Also on this day, Lord Baden-Powell was declared to be the Chief Scout of the World.
Scouting, of course, was founded by Baden Powell as his Boer War experience lead him to conclude that British youth were lacking outdoor skills. On this same day one of the Casper papers informed the public that an outdoor activity, agriculture, was being taken up by returned Great War veterans. Over 90% of new homestead entrants reported having been in the military during the war. I know of two such instances myself.
Indeed, not only was there an increase in veteran homesteading following World War One, there was an effort to "open" up lands to them, which in the case of Wyoming actually meant shrinking the boundaries of the Wind River Indian Reservation and opening them to homesteaders for farming. The view was that the lands weren't being "used", which of course was incorrect and otherwise immoral, but it was done.
In contrast, a limited reopening of the homestead provisions following World War Two brought very few homesteaders. Something had changed between the wars, with one of those things being that farmers had ceased to have economic parity with those employed in town occupations.
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