely
state that 1 enjoyed it; there are so many references to customs
and traditions, old sayings and salty G.I. terms that are still around
today. The informal history is broad in scope and brings many
interesting facts to the reader's attention; uniform of the day, live-
stock and rolling stock, weapons, Brass Button homes. There are
several such statements as " — was seldom the sort of thing one
reads in novels or sees on TV or in the movies." I wholeheartedly
agree with the author's attempt to set the record straight, although
I disagree with some of his facts.
My family now resides in Quarters 6 in the old Fort D. A.
Russell portion of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. Our quar-
ters were built in 1885, and I have seen the original blue prints
showing this set of quarters listed as captain's quarters. It has two
living rooms, five bedrooms, two baths, dining room, kitchen,
pantry and basement, a total of 1 3 rooms and three fireplaces.
This is completely contrary to Brass Button homes described by the
author. It may have made a difference to be an eight-room
officer at Ft. Lyon, Colorado, as told on page 138, or it may have
occurred that lieutenants were given one room and fodder at some
posts of the old west.
T feel I must also point out another distorted historical reference.
In Chapter 2 the various regiments were discussed, and I quote
regarding the Second Cavalry, from page 30: "In '84 the Second
was sent to the Pacific coast and served there until '90 when it was
transferred to Arizona and New Mexico." The Second's service
at Ft. Russell is commemorated in a plaque across from present
Base Headquarters which reads, "In 1 867 Fort D. A. Russell was
established near the present west gate. Composed of units of the
30th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry and commanded by Brevet Briga-
dier General John D. Stevenson, Colonel, U.S.A., to defend work-
ers on the Union Pacific Railroad and the Overland Trail against
Indians."
252 ANNALS OF WYOMING
It came as somewhat of a disappointment to find only one refer-
ence to Fort D. A. Russell. "Then there was Fort D. A. Russell,
just outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, with the Union Pacific Railroad
running past the reservation. There the army wives found some
comfort in remarking, "At least there's one good thing about this
post — a train a day going East."
To omit Fort Bridger, being immortalized by the fine work of
the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department; to leave
out any mention of Fort Laramie and the renovation of "Old
Bedlam" and other buildings being accomplished by the National
Park Service, left the reader somewhat confused. Needless to add,
this book will not be popular in Wyoming.
S. E. Whitman, son of an army officer, who was born at Fort
Sheridan and grew up in the Cavalry posts of the west, speaks
with some authority. But he missed the "big show" when he
overlooked Wyoming. There is enough history around here to
write several volumes. With his talent, background and devoted
interest in the U.S. Cavalry, I sincerely hope he finds the time.
F. E. Warren Air Force Base Major John C. Hayes
Edward Kern and American Expansion. By Robert V. Hine.
(Yale University Press, 1962. illus. index. 180 pp. $6.00.)
Robert V. Hine, associate professor of history at the University
of California, has written about part of Edward Kern's life as it
was interwoven with America's expansion, which occurred in the
acquisition of new land, resources, and trading privileges. The
principal parts of the book are twofold: (1) America's expansion
on the Continent, and (2) trips to the Far East.
In part one, Professor Hine relates Edward Kern's role as artist,
topographer, and cartographer on John C. Fremont's Third Expe-
dition, on the eve of the war with Mexico, to the Sierra Nevada
Mountain Range by the rivers of the Arkansas, Rio Grande, and
Colorado; it ended in California where Edward Kern was placed
in charge of Fort Sutter. Edward Kern was also with Fremont's
Fourth Expedition which was made in the winter with the purpose
of finding a southern railroad route to the Pacific.
In part two, Edward Kern crossed the Pacific Ocean to the Far
East, principally Japan, and plotted navigable harbors and sea
lanes, in order to help make travel and trading safer.
Edward Kern's maps, sketches and drawings not only were
utilized by other travelers and adventurers but must have been
appreciated by the greater number of stay-at-home people as well.
He quite vividly depicted animal and human life (Indians and
Orientals) that provided a greater understanding of the trans-
Mississippi West and the Far East.
BOOK REVIEWS 253
The book is written in correct thesis form, and is aptly illus-
trated by Edward Kern's, as well as his brother Richard's sketches
and drawings. The principal weakness of the book is the lack of
maps which could display routes taken by Edward Kern. If a
comprehensive atlas were to be used in conjunction with reading,
this aid would more greatly help one understand the material
encompassed. The greatest strength of the book is the author's
ability, sometimes almost poetically, to put down in descriptive
words the vivid impressions that Edward Kern saw and felt and
oftentimes captured on canvas. The book is also deserving of
praise because Professor Hine uses a myriad of primary sources:
diaries, journals, correspondence, et cetera.
This reviewer got the pleasant sensation of feeling that he was
getting to know Edward Kern as a real person who had flesh and
blood and is not simply a name to be committed to memory. The
general reader might not be as interested in this book as would be
the student of American history, particularly in American expan-
sion, but it is a rewarding book to read.
The 162 pages of content do not consume more than one eve-
ning of reading but will provide much food for later thought.
Cheyenne George W. Paulson
Early Cheyenne Homes. (Laramie County Historical Society,
Cheyenne, 1962. illus., index, 79 pp. $1.00.)
Laramie County Historical Society has produced a fascinating
chapter of Wyoming history, through pictures of many of the first
homes in Cheyenne, the capitol city. The stories of these homes, in
brief, are gathered together in a volume of great historical impor-
tance, which the society offers for sale to the public.
The book covers the era from 1880 to 1890. In these years a
number of fabulously elaborate houses were built in the western
frontier town, by men representing some of the most prominent
families in the United States and Europe.
Strangers in Cheyenne were surprised to find there the mansions
which were homes of Cheyenne leaders. In the western territorial
city grew up a cultured society, their homes reflecting the best of
their time.
Of the 60 homes described in this delightful book, many are
gone, razed to make way for progress; some are now serving as
business locations; some have been moved to other locations, and
some are still home to Cheyenne families.
A remarkably fine job has been done in the commentaries ac-
companying the pictures of the early day homes; they bring back
the romance of the early days in Cheyenne, much of the adventure
and some of the tragedy as well as the personalities of the era.
254 ANNALS OF WYOMING
The notes speak of the first owners, and often of the builders
as well as the architects, and follow up the histories of these pic-
turesque houses by noting subsequent owners, bringing the history
of each home up to date.
Glimpses of rich furnishings of the period, notes on entertaining
on the grand scale, notable visitors who were guests in these homes,
including Theodore Roosevelt, are of interest. Three of the homes
had ball rooms, and they all had, as a matter of course, large barns
to house their fine horses and carriages. Some of the homes served
as Governors" Mansions, during the terms their owners held that
high state office.
Included in the history of this era is the exclusive Cheyenne Club
which gained world-wide fame.
Ferguson Avenue (now Carey) was known as "Millionaire
Row", as many of the large homes were built on this street. The
builders of many of the elegant mansions were the early day cattle
barons, and even though engaged in some mercantile venture, or
other line of endeavor, many of the early day residents were also
in the cattle business.
Misfortune struck many early day owners of these homes, during
the disastrous blizzard of 1886-87 and the collapse of the cattle
companies in 1889 following the great losses sustained during this
bad winter. The panic of 1893 saw the end of others.
A committee of the Laramie County Historical Society was in
charge of this significant publication. There are 41 contributors
listed in the book as assisting with the gathering of the facts cor-
related into this book, and the pictures which illustrate it.
Pioneer residents of the area will thrill as they peruse this book
so reminiscent of the early days they knew; newcomers will wel-
come this history and the information it contains concerning Wyo-
ming's capitol city.
Casper Frances Seely Webb
Great Western Rides. By Dabney Otis Collins. (Denver, Colo.,
Sage Books, 1961. illus., index, 277 pp. $4.75.)
The reader of Great Western Rides is not sure if the man or the
horse is the hero of each episode. Quite possibly, the author
intended that hero honors should be equally shared by the two.
Not only does Collins know horses, he obviously likes and respects
them as well. His account of these twelve emergency rides in the
history of the West points up the interdependence of men and
horses, and the fact that early day life in the West would hardly
have been possible without the horse.
The book is supplemented by an excellent section of photographs
BOOK REVIEWS 255
and descriptions of the horses used in the rides — thoroughbred,
mustang, quarter horse, Arabian and cayuse.
From California eastward across the plains, the rides recounted
were undertaken for vastly different reasons.
Dr. Marcus Whitman rode from Oregon Territory to Boston to
promote interest in settling the northwest, that it might be assured
as United States territory, and the ride of James Haslam was made
in a vain effort to prevent the Mountain Meadows Massacre in
Utah.
On the other hand, a long and devious ride by Butch Cassidy
and some of his companions of the outlaw Wild Bunch was made
to elude a posse.
Portugee Phillips1 ride from Fort Phil Kearny to Fort Laramie,
widely commemorated in Wyoming history, is included in the
book. In this account, as in all the stories, the author's thorough
research is apparent. According to bibliographical notes, Collins
covered on foot many of the routes followed by the riders. This is
reflected in the detailed descriptions of terrain, ranging from tim-
bered mountains to desert wastes.
The twenty excellent illustrations for this enjoyable book are by
Nicholas Eggenhofer, whose work is noted for its vigor and
authenticity. Both Collins and Eggenhofer are transplanted West-
erners. Collins, a native of Alabama, came west as a young man,
and for many years has lived in Denver. He has written more
than 300 stories and historical articles on the West. Eggenhofer
has recently moved to Cody from New Jersey.
Cheyenne Katherine Halverson
Souls and Saddlebags, The Diaries and Correspondence of Frank
L. Moore, Western Missionary (1888-1896), edited by Au-
stin L. Moore. (Bie Mountain Press, Denver. 207 pp.,
$4.50.)
Souls and Saddlebags, the diary and correspondence of Frank
L. Moore, is a true record of a God-inspired youth, and his efforts
to bring some semblance of religion to a raw frontier. His efforts
were somewhat nebulous. He does not spare himself, his converts,
or the settlers who accepted him as a traveler and gave him shelter
of sorts. He tried his utmost to bring a breath of devotion of a
Supreme Being into the actions and lives of a new country.
Moore arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1888 from Michigan,
and was immediately disillusioned by dirt, squalor and frequent
gunbattles. Few, if any, of the transient population were desirous
of living a better life. The abrupt change from a Midwestern
civilization to frontier life was almost beyond his sensibilities to
accept, at any price.
256 ANNALS OF WYOMING
He moved on to Rawlins to work for the Presbyterian Church,
under the direction of Rev. John W. Linne. His duties were to
start Sunday Schools and to bring a semblance of religion to a
rough and uncultured land. His letters to his financee, Carol
Leigh, are a treat. He was torn between his devotion to duty and
a strong desire to live, as best he could. His circuit-riding, either
by horseback, stage or freight-teams, through Carbon County, the
Little Snake River, the Yampa and many places in between, are a
delight in his letters and diary. He was not always happy with his
surroundings, but his conscience kept him dedicated to his work.
He later married Carol Leigh, and their experiences in bringing
the Gospel to the untouched in Lander, the Big Horns and North-
ern Wyoming are momumental in the many and diverse difficulties
they had to overcome.
Moore's father, Merritt Moore, a revivalist of the period, and a
complete failure in anything he attempted, tried to inspire his son
to greater heights. His diatribes to his son are not pleasant, and
the fact that Frank Moore sent money to his father taken from his
ministerial pittance, is a disturbing thing. The reverse should have
taken place.
The book is excellently composed. The footnotes carried along
with the manuscript are magnificent. Your reviewer knew many
of the characters, either at first-hand or by reputation. This de-
lightful narrative is most interesting to any who might be con-
cerned with early missionary history, particularly in the areas
mentioned.
Rawlins P. E. Daley
—and then there was one, The Story oj Cambria, Tubb Town and
Newcastle. By Mabel E. Brown and Elizabeth J. Thorpe.
(Privately published, Newcastle, Wyoming. 1962. 16 pp.
$1.00.)
Wyoming's history to a large extent remains unwritten. It is
heartening, therefore, to see a publication appear telling some of
the local story of a part of Wyoming. All too little has been writ-
ten on the history of northeastern Wyoming and Mrs. Mabel
Brown and Mrs. Elizabeth J. Thorpe have started out to remedy
this situation. For some time they have been assiduously collecting
the history of Weston county and environs, and this little pamphlet
is their first attempt to share their research and findings with others.
The authors write in an interesting and sympathetic style, and their
stories show the results of their extensive research.
This pamphlet. "And then There Was One", is the story of three
towns, Cambria, Tubb Town and Newcastle. Only Newcastle
remains at the present time. The general history of each is given
here, and it is hoped that the authors will enlarge upon these stories
BOOK REVIEWS 257
in future works, including many incidents of interest which oc-
curred in these communities.
Cambria was a town of which its former citizens speak with
nostalgic memories. It is the people who are important in a place,
but the people of Cambria had something special, something they
lost as a group when they were forced to move away because the
coal veins gave out. After all the years since its abandonment, its
former citizens still recall the strong bonds they formed there.
Tubb Town, "naughty little precursor of Newcastle" as the
authors entitle it, lived high for a short period. It left its print on
the scene only through the stories people tell of it. When the
railroad by-passed Tubb Town, it died as quickly as it was born,
and its populace quickly moved on to Newcastle.
Newcastle was so located that its future could be assured. It
was fostered by the railroad, fed by the industry of Cambria, and
absorbed the former citizens of Tubb Town. It has grown from a
small community in 1889 to a first class city in 1962.
Through the story of the towns also runs that of Frank Wheeler
Mondell who for many years served Wyoming as its United States
Congressman. His accomplishments need more recognition by his
Wyoming compatriots.
This little booklet is recommended to all who are interested in
Wyoming history, and we look forward to additional publications
by Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Thorpe.
Cheyenne Lola M. Homsher
Colter's Hell and Jackson's Hole. By Merrill J. Mattes. (Yellow-
stone Library and Museum Association and The Grand Teton
Natural History Association, 1962. 87 pp. $1.00.)
Colter's Hell and Jackson's Hole, the Fur Trappers' Exploration
of Yellowstone and Grand Teton Park Region, by Merrill J. Mattis,
published by the Yellowstone Library and Museum Association
and the Grand Teton Natural History Association, is an excellent
and authentic history of these regions. This condesnsed book is
read by both historians and the tourists who are interested in the
history of these areas. Our sales of the book show this to be true.
Most tourists think of Yellowstone National Park as Colter's
Hell; in this book they learn the actual location of Colter's Hel!
which was near Cody, Wyoming.
I find no new notes in the book, but it is well written, and the
interesting illustrations give a fine history of the fur trappers'
exploration in both the Yellowstone and Teton regions.
Jackson Hole Museum W. C. Lawrence
258 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Cow Chips 'ri Cactus. The Homestead in Wyoming. By Florence
Blake Smith. (New York: Pageant Press, 1962. 118 pp.
S2.50.)
Cow Chips V Cactus is more than just another book. It is a
pep pill, a shot in the arm, a good laugh, a brisk Wyoming breeze.
Any doctor or psychiatrist might well write: "Diagnosis: depres-
sion, grief, illness, loneliness, insomnia. Prescription: read Cow
Chips 'n Cactus — aloud to someone else if possible — and as fast
as possible, stopping only for laughs, and perhaps to reminisce
about your own experiences on Wyoming's young prairies. Repeat
monthly as necessary."
It is only after you finish the book that you realize that here is
grass roots reality on a frontier only a little less raw than it was 50
years before 1921, when the events in the book took place. The
incidents and the atmosphere could be background material for a
strong regional novel or a rollicking musical comedy. But the
sense of humor overrides the rest of the book's qualities
The first page or two, the writer's free-wheeling with the English
language, her lack of chapters — and sometimes even paragraphs —
may bother you, if you are a purist. You'll soon forget all that,
as in Suds In Your Eye, in the ebullience of the adventure, the
courage and tenacity of the young woman who came out to Wyo-
ming from Chicago at the age of twenty-one to prove up on a
homestead, miles from town or neighbors, with only a dog, a Vic-
trola and a typewriter for company. She stayed most of her life.
How she did it is for you to read and enjoy.
If you don't need a boost in the morale, buy a few copies to send
to friends in the hospital instead of flowers.
Cheyenne Grace Logan Schaedel
UNIVERSITY PRESS REPRINTS
The University of Nebraska Press and Yale University Press are
performing a valuable service in the field of Western Americana.
Many books on the West have been out-of-print, difficult and
expensive to obtain for a number of years. Nebraska and Yale are
making such items, many of which have become classics, available
again and at reasonable prices.
The following reprints in paperback editions are now off the
press and may be obtained through bookstores.
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Bison Books, Paperback Editions.
Reminiscences of a Ranchman. By Edgar Beecher Bronson, with
introduction by W. D. Aeschbacher, Director Nebraska State
BOOK REVIEWS 259
Historical Society. (Reprint from A. C. McClurg & Co.
edition.) 1962 370 pp. $1.50.
Blackfoot Lodge Tales, The Story of a Prairie People. By George
Bird Grinnell. Reprint prepared from Charles Scribner's
Sons edition. ) 1962 311pp. index $1.50.
Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows. By Frank B. Linderman.
(First published as American: The Life Story of a Great
Indian, Plenty-coups, Chief of the Crows, copyright 1930 by
Frank B. Linderman.) 1962 324 pp. index $1.50.
Old Jules. By Mari Sandoz. (Reprinted by arrangement with
Hastings House Publishers, Inc.) 1962 424 pp. illus.
$1.60."
The Hunting of the Buffalo. By E. Douglas Branch, with intro-
duction by J. Frank Dobie. (Reprinted by arrangement with
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.) 240 pp. illus. index $1.40.
The Wild Horse of the West. By Walker D. Wyman, illustrated
by Harold E. Bryant. (First published in 1945 by Caxton
Printers, Ltd. ) 348 pp. Bibliog. index $1.60.
Wooden Leg, A Warrior Who Fought Custer. Interpreted by
Thomas B. Marquis. (Originally published as A Warrior
Who Fought Custer. Copyright first by the Midwest Co.)
384 pp. Maps. $1.90.
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Yale Western Americana Paperbound
Trail to California, the Overland Journal of Vincent Geiger and
Wakeman Bryarly. Edited and with an Introduction and new
Preface by David M. Potter. (First published by Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1945.) 1962 266 pp. bibliog. index $1.75.
A Canyon Voyage. The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedi-
tion Down the Green-Colorado River from Wyoming and the
Explorations on Land, in the Years 1871 and 1872. By
Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, with a Foreword by William H.
Goetzmann. (First published in 1908 and 1926 by F. S.
Dellenbaugh.) 277 pp. index illus. $1.95.
By Cheyenne Campfires. By George Bird Grinnell, with a Fore-
word by Omer C. Stewart. (First published in 1926 by Yale
University Press.) 305 pp. $1.95.
260 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico: Diary of Susan Shelby
Magoffin. Edited by Stella M. Drumm, with an Introduction
by Howard Lamar. (Published in 1926 by Yale University
Press.) 294 pp. index $1.95.
An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology. By
Alfred Vincent Kidder, with an Introduction by Irving Rouse.
(First published in 1924 by Yale University Press.) 377 pp.
bibliog. illus. $1.95.
The Fur Trade in Canada. By Harold A. Innis, with a Foreword
by Robin W. Winks. (First published in 1930 by Yale Uni-
versity Press.) 446 pp. bibliog. index $1.95.
Contributors
Philip Gardiner Nordell, an alumnus of Dartmouth College,
has done considerable research in early American lotteries and is
writing a history of the subject. Several advance articles on some
of the lotteries have been or soon will be published. Since, as he
says, there can hardly be an end to research in this largely neglected
field, he hopes that anyone with knowledge of important unpub-
lished source material and of original tickets will communicate
with him at R. D. 1, Ambler, Pa.
Fritioff Fryxell has authored or edited numerous books on
geology, the National Parks and western history. Recently he
completed five posthumous works of the late Francois E. Matthes,
four of which have been published. A geologist, he took his B. A.
degree at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, his M. A. at the
University of Illinois and his Ph. D. at the University of Chicago.
Since 1923 he has been on the faculty of Augustana College, and
also does part time work with the U. S. Geological Survey. During
leaves of absence he has been acting naturalist of Grand Teton
National Park, geologist on the museum planning staff of the
National Park Service, has engaged in geological explorations in
the Philippine Islands for the commonwealth government, and dur-
ing World War II he was a member of the Military Geology Unit,
with which he served overseas in England, the Philippines and
Japan. He is married and has two sons, Roald H. and Thomas W.
The Venerable Howard Lee Wilson, Archdeacon of the
Diocese of Wyoming, who was born in Peoria, Illinois, has lived
in Wyoming for the past fifteen years. He was graduated from the
University of Wyoming in 1950, where he had majored in history
and was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa. For nine years
he has been a clergyman in the Episcopal Church in Wyoming, and
has served at Casper, Dubois and Crowheart. He assumed his
present post as assistant to the Bishop in Laramie in July, 1958.
As the recently appointed historiographer for the Church, he edits
the Church newspaper, The Wyoming Churchman.
John D. McDermott has been Supervisory Park Historian at
Fort Laramie National Historic Site for the past two years, where
his duties include the direction of all interpretive activities, long
range planning and technical assistance for the restoration and re-
furnishings programs. His article in this issue of the Annals, "Fort
Laramie's Iron Bridge", was prepared as part of a report which
forms the basis for the restoration of the bridge in the coming year.
262 ANNALS OF WYOMING
Mr. McDermott received his bachelor's degree from the University
of South Dakota in 1957 and his master's from the University of
Wisconsin in 1959. He and his wife live in Torrington at the
present time.
A. S. (Bud) Gillespie gained his knowledge of ranching activ-
ities through first hand experience. He was born in Albany Coun-
ty, and has lived in Wyoming all his life. He was a cowpuncher
and later a cattle rancher from 1901 until his retirement in 1948.
Since then he and his wife have lived in Laramie. Mr. Gillespie
competed in Cheyenne Frontier Days steer roping events in the
early 1900's and consistently won top money. His hobbies include
cowpunching, research and writing. He is co-author with R. H.
Burns and W. G. Richardson of Wyoming's Pioneer Ranches, pub-
lished in 1955.
Gordon S. Chappell served as Seasonal Ranger-Historian with
the National Park Service at Fort Laramie National Historic Site
during the summer of 1960 and the summer and fall of 1961. He
was graduated from the University of California in 1961. Mr.
Chappell's interests include frontier and military history and Indian
wars, and collecting frontier army uniforms and miscellaneous
railroadiana. In recent years he has photographed, in movies,
color slides and black and white, numerous operating steam
locomotives. A resident of Sacramento, he is currently on duty
with the U. S. Army, stationed at Fort Ord, California.
Elizabeth Keen is presently on the faculty of Tuskegee Insti-
tute, Tuskegee, Alabama, teaching English. For further informa-
tion see the Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 33, No. 2, October, 1961,
p. 240.
Hans Kleiber. See Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 33, No. 1, April
1961, p. 115.
General Judex
Abbott-Downing stages, 34:2:245
Abbott, Mrs., 34:1:89
Academy of Music, 34:2:198
Academy of National Sciences, 34:
2:185, 189
Adams, Ramon F., The Old-Time
Cowhand, review, 34:1:128-129
Adobe Town, 34:2:241
Ah Say, Mrs., 34:1:90
Albany County, 34:1:72
Albert Charles Peale, Pioneer of the
Hayden Survey, by Fritiof Fryx-
ell, 34:2:175-192: 175, 176, 177,
178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185,
187, 188, 190, 191; photos, 176,
181
Albright, J. J., 34:1:94
Alias Dan Davis - Alias Dan Mor-
gan, as told by Mrs. "Doc" Daisy
Spear to R. H. (Bob) Scherger,
34:1:60
Allen, E. T., 34:2:184
Allen & Co., 34:2:201
Almond Station, 34:2:238
Alsop ranch, 34:1:87
American Chemical Society, 34:2:
189
American Climatological Associa-
tion, 34:2:188, 189
American Fur Company, 34:2:147
American Gold & Silver Mining Co.,
34:2:198
America's History lands. Landmarks
of Liberty. Prepared by the Na-
tional Geographic Book Service,
Merle Severy, Chief, review, 34:
1:123-124
An Introduction to the Study of
Southwestern Archaeology, by Al-
fred Vincent Kidder with an In-
troduction by Irving Rouse, 34:
2:260
—and then there was one. The Story
of Cambria, Tubb Town and
Newcastle, by Mabel E. Brown
and Elizabeth J. Thorpe, review,
34:2:256-257
Andrews, Cora. See Mrs. Brees
Andrews, Hattie. See Mrs. Phillips
Antelope Springs, 34:1:46
Anthony [J. W.], Lieut. Col., 34:
2:277
Arapahoe Brown, 34:1:48
Arapahoe, squaw, 34: 1 : 109
Arnold, C. P., 34:1:92
Arnold, F. L., 34:1:91, 92
Arnold, Minnie. See Mrs. Eurgens
Arnold, Olga Moore, 34:1:131
Ash Hollow, 34:1:50
Ashley, William, 34:2:245
Atchison \ Kansas] Patriot, newspa-
per, 34: 1 :66
Atherton, Lewis, The Cattle Kinqs,
review, 34:1:121-122
Atlantic City, Wyo., 34:2:238
Averell, Jim, 34:1:116
Avery, Sally, 34:1:100
Backus Creek, 34:1:98; canyon, 99
Baird, Jay, 34:1:30
Baird, Spencer F., 34:2:178
Baker, Nathan A., 34:1:62, 63, 65,
70; 34:2:221, 223, 224, 225, 229
Baker's Springs, Colo., 34:1:65
Banditti of the Plains, The, 34: 1 :77,
79
Barber, Mrs., 34:2:226
Bar C, ranch, 34:1:99, 107
Barnum country, 34:1:97, 101, 102,
104, 107, 108, 111; cowboys, 99,
110
Barrett, — , 34:2:210
Barrow, Merris C, 34:1:62, 79, 80,
8 1 -82 83
BartlettV Albert, 34:2:172
Bass, Sam, 34:1:115
Batten, Rollin, 34:2:171
Bealey, Rosalind, 34:2:249
Bear Butte Valley, 34:1:15
Bear River City, 34:2:221, 224, 225
Beaver Creek, 34:1:12, 28, valley,
21
Bedlam, 34:2:148, 151
Bee Hive Monument, 34:2:249
Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 34:2:
198; Mrs., 198
Belcher, J. H., 34:2:140
Belknap, W. W., 34:2:138, 139, 140
Bellamy, Mrs. Mary, 34:2:201, 204
Berry, Henryetta, review of Wagons,
Mules and Men, 34: 1 : 121
Beulah, Wyo., 34:1:8, 11
Bible, George, 34:2:170, 171
Big Horn Mining Ass'n., 34:2:228
Big Horn mountains, 34:1:40; 34:2:
228
Big Piney country, 34:2:243
264
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Bill Barlow's Budget, newspaper,
34:1:62, 80, 81, 82
Bill. Ed, 34:2:249
Bishop Who Bid for Fort Laramie,
The. by Howard Lee Wilson, 34:
2:163-174
Bishop. Mrs. L. C, 34:2:237, 249
Bitter Creek railroad station, 34:2:
236; Creek, 237, 239, 240; coun-
try. 237; valley, 247
Black Buttes Station, 34:2:236, 237
Blackfoot Lodge Tales, The Story of
a Prairie People, by George Bird
Grinnell. 34:2:259
Black Hills. 34:1:7, 9, 58
Black Hills Stage. Mail and Express,
34:2:142
Black Thunder Creek, 34: 1 : 13
Black Vacks. 34:1:53
Black's Fork, 34:2:247, 248
Blackwell's saloon, 34:1:23
Bladget and Co.. 34:1:57
Blake. John W.. 34:2:209, 210
Blodgett, Mrs. Mary Sherwood, 34:
2:173
Blue Creek, 34:1:101, 110
Blue Creek ranch, 34:1:97, 100,
103, 104, 109
Blue Rock. 34:1:57
Bonney. Orrin and Lorraine G.,
Bonney's Guide, review, 34:1:123
Bonney's Guide, by Orrin H. and
Lorraine G. Bonney, review, 34:
1:123
Boomerang, newspaper, 34:1, 66,
68, 69
Boston Globe, newspaper, 34:1:76
Bothwell, A. L. 34:1:116
bourke, Lieut. John, 34:2:142
Bowen. Hunter. 34:1:24
Bowie Cross Timber, newspaper,
34:1:79
Box Butte County, Nebr., 34:1:104
Bozeman Trail, 34:1:51; 34:2:249;
War, 61
Boyack, Hazel Noble, 34:2:247
Bradley, Ruth J., review of Recol-
lections of A Piney Creek Ranch-
er, 34:1:118
Bradley. Col. Wm. R., 34:2:235,
246; Mrs., 249
Bramel, Judge Charles W., 34:1:
62. 67. 71. 72
Bramwell, Mrs. Lucinda, 34:2:242
Branch, E. Douglas, The Hunting of
the Buffalo, 34:2:259
Brees, Mrs., 34:1:89
Brent. Lieut., 34:2:160
Brewer, Nellie, 34:1:11
Bridger, James, 34:2:179
Bridger's Pass, 34:2:246, 247
Brimmer, George, 34:2:170, 171
Brock, Alfred, ranch, 34:1:100
Brock, Billy, 34:1:101
Brock, Elmer J., 34:1:101
Bronson, Edgar Beecher, Reminis-
cences of a Ranchman, 34:2:258-
259
Brooks, —,34:1:92
Brown, Capt. Frederick, 34:1:51
Brown, Judge, 34:1:86, 93
Brown, Lieut., 34:2:155
Brown, Mable E., May Nelson Dow,
A First Lady of Newcastle, 34:1:
5-30; 132
Brown, Nancy Fillmore, Girlhood
Recollections Of Laramie in 1870
and 1871, 34:1:85-91
Brown Springs, 34:1:45
Browning, Mrs. J. Hall, 34:2:163,
165, 168
Brown's Park areas, 34:2:243
Bryan, Lieut., 34:2:240, 244
Bryan, Wyo., 34:2:241, 244
Buck Shoals Hill, 34:1:76
Buehler, Rev. Dr. H. G., 34:2:166
Buffalo Bulletin, newspaper, 34:1:
79
Buffalo Gap, D. T., 34:1:17
Buffalo Creek, 34:1:102, 106
Buffalo, Wyo., 34:1:40, 43, 45, 47,
108
Bullion Gold and Silver Mining Co.,
34:2:204
Burlington and Missouri R. R., 34:
1:24
Burlington railroad, 34:1:104
Burns, R. H. "Bob", review of The
Cowboy And His Interpreters, 34:
2:250-251
Burnt Ranch, 34:1:54
Burritt, Charles H., 34:1:43, 47
Butterworth, Dr., 34:2:167
By Cheyenne Campfires, by George
Bird Grinnell with foreword by
Omer C. Stewart, 34:2:259
Calamity Jane, 34:1:22, 23
California Trail, 34:2:245
Cambria, W. T., 34:1:11; Wyo., 31;
Canyon, 21, 24, 28, 31
Campbell, Gov., 34:1:87, 93; Mrs.,
88
Camp Brown, 1878, 34:1:51
Camp McGraw, 34:1:50
Camp Mitchell, 34:2:154, 157
INDEX
265
Camp Weld. 34:2:215
Cantonment Reno, 34:1:46
Canyon Voyage, by Frederick S.
Dellenbaugh, with foreword by
William H. Goetzmann, 34:2:259
Capital Hills. See Scotts Bluffs.
Carbon County, 34:1:81
Carbon, Wyo.. 34:2:233
Carey, J. M., 34:2:143, 144
Carley, Maurine. 34:2:235, 239,249
Carlisle. Mrs. J. H., 34:2:249
Carmichael's, 34:2:224
Carr, E. N., 34:2:207
Carter County, 34:2:241
Carter Troupe, 34:2:226
Carter, Wyo.. 34:2:224
Casement. — . 34:2:222, 223
Casper, Wyo.. 34:1:58, 62, 108
Cassidy, — . lawyer. 97, 105, 109
Castle Rock. 34:2:241
Cattle Kate. 34:1:116
Cattle Kings, The, by Lewis Ather-
ton, review, 34:1:121-122
Cattlemen's Ass'n., 34:1:97
Central High School, 34:2:176
Central Overland California and
Pike's Peak Express. See Over-
land Trail
Central Pacific, 34:2:225
Champion. Nate, 34:1:107
Chaplin. Wm. E„ 34:1:62, 71, 72,
73, 75. 80, 81, 82
Chappell, Gordon S., The Fortifica-
tions of Old Fort Laramie, 34:2:
145-162; 262
Cherokee Strip, 34:1:101
Cherry Creek, Colo., 34:1:63
Cheyenne Daily Leader, newspaper,
34:1:63, 64". 65, 70; 34:2:141,
222, 223, 225 226 228 229 230
233'
Cheyenne Daily Gazette, newspaper,
34:1:72
Cheyenne Dailv News, newspaper.
34:1:70
Cheyenne Daily Sun, newspaper,
34:1:75; 34:2:231
Cheyenne Dailv Tribune, newspa-
per, 34:2:221
Cheyenne Democratic Leader, news-
paper, 34: 1 :79
Cheyenne, postmaster, 34:1:77
Chevenne State Lottery, 34:2:193,
205
Cheyenne Sun-Leader, newspaper,
34:1:70
Cheyenne, Wyo., 34:1:43, 58, 63,
64, 71, 79; 34:2:223, 224, 228,
229; first school building, 230,
231
Chicago & Northwestern Railroad,
34:1:43
Chicago Times, newspaper, 34:1:74
Chimney Rock, 34:1:50, 57
Chipp, Rev. Frank, 34:2:169
Chivington, John Milton, 34:2:154
Christian Weekly, newspaper, 34:2:
177
Church Buttes, 34:2:247, 248
Clagett, William H., 34:2:180
Clark, Edith K. O., 34:2:167
Clark, Harry, 34:1:24
Clark, John, 34:2:165
Clarke, Henry T., 34:2:140
Cogshell, C. E.. 34:2:216
Collins Brothers Saddlery, 34:2:215
Collins, J. S. and Sons, 34:2:215
Colorado Leader, newspaper, 34:2:
221
Colter's Hell and Jackson's Hole, by
Merrill J. Mattes, review, 34:2:
257
Comstock, Anthony, 34:2:204, 206,
210
Comstock Lode, 34:2:193
Connor, Col., 34:2:245
Cook, Rev. Joseph C, 34:2:231
Cook, Mr. and Mrs. Ward, 34:2:249
Cornish and Watson Saddlery, 34:
2:216
Cosmos Club. 34:2:189
Cones, Elliott, 34:2:181, 185, 189
Coulter, John M., 34:2:181
Coir Chips 'n' Cactus, by Florence
Blake Smith, review, 34:2:258
Cowboy And His Interpreters, The,
by Douglas Branch, review, 34:2:
250-251
Crane, Harry E., 34:2:165, 166, 167
Clayton, Eli, 34:1:53
"Club-foot Bill", 34:1:23, 24
Coates, Fred, 34: 1 : 15
Coe, William Robertson, 34:2:172
Collier, Drucinda, 34:1:5
Collier, Nancy Melinda, 34:1:5, 6,
9, 18
Collins, Col. William Oliver, 34:2:
154, 155
Colorado Leader, newspaper, 34:1:
63
Colorado Tribune, newspaper, 34:
1:65
Company B, 29th Iowa Infantry,
34:1:5
Condit, L. R. A., 34:1:111
Condit, Thelma Gatchell, Hole-in-
the-Wall, Part VIII, Section 4,
34:1:95-111; 132
Continental, steamer. 34:1:78
Cornell, Rev. Joseph, 34:1:86, 92
266
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Council Bluffs [Iowa] Nonpareil,
newspaper, 34:1:65
Cowboy Saloon. See Dannie
Mitchell
Coyle, M. J., 34:1:15
Crancall, — , 34:1:92
Crane, — , 34:2:167
Crazy Woman crossing, 34:1:46
Creighton, Edward, 34:1:87
Crook County, 34:1:13
Crounse, — , 34:2:140
Cummings, Sgt. J. C, 34:2:155
Cunningham, Daniel, 34:2:219
Curran, Rev. F. R., 34:1:13, 17, 20,
21
Curran's saloon, 34:1:25
Cusson, Father, 34:1:93
Custer-Belle Fourche trail, 34:1:17
Custer County, Nebr., 34:1:52
Custer, So. Dak., 34:1:12, 13, 17
Custer, Wyo., 34:1:21
Daily Leader, newspaper, 34:2:204
Daily Sentinel, newspaper, 34:1:65,
74
Dale City, 34:2:219, 223
Daley, P. E., review of Souls and
Saddlebags, 34:2:255-256
Daley, Will, 34:2:170, 171
Dandy, Capt. George, 34:2:158,
159, 160, 161
David, James C, 34:1:52, 55, 58,
59
David, Oliver P., 34:1:52
Davis, — , 34:1:17
Day, Arthur L., 34:2:184
Deadwood Gulch, 34: 1 :8
Deadwood, So. Dak., 34:1:8, 9, 10
Deane, William (Billy), 34:1:97
Dellenbaugh, Frederick S., Canyon
Voyage, 34:2:259
Delphos, Kans., 34:1:9
Deming, William Chapin, 34:1:70
Democratic Times, newspaper, 34:
1:80
Dept. of the Platte, Omaha, 34:2:
139, 144
DeSmet, Father, 34:1:35, 36
Devil's Gate, 34:1:50
Diamond Cattle Company, 34:2:
215
Dickson, John, 34:2:235, 238, 240;
Mr. and Mrs., 249; Mary, 249
Dillon, Sidney, 34:1:94
Division of the Missouri, 34:2:139
Dixon, — , photo, 34:2:181
Dodge, Maj. Gen. Grenville M.,
34:1:58, 70
Doescher, Bill, 34:2:215
Donelson, Bvt. 2nd Lieut., 34:2:
148, 151
Donielson, Charles, 34:1:9; Mrs.
Nancy, 9; Neva, 9, 11, 12
Donnellan, Mrs., 34:1:89
Dougherty, L. B., 34:2:152
Douglas, Stephen Arnold, 34:1:45
Douglas, Wyo., 34:1:45, 81, 82
Dow, Charles, 34:1:27, 28, 30;
photo, 29
Dow, Fannie Walters, 34:1:27
Dow, George W., 34:1:27
Dow, May Nelson, 34:1:5, 9, 11,
12, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,
25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31; photo, 29
Dow Motor Co. 34:1:30
Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into
Mexico: Diary of Susan Shelby
Magoffin. Edited by Stella M.
Drumm, with introduction by
Howard Lamer, 34:2:260
Downey, Col., 34:1:93; Mrs. Steph-
en, 89
Dry V Creek, 34:1:109
Dragoons and Mounted Rifles, 34:
2:146
Drumm, Stella M., Down the Santa
Fe Trail and Into Mexico: Diaiy
of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 34:
2:260
Drury, Dr., 34:2:170
Dubois, William, 34:2:165
Dug-Out on Oil Creek, plan of,
sketch, 34:1:14
Duniway, — , Pres., Univ. of Wyo.,
34:2:166
Dunning, George, 34:1:76, 77, 79
Durett, Corett, 34:1:25
Durett, George M., 34:1:25
Eagle Canyon, 34:1:102; Creek, 102
"Eagle Eye", 34:1:109
Eagle Oil Co., 34:1:15
Eagle Point, 34:1:53
Eagle River, 34:2:182
Early Cheyenne Homes, by Laramie
County Historical Society, review,
34:2:253-254
Echo Canon, 34:1:90
E. C. Lee Company, 34:2:217
Edward Kern and American Expan-
sion, by Robert V. Hine, review,
34:2:252-253
INDEX
267
Edelbrock. Joe and Sons, 34:2:217
Eggenhofer, Nick, Wagons, Mules
and Men, review, 34:1:121
1852 On The Oregon Trail, by Mae
Urbanek, 34:1:52
Eighteenth Infantry, 34:2:157
Eklund, Richard, 34:2:249
Eleventh Ohio Volunteer, Com-
panies "C" and "I", 34:2:155
Elk Mountain, 34:1:13
Elliott. Henry W., 34:2:179
Ellsworth. Lieut., 34:2:154
Elston. Allan Vaughn, Treasure
Coach from Deadwood, review,
34:1:125
Emmons, Samuel F., 34:2:185
Emory & Co.. 34:2:206
Ence, Mr. and Mrs. W. E., 34:2:
249
Endlich, F. M., 34:2:182, 183
Episcopal Church, 34:1:30; 34:2:
231, Laramie's first, 231
Eurgens, Mrs.. 34: 1 : 89
Evans. Bob, ranch, 34:1:10
Evans, Capt., 34:2:245
Evanston. Wyo., 34:1:90
Family Band, 7 he, by Laura Bower
Van Nuys, review, 34:1:119-120
Fawcett, Billy, 34:1:15
Ferris Mountains, 34:2:204
Fiddler Bill's funeral, 34:1:91
Field City. 34:1:17, 20
Field City Journal or Stockade Jour-
nal, newspaper, 34:1:20
Fields, S. I., 34:2:241
Fifteenth Infantry, 34:1:51
Fillmore, Millard, 34:1:52, 85
Fillmore. Supt., 34:2:232
Firnekas. Church, 34:1:99, 100
First Christian Church, 34:1:9
First State Bank of Newcastle,
Wyo.. 34:1:30
Fitzpatrick. Lilian, Nebraska Place
Names, review, 34:1:126-128
Flynn Saddlery, 34:2:216
Forbes, Davy, 34:1:24
Fort Augur. 34:1:51
Fort Bridger, 34:2:224, 236, 242,
245, 246. 249
Fort Fetterman, 34:1:45, 81
Fort Hall, 34:1:50; 34:2:146, 148,
149, 152, 153
Fort Kearney, 34:1:50
Fort Kearny, 34:2:146
Fort Laramie, 34:1:50, 52, 57, 58;
34:2:137, 138, 139, 140, 141,
142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149,
151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161,
162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170,
172, 228; site, 173; photo, 164
Fort Laramie and Livestock Com-
pany, 34:2:169
Fort Laramie National Historic Site,
34:2:144, 145
Fort Laramie's Iron Bridge, by John
Dishon McDermott, ' 34:2:137-
144
Fort Leavenworth, Kans., 34:1:50,
58
Fort Logan, Colo., 34:2:143
Fort McHenry, 34:1:145
Fort McKinney, 34:1:45
Fort Myers, Fla., 34:2:172
Fort Rankin, 34:2:154
Fort Robinson. Nebr., 34:2:142,
143
Fort Russell, 34:2:143, 223
Fort Stambaugh, 34:2:241
Fort Steele, 34:1:85, 86
Fort Thompson, 34:1:50
Fort Washakie, 34:1:51
Fortifications of Old Fort Laramie,
The, by Gordon S. Chappell, 34:
2:145-162
4J outfit, 34:1:100
Foxton, George, 34:2:165
France, Richard, 34:2:210
Frank, Mrs. Dr., 34:2:218
Frauds Exposed, 34:2:206
Freeman Bros., 34:2:220, 221, 223
Fremont County, 34:1:51, 72
Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri
Valley railroad, 34:1:43
Fremont street, 34:1:94
Frontier Day celebrations, 34:1:71
Frontier Index, newspaper, 34:2:
220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 242
Frontier Lawyer, T. P. Hill, by Bur-
ton S. Hill, 34:1:43
Fryxell, Fritiof, Albert Charles
Peale, Pioneer of the Hayden
Survey, 34:2:175-192; 261
Fryxell, Roald, 34:2:191
Fur Trade in Canada, The, by Har-
old A. Innis, 34:2:260
Galbraith, Ella. See Mrs. Charles
Stone
Gale, Charles T., 34:1:43
Gallatin, E. L., 34:2:215; Saddlery,
216
268
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Gallup and Frazier, 34:2:216
Gammage, Dr. Frederick L., 34:2:
166
Gann, Dr. Robert H., 34:2:145
Gannett, Henry, 34:2:181, 183, 188
Garcia, G. G., 34:2:214
Gardner, Bobbie, 34:2:215
Gardner, James T., 34:2:181
Gardner, Tom, 34:1:100
Garrett, George, 34:1:80
Gates, — , 34:1:63. 65
Geggie, J. B., 34:2:197
Gilbert, Grove K., 34:2:185
Gilbertson, Ross, 34:1:107
Gillespie, A. S. '"Bud", Saddles, 34:
2:213-217; 262
Gillette, Wyo., 34:1:24
Girlhood Recollections Of Laramie
in 1870 and 1871, by Nancy Fill-
more Brown, 34:1:85-91
Glendo, Wyo., 34:2:172
Goshen County, 34:2:144
Grand Central Hotel, 34:2:140
Grand River, 34:2:182
Graf, Mrs. George, 34:2:244; Mr.
and Mrs., 249
Granger, (Granger's), 34:2:224,
244, 245
Granger, Wyo., 34:2:244, 245, 248
Grattan, Bvt. 2nd Lieut. John Law-
rence, 34:2: 152
Grays Range, 34:2:190
Great Western Rides, by Dabney
Otis Collins, review, 34:2:254-
255
Great White Father, 34:1:25
Green River, 34:2:240, 241, 247
Green River City, Wyo., 34:2:224,
241, 243
Green River ferry, ford and stage
station, 34:2:241
Green River Marker, dedication,
34:2:240
Green River Station, 34:2:241; site,
240, 241
Gregory partners, 34:2:210
Greub, Johnnie, 34:1:45, 46
Grinnell, George Bird, Blackfoot
Lodge Tales, 34:2:259
Grinnell, George Bird, By Cheyenne
Campfires, 34:2:259
Grow, Mrs., 34:1:89
Guild, Charles, 34:2:235, 249
Gunster, Mrs. John, 34:1:89
Gupton, "Boz", 34:1:11
Hague, Arnold, 34:2:185
Haley, Ora, 34:1:93
Halverson, Katherine, review of
Great Western Rides, 34:2:254-
255
Hamley and Company, 34:2:214,
216
Hammond, Col. and Mrs., 34:1:90
Ham's Fork Station, 34:2:243, 244,
245, 246, 247
Hans Christiansen Ranch, 34:2:172
Hansen, Fod, 34:1:17
Harden, Victory, 34:2:216
Harness, Mrs. Hazel, 34:1:52
Harney, Gen., 34:2:153
Harper, Alice. See Mrs. Robert
Marsh
Harper, Nellie. See Mrs. John
Gunster
Harrell, Lemon David, 34:1:109
Harrell, Rap, 34:1:109, 110; photo,
96
Harriman, E. H., 34:2:173
Harrington, — , 34:1:93
Hart, Laura Nelson (Dot), 34:1:7,
9, 10, 15, 18, 20; 131
Hart, Sheila, Petroglyphs, 34:1:58
Hat Creek, post office, 34:1:100
Hatton, Gen., 34:1:69
Hay, John, 34:2:172
Hayes, Maj. John C, review of The
Troopers, 34:2:251-252
Hayden, Elizabeth Wied, review of
Bonnev's Guide, 34:1:123
Hayden, "Dr. F. W., 34:2:175, 178,
179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 187, 190;
Mrs., 189
Hayden Survey, 34:2:180, 181, 183,
184, 185, 190, 191
Hayden 's Annual Report, 1871, 34:
2:180
Hayford, James H., 34:1:62, 65, 66,
67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75; 34:2:219,
220, 232, 233
Heiser, H. H., 34:2:216
Hell's Canyon, 34:1:17
Henderson, Helen, 34:2:246
Henderson, Paul, 34:2:235, 246;
Mr. and Mrs., 249
Herald, newspaper, 34:2:197
Heuton, Fran, 34:2:235
Hewes, Tom, family, 34:1:11
Hildebrand, Elizabeth, 34:2:235;
Fred, 235, 249; Lyle, 235; Mr.
and Mrs., 249
Hildreth, G. H., 34:2:208
Hill, Billy, ranch, 34:1:100
Hill, Burton S., Frontier Lawyer,
T. P. Hill, 34:1:43; 131
Hill, Lucy B., photo, 34:1:44
INDEX
169
Hill, T. P., 34:1:43, 44, 47; photo,
44
Hilton, Nellie. See Mrs. Locke
Hinsdale, Guy, M. D., 34:2:188
Head, Bob, 34:1:80
Hogerson, Charles J., 34:1:49
Hole-in-the-Wull, by Thelma Gatch-
ell Condit, Part VIII, Section 4,
34:1:95-111; 109, 111
Hole-in-the-Wall gang, 34:1:97
Holladay, Ben, 34:1:78; 34:2:236,
241, 245
Holliday, W. H. Company, 34:2:
215
Holliday's Opera House, 34:2:233
Holmes, William Henry, 34:2:176,
181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 191
Hoist, Sirene, 34:1:11
Home Ranch, 34:1:31
Homsher, Lola M., review of Amer-
ica's Historylands, Landmarks of
Liberty, 34:1:123-124; review of
Treasure Coach from Deadwood,
34:1:125
Hope, Thomas, 34:2:211
Horn, Hosea, 34:1:55
Hough, William, 34:1:25
Houston, Jane Hunt, 34:2:249
Howell, Dr. J. V., 34:2:190, 191
Howie, Tom, 34:1:28
Hubbard, A. W., 34:2:140
Hubbard, Elbert, 34:1:82
Hueton, Mrs. Don and Rae, 34:2:
249
Hunting of the Buffalo, The, by E.
Douglas Branch, 34:2:259
Hunton, John, 34:2:166, 171; ranch,
163
Hurd, Vernon K., review of The
Old-Time Cowhand, 34:1:1 28-
129
Hurd, Dr. and Mrs., 34:1:90
Hurst, Mrs., 34:1:89
Hurt, K. O., 34:1:24
Husband, Bruce, 34:2:147
Hutton, Charlie, ranch, 34:1:87, 88
Hutton, Eunice, 34:2:249
Hutton, William, 34:2:240, 249
Hyattville, Wyo., 34:1:79
Independence Rock, 34:1:50
INDIANS:
Chiefs and Individuals:
Red Cloud, 34:2:138
Spotted Tail, 34:2:138
Washakie, 34:1:50; 34:2:238
Tribes:
Arapahoe, 34:2:246
Cheyenne, 34: 1 :36
Crow, 34:1:16; 34:2:246
Ogallala, 34:1:109
Omaha, 34:1:54, 55
Pawnee, 34: 1:55
Pottawatomi, 34:1 : 109
Shoshone, 34:1:50
Sioux, 34:1:16, 36, 55, 57, 109
Inman, Col., 34:2:169
Innis, Harold A., The Fur Trade in
Canada, 23:2:260
Inter-Ocean Hotel, 34:1:66, 71
Ivinson, Mr. and Mrs., 34:1:93
Ivinson, Maggie. See Mrs. Grow
Jackson, William Henry, 34:2:179,
191, 242, 244; photo, 181
James, Governor, 34:2:197
Jeffreys, William, 34:2:145
Jenkins, John J., 34:1:74
Jenney Stockade, 34:1:17
Johnson, Alvin, Pioneer's Progress,
34:1:124-125
Johnson County, 34:1:43, 95, 100;
court house, 34:1:47
Johnson County Invasion, 34:1:107,
110
Johnson County range wars, 34:1:
76
Johnson County War, 34:1:49
Johnson, Sally, 34:2:145
Joyce. Bishop, 34:1:92
Judd, Orange, 34:2:205, 207
Julesburg, Colo., 34:2:154, 229, 247
Kaycee, Wyo., 34:1:95
KB&C Commissary, Newcastle, 34:
1:24
Keen, Elizabeth, Wyoming's Fron-
tier Newspapers, 34:1:61-84; 131;
34:2:218-233
Keith Creek, 34:1:98
Kemmis, Billy, 34:1:80
Ketchum, Capt., 34:1:58
KFBU, radio station, 34:2:173
Kidder, Alfred Vincent, An Intro-
duction to the Study of South-
western Archaeology, 34:2:260
Killpecker tributary, 34:2:240
Kilpatrick Brothers and Collins,
34:1:15; Mrs., 27; sawmill, 24
270
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Kimball, E. H., 34:2:221
Kimball. Thomas L., 34:2:142, 143
King Bridge and Manufacturing Co.,
34:2:139. 140
King. Clarence, 34:2:183, 185
King. James. 34:2:140; Zenas, 40
Kingsford. More, 34:1:80
Kirk, Edwin. 34:2:188, 189, 191
Kittrell, William H., 34:1:77, 79
Kleiber. Hans, To The Little Big
Horn, poem, 34:2:211; 262
Knox and Tanner, 34:2:215
LaClede, 34:2:239
LAK, ranch, 34:1:12, 15
Lake DeSmet, 34:1:32, 33, 34, 35,
36. 40. 41. 42
Lambertsen, Harry. 34:2:249
Lambertsen, Mr. and Mrs. Walter,
34:2:249; Mrs., 238
Lambeth Conference, 34:2:172
Lamer. Howard, introduction to
Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into
Mexico, 34:2:260
Lander. Col. F. W., 34:1:50, 51
Lander Cutoff, by J. K. Moore, Jr.,
34:1:50. 51
Lander. Wyo.. 34:1:50, 51
Langford. Nathaniel P., 34:2:180
Laramie City, 34:2:193, 198, 220,
223
Laramie Daily, newspaper, 34:1:65
Laramie Dailv Boomerang, newspa-
per. 34:1:73. 75, 80, 81
Laramie Dailv Chronicle, newspa-
per. 34:1:71
Laramie Daily Independent, news-
paper. 34: 1 :70
Laramie Dailv Sentinel, newspaper,
34:1:67, 68, 69, 73; 34:2:219
Laramie Dailv Sun, newspaper, 34:
1:71
Laramie Dailv Times, newspaper,
34:1:71. 75', 80
Laramie National Bank, 34:2:233
Laramie News, The, newspaper, 34:
2:199
Laramie Peak, 34:2:151
Laramie Plains, 34:1:87, 88
Laramie Range in Wyoming (Black
Hills), 34:1:57
Laramie River, 34:1:57; 34:2:147,
148, 156, 158, 162
Laramie Weekly Sentinel, newspa-
per. 34:2:204. See Sentinel
Laramie. Wyo., 34:1:43, 64, 72, 75,
80. 89. 90, 91. 92, 93; 34:2:233
Laramie's Peak, 34:1:57
Larpy, I. A., 34:1:55
LaSal Mountains, 34:2:190
Latham, 34:2:247
Latham, Dr., 34:1:88
"Latigo", 34:1:101, 104
Latter-day Saint Church, 34:2:248
Lawrence, W. C, review of Colter's
Hell and Jackson's Hole, 34:2:
257
Leavenworth, Col., 34:2:215
Legend of Lake DeSmet, The, by
Mary Olga Moore, 34:1:32-42
Lincoln Highway, 34:2:237, 243
Linderman, Frank R., Plentv-Coups,
Chief of the Crows, 34:2:259
Little, Horatio, 34:1:60
Little Oil Creek (Coal Creek or
Cambria Creek), 34:1:28; map,
19
Little Snake River Valley, 34:2:165
Lobban, James M., 34:1:43
Locke, Mrs.. 34:1:89
Lodgepole Creek, 34:2:246
Lohleim and Swigart, 34:2:215
Lohman & Co., 34:2:198
Lone Tree Station, 34:2:244; site,
247
Long, Maj., 34:2:177
Lookout Mountain, 34:1:11
Lowe, B. F., 34:1:51
Lower Fire Hole Basin, 34:2:181
Lowman, H. L., 34:2:198
Lowrv, Mr. and Mrs., 34:2:249
Lusk, Wyo., 34:1:100, 102, 104
Lutton, Rev. Arnold, 34:1:30
McCabe, Chaplain, 34:1:92
McDermott, John Dishon, Fort Lar-
amie's Iron Bridge, 34:2:137-144;
145, 261
McGraw, William F„ 34:1:50
McGraw, William M., 34:1:50
Mclnerney, Mr. and Mrs. W. H.,
34:2:249
Mclntyre, Bishop Robert, 34:1:91
Mackey, Maj. Thomas L., 34:2:154,
155, 160, 161
Maham, Richard, review of Nebras-
ka Place Names, 34:1:126-128
Mahan, Mrs. Elizabeth, 34:2:191
INDEX
271
Manchester, John K., 34:2:140
Mansfield. G. R., 34:2:183, 190
Marble, A. H., 34:2:172
Marsh, Mrs. Robert, 34:1:89
Marvine. Archibald, 34:2:181, 182
Mattes, Merrill, 34:2:145
Matthews, — , 34:2:243
May Nelson Dow, A First Lady of
Newcastle, by Elizabeth J. Thorpe.
Mable E. Brown, 34:1:5-30
Mead, Mr. and Mrs., 34:1:90
Meanea, Frank A., 34:2:215
Meanea, T. R.. 34:2:215
Medicine Bow mountains, 34:2:247
Medicine Bow River, 34:2:246
Medicine Bow, Wyo., 34:2:169, 224
Meigs. Chief Quarter Master, 34:1:
78; 34:2:143
Meldrum, Mrs. J. W., 34:2:219
Mercer, Asa Shinn, 34:1:76, 77, 78.
79
Mercer Island, 34:1:78
Mercer, Judge Thomas, 34:1:77
Merna, Wyo.. 34:1:52
Merrill. George P.. 34:2:178. 187.
188
Meyer, Frank, dry goods, 34:1:25
Miller, James Knox. 34:2:239
Mills, Mrs. Charles K., 34:2:176
Mitchell. Dannie, 34:1:46, 47
Mobeetie Panhandle, newspaper, 34:
1:79
Mondell, Frank, 34:1:15, 21. 24. 27
Moorcroft, Wyo., 34:1:24
Moore, J. K., Jr., Lander Cutoff,
34:1:50-51; 131, 132
Moore, Mrs. Lee. 34:1:46
Moore, Olga Mary, The Legend of
Lake DeSmet, 34:1:32-42
Moran, Thomas, 34:2:179
Mormon Trail, 34:2:248
Morris, Esther Hobart, 34:1:70
Morris, John A., 34:2:210
Mother Hubbard saddle, 34:2:216
Moulton, Francis D., 34:2:198
"Mount Peale", 34:2:190
Muddy Creek, 34:2:246; valley, 247
Mud Springs, 34:2:154, 156
Mulhern, Jimmie, 34:1:80
Murray, C. H., 34:2:210
Mushback, — , 34:2:185
National Geographic Book Service,
Merle Severy, Chief, America's
Historylands, Landmarks of Lib-
erty, review, 34:1:123-124
National Park Service, 34:2:144
Natrona County, 34: 1 : 72
Nebraska Place Names, by Lilian
Fitzpatrick, 34:1:126-128
Needle Rock Station, 34:2:236
Neeley, Sarah F., 34:1:70
Nelson, A. M. (Alfred). 34:1:5, 6,
7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18,
20, 26, 28, 30; photo, 4
Nelson. Charles. 34:1:30
Nelson, Dick J., 34:1:7, 9, 10, 13,
16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27. 131;
photo, 4; Wyoming Memories,
poem, 34: 1 : 1 12-1 14
Nelson. Eliza, 34: 1 :6
Nelson, Frank Ellen, 34:1:6. 9, 11,
20
Nelson, Geneva, 34:1:7
Nelson, Henry, 34:1:5, 6
Nelson. Ida J., 34:1:6
Nelson, James, 34:1:5
Nelson, Lloyd, 34:1:5, 6
Nelson, Martha, 34:1:6
Nelson, Mary Caroline (Dalton),
34:1:6, 7, 9, 11, 18, 20. 21. 23,
25, 26, 28; photo, 4
Nelson, Nancy Melinda, 34:1:6, 7.
9. 17
Nelson, Neva, 34:1:16, 18, 26
Nelson, Orpha May, 34: 1 :7
Nelson, Pearl, 34:1:30
Neumann, — , 34:2:177; ranch, 133
Newcastle, Wyo.. 34:1:13. 21, 25,
26
New York Herald, newspaper. 34:2
197. 201
New York Times, newspaper. 34:2
177, 194. 196, 203, 205
New York World, newspaper. 34:1
73
NH ranch, 34:1:95
Nichols, Harry, 34:1:45
Nickerson, Capt. H. G., 34:2:227
Noah, Morton, 34:1:6
Noble, John, 34:2:144, 216
Nordell, Philip Gardiner, Pattee, the
Lottery King, 34:2:193-211; 261
North Platte River, 34:2:137. 147.
246
North Platte Valley, 34:2:157
Northwestern Livestock Journal,
newspaper, 34:1:76, 79
Northwestern Railroad. See Wyo-
ming Central Railroad Company
Nott, Mrs. Ernest, 34:2:249
Nuckolls, S. F., 34:1:67, 68
Nye, Edgar Wilson [Bill], 34:1:62,
73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81
272
ANNALS OF WYOMING
O'Brien. — , 34:2:166, 167
Occidental Hotel. 34:1:46, 48
O'Day. Tom, 34:1:48
Ogilhy, Bishop Lyman, 34:2:167
Ogilhy. Rev. Remsen. 34:2:167, 170
Oil Creek. 34:1:27
Old Bedlam. 34:1:58
Old Emigrant Trail, 34:2:247
Old Jules, by Mari Sandoz, 34:2:
259
Old-Time Cowhand, The, by Ramon
F. Adams, review, 34:1:128-129
Olmstead, Rev. Dr. William B., 34:
2:166
Ord. Gen.. 34:2:138, 139
Oregon Granger, newspaper, 34:1:
79
Oregon Trail. 34:1:52; 34:2:146,
147. 246, 247
Osborne, John E., Gov., 34:1:72
Overland Exchange Hall, 34:2:226
Overland Guide to California, 34:1:
55
Overland Stage Line, 34:2:236, 246;
Station, 241
Overland Stage Trail - Trek No. 3,
34:2:235-249
Overland Trail, 34:1:50, 51; 34:2:
235. 236. 237, 240, 241, 246, 247
Owen. Etta. See Mrs. Roach
Owen. Eva. See Mrs. Stephen
Downey
Pacific Springs, 34:2:243
Packer, Gov., 34:1:87
Palmer, Gen. John M., 34:1:70
Patrick Brothers, 34:1:45
Pattee. James Monroe, 34:2:193,
194. 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203,
204. 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211;
photo. 196
Pattee, the Lottery King, The Oma-
ha and Wyoming Lotteries, by
Philip Gardiner Nordell, 34:2:
193-211
Pattee's Bullion Mining Co., 34:2:
208
Paulson. George W., review of
Edward Kern and American Ex-
pansion, 34:2:252-253
Peabody, Dr. Endicott, 34:2:166,
170
Peale, Albert Charles. See Albert
Charles Peale
Peale, Charles Willson, 34:2:175,
189
Peale, Eliza Burd Patterson, 34:2:
176
Peale, Harriet Friel, 34:2:176
Peale Island, 34:2:190
Peale, J. Burd, 34:2:176
Peale, Rubens, 34:2:176
Peale, Titian R., 34:2:177, 189
Peale, Young, 34:2:176
Peale's Museum, 34:2:176
Pearce, D. J., 34:1:92
Perry, Gen. A. J., 34:2:139, 140
Pettigrew, Charlie (Charles), 34:1:
6, 8, 10, 11
Pettigrew, Freddie, 34:1:8
Pettigrew party, 34:1:7
Pettigrew, Sarah, 34:1:6, 8; photo 4
Petroglyphs, poem, by Sheila Hart,
34:1:59
Phalen, James, 34:2:210
Philadelphia Press, newspaper, 34:
2:177
Phillips, Mrs., 34:1:89
Pickering, Gov., 34:1:78
Pike, Marshall S., 34:2:204, 205
Pioneer Association, 34:1:71
Pine Ridge, 34:1:109
Pioneer's Progress, by Alvin John-
son, review, 34:1:124-125
Platte River, 34:1:55, 57, 58, 62;
crossing, 45; 34:2:154, 166
Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows,
by Frank R. Linderman, 34:2:259
Point of Rocks, 34:2:237, 238;
railway station, 237, 238
Poison Spider Creek, 34:1:116
Popo Agie River, 34:1:50; valley,
51
Porter. Judge John R., 34:2:197
Porter, T. C, 34:2:181
Porter, Tommy, 34:1:106
Potter, David M., Trail to Califor-
nia, the Overland Journal of Vin-
cent Geiger and Wakeman Brvar-
Iv, 34:2:259
Poulton, P. C, 34:1:75
Powder River crossing, 34:1:46, 60;
canyon, 98, 99; country, 34:2:154
Powell, John Wesley, 34:2:185, 189
Powell, Maj., 34:2:241
Preuss Range, 34:2:190
Proctor, Redfield, 34:2:143, 144
Pumpelly, Raphael, 34:2:185
Pumpkin Buttes, 34:1:102
Quartermaster Department, 34:2:
158, 159, 160
"Quarter Master's Corral", 34:2:161
INDEX
273
Rabbit Hollow, 34:2:243
Rattlesnake River, 34:1:57
Raw Hide creek, 34:1:57
Rawlins, Wyo., 34:1:81; 34:2:233
Rawlins Wyoming Tribune, newspa-
per. 34:1:81
Raynolds, Capt., W. F., 34:2:179
Read, Eunice D., 34:2:206
Read, Nate, 32:2:207
Read, Sherman, 34:2:206, 207
Read & Co.. 34:2:206
Recollections of a Piney Creek
Rancher by Fred J. Todd, review,
34:1:118
Red Cabin, 34:1:102, 103
Red Forks. 34:1:100
Red River. 34:1:101
Red Wall. 34:1:95, 97; country. 111
Redick's Opera House, 34:2:196
Reed, Erie. 34:2:171, 172
Reed, Randy. 34:2:249
Reeside. John B„ 34:2:191
Reeves. Dr., 34:1:94
Register Rocks, 34:2:248
Reminiscences of a Ranchman, by
Edgar Beecher Bronson, 34:2:
258-259
Reynolds, Adrian, 34:2:235, 241,
244, 249
Richardson. Sumner, 34:1:102
Riley, James Whitcomb, 34:1:73
Ritter, Charles, 34:2:247; Mr. &
Mrs., 235, 249
Roach, Mrs.. 34:1:89
Robertson. G. D., 34:2:187
Rock Point Station. See Point of
Rocks
Rock River. Wyo., 34:2:224
Rock Springs, Wyo., 34:2:239, 240,
242
Rockv Mountain News, newspaper,
34:1:63
Rocky Ridge, 34:1:50
Roderick. Leo, 34:1:20, 22, 23
Rollins, Mr.. 34:2:221
Root's Opera House, 34:1:93
Ross, Charley, 34:2:199
Rucker, Daniel H., 34:2:139, 140
Rumsey, Edith, 34:1:89
Rumsey, Capt. Henry, 34:1:89
Rumsey, James (Jim), 34:1:89
Rumsey, Philo, 34:1:89
Rumsey, Mrs., 34:1:89
Russell, Majors and Waddell, 34:2:
246
Sac/dies, by A. S. "Bud" Gillespie,
34:2:213
Sagebrush Philosophy, magazine,
34:1:82
Sage Creek, 34: 1 :45
St. John, Orestes, 34:2:181, 183
St. Mary's station, 34:1:85
St. Matthew's Cathedral, 34:2:173
Samson, Walter L., Jr., review of
Pioneer's Progress, 34:1:124-125
Sand Creek, 34:1:8, 17, 18, 25
Sandercock, Mrs. Hattie, 34:2:166
Sandoz, Mari, Old Jules, 34:2:259;
These Were The Sioux, review,
34:1:120
Salt Wells Station, 34:2:239
Sanderson, Maj. Winslow F., 34:2:
147
Sarpy, John, 34:2:147
Saufley, Judge Micah Chrisman, 34:
1:43, 48: photo. 47
Saunders, Gov.. 34:2:197
Schaedel, Grace Logan, review of
Coir Chips 'n' Cactus, 34:2:258
Schell, Assistant Surgeon, 34:2:160
Scherger, R. H. (Bob), Alias Dan
Davis - Alias Dan Morgan, 34:1:
60
Schnyder, Sgt., Leodegar, 34:2:153,
155
Schoelkoph. — , 34:2:217
Schonborn, Anton, 34:2:179
Schoonmaker, Walter, 34:1:24
Schuchert, Prof. Charles, 34:2:183
Schurz, Carl, 34:2:185
Scotts Bluffs, 34:1:57
Scoville Saddlery, 34:2:215
Seane, Patrick S., 34:2:231
Second Cavalry, 34:2:157, 159
Second Man, The, by Mae Urbanek,
review, 34:1:129-130
Securities State Bank of Newcastle,
34:1:30
Sentinel, newspaper, 34:1:75; 34:2:
231, 232, 233
Seventeen Mile station, 34:1:46
Severy, Merle, America's History-
lands, Landmarks of Liberty, re-
view, 34:1:123-124
Sharp, Charles, 34:1:145
Sheridan, Lieut. Gen., 34:2:139, 140
Sherman Hill, 34:2:223, 246
Sherman, Gen., 34:2:143
Sherraden, A. G., 34:1:52
Shoshone Indian Agency, 34:1:51
Sickles, P., 34:2:215
Silver Crown, 34:2:221
Simmons, Z. E., 34:2:210
Simpson & Co., 34:2:210
Sims, Albert, 34:2:246
274
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Sioux Refinery, 34:1:25
Sixth Infantry, 34:2:246
Slack, Edward Archibald, 34:1:62,
69, 70, 71, 75
Snake River, 34:2:181
Snyder, O. S., 34:2:216
Songs of the Sage, by Mae Urbanek,
review, 34: 1 : 126
Souls and Saddlebags, edited by
Austin L. Moore, review, 34:2:
255-256
South Pass and Honey Lake Wagon
Road, 34:1:50
South Pass City, 34:1:50, 70: 34:2:
225, 226, 243, 246
South Pass News, newspaper, 34:1:
64, 70; 34:2:227
South Pass road, 34:2:247
South Platte River, 34:2:246, 247
Spangler, Frank, 34:1:110, 111
Spear, Mrs. "Doc" Daisy, Alias Dan
Davis - Alias Dan Morgan, 34:1:
60
Spearfish Creek, 34:1:8; Valley, 8,
9, 10
Speedy Stirrup Pin Company, 34:
2:217
Spencer, J. C, 34:1:15
Spring, Agnes Wright, review of The
Cattle Kings, 34:1:121-122
Stanford, Leland, 34:2:225
Stansbury, Capt., 34:2:240
Stanton, Capt. William S., 34:2:141
Steele, W. R., 34:1:68; 34:2:138,
139. 141
Steiger, Otto, 34:2:215
Stevenson, James, 34:2:179, 181
Stewart, Eliza, 34:2:231
Stockade Beaver, valley of, 34:1:17
Stockade Journal, newspaper. See
Field City Journal
Stone, Mrs. Charles, 34:1:89
Streeter, — , 34:2:217
Strickland, Gen. S. A., 34:2:197
Stuart, Robert, 34:1:116; 34:2:244
Stubbs, Amelia, 34:1:100, 102; Bar-
ton Jefferson, 100; Bill, 102, 105;
Charles (Bud), 100, 103, 110;
Charlie, photo, 98; Elizabeth, 100;
Grandma, 105, 106, photo, 96;
Grandpa, 105, 106, photo, 96;
Isaac (Ike), 100, 102, 103; James,
100, 101; Jim, 95, 97, 100, 101,
103, 106, 107, 108, 109, photo,
96; Lois, 107, 109; Martha
(Sally), 100, 101; Rachel, 100;
William Avery (Bill), 100, 103
Sturgis, Wyo., 34:1:15
Sulphur Springs, 34:2:239
Sundance Gazette, newspaper, 34:1:
11
Sundance, Wyo., 34:1:11, 12, 25
Sun-Leader, newspaper, 34:1:70
Swan Land & Cattle Co., 34:2:215
Sweet, Tom, 34: 1 : 17
Sweetwater County, 34:2:241
Sweetwater Mines, newspaper, 34:
2:225, 226, 227
Sweetwater Mines Road, 34:2:238
Sweetwater River, 34:2:246
Sylvester, — , 34:1:54, 57
Taylor boys, 34:1:106
Taylor, Bert, 34:1:101: Ed, 101;
Emma, 101; Homer, 101; John
Wesley, 101; Rose, 101; Sally,
101, 102; Talton, 101; Will, 101
Taylor, — , 34:1:58, 59
Tecumseh Chieftain, newspaper, 34:
1:80
Thayer, Rev. William, D. D., 34:2:
166, 167, 169, 170, 173
Thayer, Gov., 34:2:200
These Were The Sioux, by Mari
Sandoz, review, 34: 1 : 120
Thomas, Cyrus, 34:2:179
Thomas, George C. Jr., 34:2:171;
Mrs., 170
Thomas, Rt. Rev. Nathaniel S., 34:
2:163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169,
170. 171, 172, 173
Thorpe, Elizabeth J., May Nelson
Dow, A First Lady of Newcastle,
34:1:5-30; 132
Thorpe, Dr. V. L., 34:1:132
Tilton, Mrs., 34:2:198
The Times Illustrated, newspaper,
34:2:198
Tisdale, Johnny, 34:1:107
Todd, Fred J., Recollections of
Pinev Creek Rancher, review, 34:
1:118
Toole, Robert, 34:2:165, 170
To The Little Big Horn, by Hans
Kleiber, poem, 34:2:211
Townsend, H. M., 34:2:235; Mr. &
Mrs. and Mark, 249
Townsend, Katherine, 34:2:249
Trabing Commercial Company, 34:
2:233
INDEX
275
Trabing, Wyo.. 34:1:45
Traders Point (Omaha). 34:1:55
Trail to California, the Overland
Journal of Vincent Geiger and
Wake man Bryarly, Edited and
with an Introduction and new
Preface by David M. Potter, 34:
2:259
Treasure Coach from Deadwood, by
Allan Vaughn Elston, review,
34:1:125
Trigood Oil Company, 34:1:116
Troopers. The, by S. E. Whitman,
review. 34:2:251-252
Tubbs. Deloss. 34:1:17, 18
Tubb's store, 34:1:17, 23
Tubbtown. Wyo., 34:1:13, 18, 20,
21 22 24 25 27
Turnbull' Dr..~photo. 34:2:181
Tyler, Ben, 34:2:211
Union Pacific Hotel, 34:1:89
Union Pacific Railroad, 34:1:43,
58, 70. 85. 88. 90, 94; 34:2:137,
142, 222. 223, 225, 226, 233, 237,
238' _
University High School, 34:2:166
University of Wyoming, 34:1:92
Urbanek. Mae, 1852 On The Ore-
gon Trail, 34:1:52; Songs of the
Sage, review. 34:1:126; The Sec-
ond Man. review, 129: 132
Van Nuys, Laura Bower, The Fam-
ily Band, review, 34:1:119-120
Van Voast, Maj. James, 34:2:158
Vernon Guard, newspaper, 34:1:79
Virginia Dale Station, 34:2:247
Visalia Company, 34:2:216
Wagner, Charles, 34:1:93
Wagons, Mules and Men, by Nick
Eggenhofer, review, 34:1:121
Waitman, Mr. and Mrs., 34:2:249;
Paula, 235
Walker, D. E.. 34:2:214, 215
Wamsutter, Wyo., 34:2:237
Wanless. Col., 34:2:224
Warthen. Slim, 34:2:145
Washburn - Langford - Doane party,
34:2:179
Watson, — , 34:1:104
Webb, Frances Seely, review of
Early Cheyenne Homes, 34:2:
253-254
Webber Canon, 34:1:90
Webster Range, 34:2:190
Weekly Sentinel, newspaper, 34:1:
65; 34:2:208
Wellman. George, 34:1:97
Wells Fargo and Company, 34:2:
236
Weston County, 34:1:13, 21, 30
Wheatland. Wyo., 34:2:169
Wheeler. Jimmy, dance hall and
saloon. 34: 1 :25
White, Addie, 34:1:21
White, Charles A., 34:2:181, 182,
189
White, Hershon, 34:1:17, 18, 21
White, Irma, review of Songs of the
Sa%e, 34:1:126; review of The
Second Man, 34:1:129-130
Whitewood, D. T., 34:1:9
Whitman, S. E., The Troopers, re-
view, 34:2:251, 252
Wichita Herald, newspaper, 34:1:79
Wild Horse of the West, The, by
Walker D. Wyman, illustrated by
Harold E. Bryant, 34:2:259
Wilde. Joseph, 34:2:163, 165, 166,
167
Wilkins, Edness Kimball, President's
Message. See Wyoming State
Historical Society
Willow Creek, 34:1:102
Willson. Mr. and Mrs. Grant. 34:2:
249
Wilson, A. D., 34:2:181
Wilson, Howard Lee, The Bishop
Who Bid for Fort Laramie, 34:
2:163-174; 261
Wilson, Rex, 34:2:145
Wind River Indian Agency, 34:1:51
Wind River Reservation, 34:2:173
Wind River Valley, 34:1:50
Wiswell, Emily, 34:2:176
Wiswell, Rev. George F.. 34:2:176;
Mrs., 176
Woodard, Lois, 34:2:145
Woodbury, Lieut., 34:2:148, 149,
150, 151, 152, 159. 160
Wooden Leg, A Warrior Who
Fought Custer, Interpreted by
Thomas B. Marquis, 34:2:259
Wounded Knee Battle, 34:1:109
Wright, Mr. and Mrs. G. E., 34:2:
249
Wright. Miss Jennie, 34:2:231
276
ANNALS OF WYOMING
Wyman, Walker D., The Wild
Horse of the West, 34:2:259
Wyoming Academy of Science, Arts
and Letters, 34:2:231
Wyoming Central Railroad Com-
pany, 34:1:81
Wyoming Editorial Association, 34:
1:71
Wyoming Memories, poem, by Dick
J. Nelson, 34:1:112-114
Wyoming Press Association, 34:1:
66, 71
Wyoming State Historical Society,
34:1:115-117; 34:2:249
Wyoming Stock Growers Associa-
tion, 34:1:76
Wyoming Supreme Court, 34:1:43
Wyoming Territory, 34:1:11, 17, 43
Wyoming Tribune, newspaper, 34:
1:64
Wyoming's Frontier Newspapers, by
Elizabeth Keen, 34:1:61-84; 34:
2:218-233
Yates & Mclntyre, 34:2:210
Yellowstone National Park, 34:1:
108; 34:2:175, 180, 181, 183,
184, 187, 189, 190
Yellowstone Lake, 34:2:190
Young, Brigham, 34:1:90; 34:2:247
YT, ranch, 34:1:12, 13
WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT
The Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department has as its func-
tion the collection and preservation of the record of the people of Wyo-
ming. It maintains a historical library, a museum and the state archives.
The aid of the citizens of Wyoming is solicited in the carrying out of its
function. The Department is anxious to secure and preserve records and
materials now in private hands where they cannot be long preserved. Such
records and materials include:
Biographical materials of pioneers: diaries, letters, account books, auto-
biographical accounts.
Business records of industries of the State: livestock, mining, agricul-
ture, railroads, manufacturers, merchants, small business establishments,
and of professional men as bankers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, ministers,
and educators.
Private records of individual citizens, such as correspondence, manuscript
materials and scrapbooks.
Records of organizations active in the religious, educational, social,
economic and political life of the State, including their publications such
as yearbooks and reports.
Manuscript and printed articles on towns, counties, and any significant
topic dealing with the history of the State.
Early newspapers, maps, pictures, pamphlets, and books on western
subjects.
Current publications bv individuals or organizations throughout the
State.
Museum materials with historical significance: early equipment, Indian
artifacts, relics dealing with the activities of persons in Wyoming and with
special events in the State's history.