August 17, 1919. Evanston to Echo, Utah.

On this day in 1919 the Motor Transport Convoy left Wyoming and entered Utah.

The 17th was a Sunday. This is remarkable as the Convoy's command chose not to stay in Evanston, Wyoming that Sunday but simply pushed on.  No day of rest for the convoy.  That had happened only once before in their trip, and on that occasion it had pretty clearly occurred because the convoy had experienced delays due to road conditions and mechanical problems.  Here there's no evidence that had occurred. 

Having said that, the convoy did get an unusually late start that day, starting at 12:30 p.m.  While the diarist doesn't note it, chances are high that the late start was in order to allow men to attend local church services before the motor march was resumed.

The convoy experienced a plethora of problems, including the Lincoln Highway now being a bad mountain road as it crossed over from Wyoming.  Carbon buildup in a cylinder was plaguing a Dodge, which is interesting in this household as the same thing recently afflicted one of our Dodge pickups.  The engine of the Class B truck that was a machine shop was shot.

Echo Utah is a little tiny town today, and must have been the same in 1919.  By stopping in Echo, they were effectively camping.

August 16, 1919. Steep grades for the Motor Transport Convoy, the 35 miles between Fort Bridger and Evanston Wyoming.

Evanston, Wyoming's well preserved downtown.

Mountainous terrain became the challenge this day for the Motor Transport Convoy, as it passed from Fort Bridger to Evanston Wyoming.

A 12% grade is incredibly steep.

Former Union Pacific roundhouse in Evanston, Wyoming, now a museum.

In other vehicle news, the first automobile race at the Orange County California Fair was held.

Back home, Frank Hadsell was so impressed with the recent cover photograph on the August issue of the Wyoming Stockman Farmer, he was hoping to buy fifty copies.

Some Gave All: Henry B. Joy Memorial, Interstate 80, Albany County, Wyoming.

And another one in light of the recent emphasis here on the Lincoln Highway:  Some Gave All: Henry B. Joy Memorial, Interstate 80, Albany Count...:

Henry B. Joy Memorial, Interstate 80, Albany County Wyoming.

This is a monument to one of the founders of the Lincoln Highway, located along its successor, Interstate 80.  The art deco memorial was created in 1938, the "L" cement markers are markers for the Lincoln Highway that can be found here and there along its route.

While this blog started out with war memorials, it's covered quite a few trail markers over the years, and indeed I will now be adding that as a category here, meaning I have to go back and edit quite a few old posts.  This marker, however, is only the second one I've posted on any of my blogs to highways, the other being the Black and Yellow Road near Gillette.

This marker is quite elaborate and very nice, being both a suitable marker for the Lincoln Highway and a nice example of an art deco piece of art.

Wyoming has also commemorated the highway, the noted individual, and the marker, with its own highway sign.

All of this is located at the same rest stop on Albany County that the Lincoln Memorial is located at.  Of note, this marker was moved from its original location, which might have been one that was preferred by the individual commemorated by the marker.

August 15, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy reaches Ft. Bridger and tensions rise on the border.

The Motor Transport Convoy left Green River and made 63 miles to Ft. Bridger, opting to stay on the location of that former post. The post had been occupied intermittently since the 1840s, but had been last abandoned by the Army in 1890.

The entry that day was the longest to date because of the diarist interest in a significant engineering project the party undertook.

The trip made the local papers retrospectively.

At the same time, it looked like the tensions on the border with Mexico were about to erupt into war once again.  The Cheyenne, Casper and Laramie newspapers took note of the renewed tensions and didn't take note of the Motor Convoy at all.

Closer to that border, an item for today?

Some Gave All: Abraham Lincoln Memorial, Interstate 80, Wyoming

Given all the recent entries here about the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy's trip on the Lincoln Highway:  Some Gave All: Abraham Lincoln Memorial, Interstate 80, Wyoming:

Abraham Lincoln Memorial, Interstate 80, Wyoming

This is the very large bronze of Abraham Lincoln located on Interstate 80 just east of Laramie, Wyoming.  Interstate 80 is located on what was once the Lincoln Highway, hence explaining the very large bronze, which is otherwise somewhat unusual for a Wyoming monument.

August 14, 1919. The Red Desert "exerting a depressing influence" on the personnel of the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy.

On this day in 1919, the diarist for the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy reported that parched landscape of the Red Desert was exhibiting a "depressing influence on personnel".

And they had a fair amount of trouble including a breakdown that required an Indian motorcycle to be loaded into the Militor.

You'd see a lot of motorcycles on the same stretch of lonely highway today. The highway itself is unyielding busy but the desert is still a long stretch in Wyoming.  People either love it or find it dispiriting even now.

Classic, retired, Union Pacific Depot in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Union Pacific freight station, Rock Springs.

Oddly, Rock Springs hardly obtained mention in today's entry, even though it is now a larger city than nearby Green River, which is the county seat.  But it is remarkable to note that the convoy was able to stop, grind a valve, and get back on the road, which is what they did, having the valve ground (or probably grinding it themselves, in Rock Springs.

Railroad depot in Green River, which would have appeared much the same in 1919 as it does now.

The final destination that day was Green River, which they arrived in relatively late in the evening, in comparison with other days reported in the diary, after a 13.5 hour day.

Rawlins was the last substantial town that the convoy had passed through prior to this day, and its paper memorialized their stay in the and through the town with a series of photographs in the paper that was issued on this day.

The Casper paper mentioned another momentous event, the transfer of 14,000 acres from the Wind River Indian Reservation to be open for homesteading, a post World War One effort to find homesteads for returning soldiers.

That act was part of a series of similar ones that had chipped away at the size of the Reservation since its founding in the 1860s.  While the Reservation remains large, it was once larger until events like this slowly reduced its overall extent. 

14,000 acres is actually not that much acreage, but what this further indicates is an appreciation on the part of the government that the land around Riverton Wyoming was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing.  The various homestead acts remained fully in effect in 1919 and indeed 1919 was not surprisingly the peak year for homesteading in the United States, as well as the last year in American history in which farmers had economic parity with urban dwellers.  But the land remaining in the West that was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing, was now quite limited.  Some of that land was opening up with irrigation projects, however.

None of this took into mind, really, what was just for the native residents of the Reservation and that lead to the protests in Chicago.  Interestingly, those protests do not seem to have been undertaken by Arapaho and Shoshone tribal members, who indeed would have been a long way from home, but rather from Indians who were living in those areas, showing how the the efficient development of the spreading of news was impacting things.

Locally Judge Winters was stepping down as he felt that private practice would be more lucrative and he'd be better able to support his family  Judge Winter was a legendary local judge and his son also entered the practice of law.  While I may be mistaken, Judge Winter came back on the bench later, perhaps after his children were older.  His son was a great University of Wyoming track and field athlete and graduated from the University of Wyoming's law school in the 1930s.  Because of the Great Depression, he was unable to find work at first and therefore only took up practicing law after the Depression eased.  He was still practicing, at nearly 100 years old, when I first was practicing law and he had an office in our building.  He and his wife never had any children.

August 13, 1919. Rawlins to the Red Desert.

If the diarist had found the prior day a bleak one, he most definitely did today.

The roads in Wyoming were, simply put, bad and the Lincoln Highway at this time made wide use of an an abandoned Union Pacific railroad bed, that being, undoubtedly, the bed of the original transcontinental rail line which is visible throughout its old course, both in the form of the bed itself and on the ash path on either side of it.  So going was slow, and at one point a very wide detour had to be made.

At the end of the day, for the first time on the trip, the convoy camped out in an unoccupied area with no nearby towns or cities.  This is probably the camp at which Dwight Eisenhower famously told the party to expect an Indian attack as a joke.

In other military endeavors, ammunition ships that were started before the war continued to be finished.

Man-o-War, the racehorse named after a type of ship, was defeated for the first time on this day in 1919 by a horse named, appropriately enough, Upset

August 12, 1919 Medicine Bow to Rawlins, Wyoming on the Motor Transport Convoy

Lincoln Highway marker at Ft. Fred Steele.

The Motor Transport Convoy traveled from Medicine Bow to Rawlins on this day in 1919.

The Strand Theatre in Rawlins, which was built in 1919.

The diarist wasn't impressed with the roads or the conditions in any fashion.  Indeed, he reported Ft. Steele as being the only pleasant spot on the journey.

A photograph taken from Ft. Steele.

Today the highway doesn't pass through Ft. Steele as it once did, but is located several miles to the south.  Interestingly, there is a campground near the current Interstate Highway.

Union Pacific depot in Rawlins.  This would have been a busy depot in 1919.

On the same day, men were busy at work elsewhere in the West.

Water troughs at Thompsons Cattle Camp. Wenaha N.F. 43264A. USDA, Forest Service, Umatilla National Forest, Oregon. August 12, 1919.

And overseas, a photographer took a reminder of the cost of the recent war.

August 11, 1919. Laramie to Medicine Bow on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy. Andrew Carnegie passes away and the Weimar Republic born.

A Packard furnished by the Firestone company crosses what passed for a bridge west of Laramie on this day in 1919.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy resumed its travel along a road that today is a state highway.

The path on the state highway today would take you to all the same spots, in much of the same conditions.  You'd still pass through Rock River, although the tiny town today would be hard pressed to offer a Red Cross canteen service.

Motor Transport Convoy in Rock River.

Today Rock River is a very small town, although its fortunes appear to have somewhat revived recently.

Veterans' Memorial in Rock River.

The Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow is still there and its still open, so perhaps similar festivities could be held today at that location.  The once busy train depot, however, doesn't serve passengers anymore.

Virginian Hotel in background, old Union Pacific depot to the right.  The hotel is named after the protagonist in Owen Wister's novel, which starts off in Medicine Bow.

The big news on this day is that Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist turned philanthropist, died at age 83.  His passing as headline news.

Carnegie in 1905.

In Germany, the Weimar Constitution was formally adopted.  With that, Germany had officially passed from having a caretaker government made up exclusively of Socialist to being a liberal parliamentary democracy. The shepherding of that effort by the heads of the SDP had been a difficult one, meeting opposition from the more radical left which wanted a government of soviets, and which was willing to rebel in support of that cause, and only barely supported by the right, which was already turning to militarism.

On the same day, the Reichstag passed the Reich Settlement Act, and agricultural act that provided for limited land redistribution.  The act did not result in a large scale change in German agricultural land owning patters but it did ultimately result in 57,000 German farmers coming into land ownership.  It's passage took a middle of the road approach to land questions signaling the moderate nature of the postwar German parliament.

August 9, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy reaches the Gem City of the Plains.

On this day in 1919, the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy went over Sherman Hill and on down into Laramie.

Sherman Hill is a legendary grade, so making the 57 miles in 11.5 hours is all the more impressive.

The entries noted that on this day, and the prior one, the weather was cool.

The prior day in Cheyenne the convoy had been feted with a rodeo and celebration.  To my surprise, this story does not seem to have regarded as anywhere near as important as I would have thought.  The arrival of the convoy was on the front page of both Cheyenne papers the day it occurred, but it didn't make the front page of the Laramie or Casper paper, both of which had wire service. The arrival of the convoy in Laramie didn't seem big news anywhere else and only made the cover of one of the two Laramie papers.

The convoy was headed to the Pacific coast, of course, and if things in the interior seemed a bit primitive. . . or not, things on the coast were definitely not.

August 8, 1919. Making Cheyenne.

The 1919 transcontinental Motor Transport Convoy entered Wyoming on this day in 1919.

The convoy east of Cheyenne.

Governor Carey was on the road as well, meeting the convoy at Hillsdale, a small Wyoming town that is now a shadow of its former self.  From there they proceeded on to Cheyenne, where Ft. D. A. Russell somewhat ironically provided a cavalry escort through Cheyenne and onto the post.

They were treated to a rodeo at Frontier Park and the town's businesses closed at 4:00 p.m. for the festivities.

Elsewhere, the Third Afghan War came to an end when the warring parties signed the Ango-Afghan Treaty of 1919. The war had been short and fought for limited purposes. The result was the establishment of the current Afghan border and the end of British subsidies to Afghanistan.

In the wreck of the Austrian Empire, the First Hungarian Republic dissolved.  As confusing as the names may be, it was replaced by the Hungarian Republic, a more conservative government.