Interesting fare.
Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Saturday, January 17, 2026
Friday, January 16, 2026
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Bautista
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Bautista: There aren't a lot of men and women left around Johnson County who are first generation from the Basque region of Spain and France, but ...
Monday, January 12, 2026
The American way
The American way: If we truly want to reestablish our national “greatness,” then we, and especially those who represent us in government, must all recommit to the fundamental and very simple proposition that America is, and has always been, a nation of laws, not men, write a group of Wyoming attorneys and retired judges.
Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps.
Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps.: A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, regarding a railroad map from 1916. I could not lon...
Looking at, and for, railroad maps.
A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, regarding a railroad map from 1916. I could not longer find it, but the item noted that later maps demonstrated the same thing. Here's one I found from 1918.
Ths map also covered motor vehicle highways, which I was also going to try to look up. Frankly, the highways are much easier to read.
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Railroad Map, 1915: The Wyoming State Library has published a series of historic maps of the state, including railroad maps. I'd been hoping to find one fo...
Wyoming Railroad Map, 1915
The Wyoming State Library has published a series of historic maps of the state, including railroad maps. I'd been hoping to find one for 1915 (book research, which I've been turning to again, which probably makes this blog a bit more like it originally was, and a bit more dull for the few people who actually stop in here), and low and behold, they had one.
1915 Wyoming Railroad Map.
Interesting map, it shows some things that I'd wondered about.
It shows, for one thing, that Casper was served by the Burlington Northern, which I new, and the Chicago and North Western, which I sort of knew, but it was celled the Great North Western in its later years. It served Casper up until probably about 25 years ago or so. There's hardly any remnant of it here now, and its old rail line here was converted to a trail through the town. The old depot is a nice looking office building, but I don't know if that building dates back to 1915. I doubt it. I don't think that the Burlington Northern one isn't that old either.
A really interesting aspect of this is that it shows two parallel lines actually running from where the railroads met in Douglas. I knew that there were two depots in Douglas, and I knew there were remnants of the North West line east of town, but I didn't realize that the two lines actually ran astride each other, more or less (within a few miles of each other), from Douglas to Powder River, where they joined. The depot at Powder River is no longer there.
1915 Wyoming Railroad Map.
Interesting map, it shows some things that I'd wondered about.
It shows, for one thing, that Casper was served by the Burlington Northern, which I new, and the Chicago and North Western, which I sort of knew, but it was celled the Great North Western in its later years. It served Casper up until probably about 25 years ago or so. There's hardly any remnant of it here now, and its old rail line here was converted to a trail through the town. The old depot is a nice looking office building, but I don't know if that building dates back to 1915. I doubt it. I don't think that the Burlington Northern one isn't that old either.
Former Chicago and North Western depot in Casper.
Burlington Northern Depot in Casper.
A really interesting aspect of this is that it shows two parallel lines actually running from where the railroads met in Douglas. I knew that there were two depots in Douglas, and I knew there were remnants of the North West line east of town, but I didn't realize that the two lines actually ran astride each other, more or less (within a few miles of each other), from Douglas to Powder River, where they joined. The depot at Powder River is no longer there.
Former depot for one of the railroads in Douglas, now used as a railroad interpretive center.
The other depot in Douglas, now a restaurant called "The Depot".
After that, interestingly, the Chicago and North Western ran to Shoshoni, while the Burlington Northern did not. Now, a local short line runs to Shoshoni and links in somewhere with the BN, but I don't know where. Not in Powder River, that's for sure. The BN still runs north through the Wind River Canyon, however, taking a turn at Shoshoni, which did not at that time, still passing through Lysite as it then did. No rail line runs from Shoshoni to Riverton, and on to Hudson and Lander like this map shows. And as with one of the Douglas depots, the old Riverton line is now a restaurant, although I've apparently failed to photograph that one (note to self, I suppose). It's pretty amazing to think, really, that Fremont County's rail service has really declined pretty significantly in the past century, with Lander no longer being a terminus.
Rail facilties in Lysite, which are probably nearly as old as the map being discussed here.
Going the other way, the results are even more surprising. Orin Junction is still there, and is still a railroad junction, but just for the Burlington Northern. The railroad still runs east to Lusk, but that's a Burlington Northern line today, apparently running on the old path of the Chicago and North Western. Going south east, that line is still there up to Harville, but from the there what's indicated as a Colorado & "South 'N" line is now a Union Pacific line.
I honestly don't know, and really should, how far south that UP line runs, which shows that this is one of those areas of my state's history and present that I don't know that much about. It's funny how something like this can really surprise you, and make you realize that you don't know aas much as you think. I know that the BN runs as far south as Chugwater today, and further south than that, but I don't know if it runs into Cheyenne like it once did (or rather the Colorado did). The main line of the UP runs through southern Wyoming and there's a huge yard in Cheyenne, so presumably there's a junction there somewhere.
The former Union Pacific depot in Cheyenne, now, of course, a restaurant and a museum.
This map in fact answered a question for me which I had, which is that if you wanted to travel from Casper to Cheyenne on a timely basis, what route would the train take. Well, now I know. In 1915, you'd take either of the railroads serving Casper east to Orin Junction, and then take the BN south to Hartville. From there, you'd take the Colorado south to Cheyenne. From there, the extensive UP lines opened up the path west, south and east.
It's also interesting to see some lines that I knew once existed, but which are now defunct, shown here on the map. The Saratoga & Encampment, for example, is shown. I didn't know it was that told, but I should have. The Colorado & Eastern running from Laramie up to the Snowies is also shown. I knew that some railroad had done that, and that the lines are still there (a shortline serving skiers was attempted a few years ago, but no longer runs), but I didn't know what line that was.
Very interesting stuff.
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Postscript
Out of curiosity, I took a look at the map for 1930, the last one they had up. The rail lines were the same in 1930 as they were in 1915.
That shouldn't, I suppose, surprise me really. For one thing, all the basic service lines appear to have been in by 1915 (or earlier, I'll have to see if there's an earlier rail map). And the last 1930 map was a "travel" map, not specifically a rail line map, like the 1915 one was, so perhaps it may have omitted any newer lines, although I doubt it. Of interest, that travel map for 1930 only showed rail lines, not roads, so the presumption was obvious that if you were going to be doing much traveling, it was going to be by rail.
Postscript II
Another thing that occurs to me from looking at this map is the extent of rail service, particularly passenger service, but all rail service in general, at a time when the state's population was less than half of what it present is. Very extensive. Quite a remarkable change, compared to now, when some of these lines and many of the smaller railroads no longer exist here at all.
Of course, that no doubt reflects the massive changes in transportation we've seen, the improvement of roads, and of course the huge improvement in automobiles over this period.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Postscript
Out of curiosity, I took a look at the map for 1930, the last one they had up. The rail lines were the same in 1930 as they were in 1915.
That shouldn't, I suppose, surprise me really. For one thing, all the basic service lines appear to have been in by 1915 (or earlier, I'll have to see if there's an earlier rail map). And the last 1930 map was a "travel" map, not specifically a rail line map, like the 1915 one was, so perhaps it may have omitted any newer lines, although I doubt it. Of interest, that travel map for 1930 only showed rail lines, not roads, so the presumption was obvious that if you were going to be doing much traveling, it was going to be by rail.
Postscript II
Another thing that occurs to me from looking at this map is the extent of rail service, particularly passenger service, but all rail service in general, at a time when the state's population was less than half of what it present is. Very extensive. Quite a remarkable change, compared to now, when some of these lines and many of the smaller railroads no longer exist here at all.
Of course, that no doubt reflects the massive changes in transportation we've seen, the improvement of roads, and of course the huge improvement in automobiles over this period.
Sunday, January 11, 2026
Going Feral: Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows
Going Feral: Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows:
Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows
Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows: Scientists have found the oldest known poisoned arrows, dating back 60,000 years. These small quartz arrowheads unearthed in South Africa are laced with plant toxins. This means the use of poison for hunting started tens of thousands of years earlier than we thought. The arrow tips came from the Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal Province, […]
Going Feral: The Feral Week of January 4, 2026.
Four Dead in Last Month From Animal Attacks in Nepal
Four Dead in Last Month From Animal Attacks in Nepal: In southern Nepal, tigers, leopards, and rhinos are more dangerous than avalanches and altitude sickness are in the high Himalaya.
Wyoming’s Coursey leads National Wildlife Refuge System audit that’s igniting sell-off worries
Wyoming’s Coursey leads National Wildlife Refuge System audit that’s igniting sell-off worries: Former wildlife officials warn Trump-appointed team they can’t haphazardly dispose of refuge land, though many support a review of the embattled national system.
Thursday, January 8, 2026
National Guard pilot admits to landing Black Hawk helicopter to pick up elk antlers The Montana soldier entered a no-contest plea to trespassing charges for landing a UH-60 helicopter on a remote ranch to collect elk antlers.
What's the fun of having access to a helicopter if you can't use it?
National Guard pilot admits to landing Black Hawk helicopter to pick up elk antlers
Judge sides with developer of controversial Casper Mountain gravel pit
Judge sides with developer of controversial Casper Mountain gravel pit: Prism Logistics' state leases are not subject to county regulations, judge rules, and the company's request for lease extensions is remanded back to the state.
Former Colorado wildlife boss Jeff Davis hired as Wyoming Game and Fish deputy director
Former Colorado wildlife boss Jeff Davis hired as Wyoming Game and Fish deputy director: State agency director resigned under pressure in November and weeks later signed on to replace recently retired Doug Brimeyer.
Apparently Wyomingites are qualified.
Wyoming’s New Deputy Game And Fish Director Is Former Controversial Colorado Chief
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Hiker Killed by Mountain Lion in Colorado, First in 25 Years
Hiker Killed by Mountain Lion in Colorado, First in 25 Years: The woman hiker's death marked the first fatal mountain lion attack in the state in over 25 years.
Monday, January 5, 2026
Backer of controversial Seminoe hydroelectric project proposes new tack
Backer of controversial Seminoe hydroelectric project proposes new tack: Local stakeholders say the project simply requires too many unacceptable impacts for the unique, and lucrative, outdoor recreation hotspot.
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Railhead: Sleeper Cars.
Railhead: Sleeper Cars.: I've started to look into sleeper cars a bit, connected with the purpose of Lex Anteinternet. In doing so, I've learned that I do...
Sleeper Cars.
I've started to look into sleeper cars a bit, connected with the purpose of Lex Anteinternet. In doing so, I've learned that I don't know hardly anything about them.
Pullman sleeping car, late 19th Century, early 20th Century
For one thing, I didn't know that they were an introduction, in the US, via George Pullman, of the Pullman Company. I was aware of Pullman porters, an all black occupation, but I guess I never put the two together.
I also didn't realize how spartan they could be, as i the photograph from above. My mental image of them is really based on movies like North By Northwest, which depicts really nice and private ones, and there were pretty luxurious sleeper cars at that. But there were also pretty plain ones, which makes sense in the era when town to town transportation was by train. Not everyone was on a holiday by any means.
Another thing I didn't appreciate really is that the cars usually didn't belong to the railroad itself One website on the Union Pacific notes:
I should have known that.
Pullman's hold on the industry was so pronounced that sleeping cars used in World War One belonged to them.
All of this no doubt just scratches the surface of this topic, about which I'm nearly completely ignorant.
Friday, January 9, 2026
Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenlanders, and musings.
An interesting blog entry by a native Montanan.
Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat
An open call to Greenlanders
I note this in part because she's a nature writer, and native Montanas are close to nature, like native Wyomingites.
Indeed, I've tended to find since Donald Trump reared his New York overfunded balding head that real Trump backers in my home state either lack education, or tend to be imports. I know part of that is a really harsh judgement, but I don't find too many natives, in any demographic, who are fire breathing Trumpites who are exceptions to this rule. There are, I'd note, educated Trumpites here, for sure, but they tend to be imports.
I think people know what the unrestrained wealth and exploitation mean to Wyoming, and that helps explain it. Wyomingites are, if they are real Wyomingites, conservative/libertarians but not populists really.
Imports who move here, however, including some who claim to be us, or want to be us, often are Southern Populists at heart. Indeed, a couple of years ago I was out in the sticks and saw a giant Stars and Bars flying above somebody's camp tent, something that, when I was young, would stood a good chance of having been ripped down by any native passing by.
I've written a lot about how we got here. The question now, is how we get out. We'll be getting out, one way or another. The question is, however, whether a rational conservatism can emerge that's free of the horrific elements that Trump has interjected into what's passing for conservatism now, or whether it will pass the way the way that French conservatism did after Vichy. I think, frankly, the latter is more likely.
If conservatism can survive Trump, which frankly I very much doubt, when it reemerges it's going to have to rebuild a lot nationally and internationally that Trump and his minions have utterly destroyed. More likely, however, what will emerge after this era is a renewed liberalism countered only by a somewhat middle of the road liberalism. Again, France provides the model. After the Second World War the French Third Republic was dominated by the hard left, including a very powerful communist party, countered only really by a centrist to liberal centrist Catholic party. The French right died.
I suspect that's the country's political future, in a way. Starting in 2026 the Democrats will regain the House and, if Trump is still in power, provide a block to an outraged and increasingly insane Trump. By 2028, the Senate is likely to go Democratic too, assuming it doesn't in 2026. The White House will have a legitimate President following the 2029 election who will almost certainly be a Democrat.
That President, whether he's Republican or Democrat, and who won't be J. D. Vance or Marco Rubio, is going to have a big task in front of him. Part of that will be to repair the international damage done by Trump.
Not all of it will be capable of being repaired. A western world that had depended upon the U.S. to be the world leader of Western ideals will never, and I mean never, trust the U.S. again.
But the U.S. will also be much diminished in the Western Hemisphere, in spite of what Trump, Vance, and Rubio think. In South American a new block will emerge, likely with former major rivals Argentina and Chile as the leadership, but with Brazil, a massive country in extent and population, more significant than the U.S. Canada will be regarded as a serious, educated, intelligent nation by the Europeans. The U.S. will still have weight in the world, but in the way that France or the United Kingdom do now, save for Asia where the U.S. will still be a major presence. We will have been forced to look to the Pacific, as so many in the past have urged us to do in the past, by Trump and the Republican party soiling our relationships with our intellectual home.
Basically, we will have been the kid that left home, got into drugs, and embarrassed everyone. We'll be the Hunter Biden of Western nations.
Domestically, we're going to have a lot of repairs to do. A new President will quietly accept much of what Trump has done in immigration. The damage done to trade economics will likely have repaired by them, the tariffs having by then settled into an economic background as part of a new system which will not generate all that much in income but which countries are by then used to. Businesses won't come back to the U.S. due to them, and the Rust Belt dreamers will have gone on to despair. The Agricultural sector will be barely reviving, I'd guess, from a Trump induced economic collapse by that time.
The U.S. will return to environmental and conservation sanity and begin to try to make up lost ground and lost damage, in part because its role in the world will have been so decreased that it will have no choice. Fools who insisted that we had to grab Venezuelan oil as China was going to will wake up and find that China will, by 2028, be using largely electric, not gasoline, vehicles. Europe won't be far behind, and a U.S. auto industry that will wish to sell will have advanced in this direction, with U.S. consumers, less enamored with a 19th Century economy than Donald Trump, will have as well.
If Trump's "Travis, you're a year too late" petrol pipe dreams will have achieved little, and they will, perhaps a revival of nuclear power might actually make a difference. Like many of Trump's policies, or those who used Trump to gain position, that policy on the margin of his larger policies, would be beneficial. The pipedreams about coal and oil, however, will go nowhere and already are going nowhere. Indeed, Wyoming's coal fortunes, so desperately pinned on Trump, are going nowhere at all, and the price of oil in the state is down in the disastrous levels.
In larger things, people sometimes ponder the existential "problem of evil", that being why does God allow bad things to occur. A common answer is that God does not allow it unless a greater good can come out of it. While I don't want to go so far as to claim to detect a Devine hand at work here, I wonder if a bit if we're going to see something like that occur.
The country that comes out of Trump Drunk in 2028 with a bad hangover is going to be a much lesser nation. Maybe that's a good thing, particularly of Europe, where we derived our culture from, revives to claim a larger place. We'll need to get used to being told what we will do, and like a bratty teenager, which we've proven ourselves to be, we'll have to get used to that. Our Evangelical Puritanism which most Americans assume is Christianity will have taken a sharp hit. Our botching foreign wars will end as nobody will really trust us much as a solo actor. Nations that need alliances, and many do, will look to us only in concert with others, which will make them safer. Taiwan and South Korea will look to Japan, and perhaps to Australia. Europe will look to ourselves. Nobody will care one wit about us, and we'll have to look, pleadingly, to everyone else. Our environmental destructivism will start to come to an end. Our cultural imperialism will come to an end, as nobody will admire a country that could produce such vile characters as Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, or Jeffrey Epstein. Our absolute lust for the wealthy, that came in with Ronald Reagan, who looks less and less like a hero, will come to an end as well as we have to face a Republican ramped up budget crisis the only way we can, taxes, and taxes on the wealthy.
Not all of Trump's legacy, including the tiny positive portions of it, or the negative massive aspects of it, will go away. Trump has destroyed the post World War Two United States. But the country itself will survive, and rebuild, and probably be better than it was before.
Perhaps the U.S. can get back to being the U.S.
Oh, and Greenland will be independent. Americans won't really be welcomed there. The U.S. military won't be there.
Dwight Eisenhower's Milk Steak.
Yuck.
For some reason, Midwesterners, or at least Midwesterners of European descent, are heavily into milk and bland.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Abortion remains legal in Wyoming after state high court strikes down bans
Abortion remains legal in Wyoming after state high court strikes down bans: Wyoming Supreme Court rules two bans passed by state lawmakers are unconstitutional.
Abortion-rights advocates cheer Wyoming Supreme Court ruling; opponents plan constitutional amendment
Abortion-rights advocates cheer Wyoming Supreme Court ruling; opponents plan constitutional amendment: Governor calls for a rehearing and urges lawmakers to draft a constitutional amendment to let Wyoming voters settle the matter.
Monday, January 5, 2026
‘Medicare for All’ can fix a broken system
‘Medicare for All’ can fix a broken system: When everyone has health insurance, providers aren’t burdened with bad debt, charity care and overcrowded emergency departments, writes Barbara Sowada.
Trump crosses the Rubicon. ‘The die is cast.’
Trump crosses the Rubicon. ‘The die is cast.’: When President Trump bombed and invaded Venezuela, kidnapped the Venezuelan president and installed a new government to “run” the country, all without the the consent of Congress and in violation of our Constitution, he crossed his own Rubicon.
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