I haven't been covering it much, although I've been meaning to post a separate thread on it, but the arrival of the Great War in Wyoming, and the expectation that thousands of troops would be flooding into the state's two military posts, produced a flurry of all sorts of activity.
One of the collateral impacts of the war was Cheyenne going dry due to Congressional action (arguably unconstitutional) and, soon thereafter, the town fathers. . . and mothers, moving to shut down the "resorts".
Resorts, at the time, was the euphemistic term for houses of prostitution, of which Cheyenne apparently had some prominent ones. The town reacted and the town's women in particular reacted to have them shut down, with the war as the ostensible reason. The war may have been the reason, but it isn't as if Ft. D. A. Russell was brand new. . . but then thousands of conscripted soldiers going through there was a new thing. Cheyenne was apparently more worried about vice and regular boys who ended up in the service, and recalled National Guardsmen, than it was about regular soldiers.
Anyhow, some of the soiled doves flew to Laramie and right away Laramie followed Cheyenne's lead. In today's headlines we see a specific example of a "colored" house being closed. The move was on against all of them, but for some reason that one got the axe first, with the others ordered to quit serving alcohol.
Cheyenne's papers, in contrast, were reporting that Russia would stay in the war. . . which of course it wouldn't. It would stay in a war, of course, one of its own horrific internal making.
And another headline gave a glimpse into the past, although it was a fairly recent past in 1917.
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