February 22, 1874. Birth of Bill Klem.

"The Old Arbitrator", Klem was a Major League (National League) umpire from 1905 to 1941, and served in eighteen World Series (1908, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1934 and 1940), more than any other umpire.

He lived until 1951 and passed away at age 77, writing his attorney just before his death that "This is my last game, and I'm going to strike out this time."  He and his wife Marie had no children.

Last prior:

February 18, 1874. Disputed crown.

Mid Week At Work: Wood vendor and burros at Fort Marcy, with bakery on left, Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Wood vendor and burros at Fort Marcy, with bakery on left, Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico

A fantastic photograph from 1905, and one truly from a bygone era.

This guy had a hard, very hard, job, and probably lived on the edge of poverty.  

On the other hand, he got to work outdoors, and with animals, two things deprived to the majority of people in the industrialized world today, a sort of poverty we endure.

A range breakfast. 1905

 

The Big Picture. Nashville Terminal, 1905.

Nashville terminal, 1905

Today In Wyoming's History: February 4: The Dams

Recently the Today In Wyoming's History blog ran this item:

Today In Wyoming's History: February 4:

1905  Construction starts on Pathfinder Dam.

Presently construction is undergoing to raise the height of the dam to take into account a century of silting.

 Walkway on the top of the dam, soon to be removed due to dam being heightened.

View from the top of the dam, on one of the rare occasions that water is released through a tunnel from it.

It occurred to me that this illustrates a massive physical change in our region.  One we're so used to that we hardly even recognize it.

Pathfinder Dam is on the North Platte River, a river that runs from northern Colorado, north into Wyoming, before turning East and Southeast and flowing to Nebraska.  It's one of the most controlled rivers in the world.  I honestly do not know the most upstream of the dams on the river, but I believe there's some sort of small such structure in Colorado.

In Wyoming, the most upstream dam is Seminoe Dam, which was completed in 1939.  Below that, just a few miles downstream, is Cortez Dam, a dam apparently so obscure that it doesn't get much mention anywhere, except by locals, even though its a pretty impressive structure.  It likely was built about the same time.  Below that is Pathfinder Dam, depicted above, the only dam of its particular vintage and necessarily the first of the dams on the river.  Below Pathfinder is Alcova Dam, which started impounding water in 1938.  A couple of miles below that is the very small dam, Grey Reef.  Miles downstream is Glendo, and then Guernsey.  All of these dams, except for Pathfinder, were part of the Kendrick project, a project designed to bring irrigation to Central Wyoming.

Prior to the dams, the North Platte River flooded every spring, and then was a trickle by fall.  Paintings of Ft. Caspar from the 1860s show the river in flood stage as being absolutely massive, something that would surprise people in the area today, but which squares with contemporary accounts.  In the Fall it was the opposite.  Very clearly the river as we know it today was not the river that existed at least prior to 1910.  It isn't even the river as it was known in the 1940s, as at that time the Bureau of Reclamation didn't worry about choking the river off in Fall to impound water.  Now it does, as that's a pretty destructive process.

The difference between having water all year long and not is too great to really expound on.  We're used to having it all year round, and its part of the background to our lives.  It wasn't always that way.

Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.

South Dakota became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day, with a proclamation by Gov. Robert S. Vessy that designated "the second Sabbath in our national memorial month of May" for the same.

This followed the first church service recognizing the day, which had been in 1907 as prat of Anna Jarvis' effort to establish the holiday, which she had been working on since 1905.  The first service for the day was at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.

This brings to mind something we posted last week:

Blog Mirror: Family Values

 

Family Values

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 8, 1909. Creation of Japanese Corporations

Location: South Dakota, USA

Friday, October 12, 1900. The USS Holland commissioned.

The USS Holland, the first submarine of the U.S. Navy, was commissioned

The boat was armed with 1 × 17.7 in (450 mm) "18-in" torpedo tube (3 torpedoes) and 1 × 8 in (200 mm) dynamite gu, the muzzle of which can be seen in the photo above.  One of seven member of the Plunger Class, she was doomed to rapid obsolescence and decommissioned in 1905.  She was not broken up, however, and is a museum ship today..

Last edition:

Thursday, October 11, 1900. Li Hongzhang, the Viceroy of Zhili, arrived in Beijing to negotiate terms of peace on behalf of China's Imperial Government, with the Eight-Nation Alliance. He was escorted by Russian troops.

Labels: 1900, 1900s, Boxer Rebellion, Diplomacy, Eight Nation Alliance, Imperial Russian Army, Qing Dynasty

Wednesday, September 26, 1900. The Battleship Potemkin.

The Potemkin, famous for its 1905 mutiny which was later depicted by Sergei Eisenstein on film, was launched.

Last edition:

Wednesday, September 19, 1900. The Wild Bunch at Winnemucca. Or not.

Labels: 1900, 1900s, actors and actresses, Crime, Nevada, Nevada (Winnemucca), The Wild Bunch