There are a couple of items in this May 3, 1917 issue of the Casper Daily Tribune that are relevant for later eras.
For one thing, the boom in the town was now reflecting itself in the new professional appearance of the newspaper. Gone was the small town appearance of purely local news. Casper, for the first time, now had a paper that was starting to rival the big established papers in other regions of the state. This paper doesn't even resemble the appearance of the Casper papers of just a couple of months ago.
The church, as can be seen above, is of substantial size and that also points to the change in Casper's economic fortunes in this period.
Finally, from the various news articles I've seen, I've sort of taken it to be the case that Casper, which was a tiny town prior to 1917, did not have a National Guard unit up until this time. I could be in error, however, as Casper's newspapers were of a fairly poor quality and they aren't all available by any means. Douglas had one, however, and its small papers reported on that unit extensively. Over the last couple of issues, however, its clear that the National Guard, which was actively recruiting for new units in the opening weeks of American participation in World War One, was recruiting for just such a unit to be formed in Casper.
Earlier we noted that 1917 was the year that really made Casper. This newspaper, in and of itself, provides some pretty good examples of how that is true.
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