Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Christ United Methodist Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Christ United Methodist Church, Casper Wyoming:

Christ United Methodist Church, Casper Wyoming

Another one of the many Casper churches I hadn't gotten around to photographing, Christ United Methodist Church as photographed out my Jeep windshield.

I don't know the history of this church but it likely dates to the 1950s.  It hasn't always been a Methodist church and in fact was part of a swap by this congregation for another building they had to another denomination as each of their respective buildings worked better for the other.

Churches of the West: Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church

Churches of the West: Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian be...:

Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church.

I debated on whether to put this entry here or on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet.  In the end, I decided to put it up here first and then link it over. This will be one of a couple of posts of this type which explore changes, this one with a local expression, that have bigger implications.

When we started this blog, some of the first entries here were on churches in downtown Casper.  These included the First Presbyterian Church and the First Baptist Church, with buildings dating to 1913 and 1949 respectively.  First Baptist, it should be noted, has occupied their present location, if not their present church, for a century.

Indeed, while I wasn't able to get it to ever upload, I have somewhere a video of the centennial of the First Presbyterian Church from 2013, featuring, as a church that originally had a heavy Scots representation ought to, a bagpipe band.  Our original entry on that church building is right below:

First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park.

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

Well, since that centennial, First Presbyterian has been going through a constant set of changes, as noted in our entry here:

Grace Reformed at City Park, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This isn't a new addition to the roll of churches here, but rather news about one of them.  We formerly posted on this church here some time ago:

Churches of the West: First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming: This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of whi...

People who have followed it would be aware that the Presbyterian churches in the United States are undergoing a period of rift, and this church has reflected that.  The Presbyterian Church, starting in the 1980s, saw conflict develop between liberal and more conservative elements within it which lead to the formation of the "moderate conservative" EPC.  As I'm not greatly familiar with this, I'll only note that the EPC is associated with "New School Presbyterianism" rather than "Old School" and it has adopted the motto  "In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; In All Things, Charity. Truth in Love.".

The change in name here is confusing to an outsider in that this church is a member of the EPC, but it's no longer using its original name.  As it just passed the centennial of its construction, that's a bit unfortunate in some ways. 

We'd also note that the sought set of stairs is now chained off.  We're not sure why, but those stairs must no longer be used for access.

The changes apparently didn't serve to arrest whatever was going on, as there's a sign out in front of the old First Presbyterian, later Grace Reformed, that starting on February 23, it'll be City Park Church.

City Park Church, it turns out, is the name that the congregation that presently occupies another nearby church, First Baptist Church, will call its new church building, which is actually a much older building than the one it now occupies, which is depicted here:

First Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

This is the First Baptist Church in Casper, Wyoming. It's one of the Downtown churches in Casper, in an area that sees approximately one church per block for a several block area.

This particular church was built in 1949, and sits on the same block as Our Savior's Lutheran Church.

What's going on?

Well, it's hard to say from the outside, which we are, but what is pretty clear is that the rifts in the Presbyterian Church broke out, in some form, in the city's oldest Presbyterian Church to the point where it ended up changing its name, and then either moving out of its large church, and accompanying grounds, or closing altogether.  I've never been in the building but I'm told that its basement looked rough a couple of years ago and perhaps the current congregation has other plans or the grounds and church are just too much for it.  At any rate, the 1949 vintage building that First Baptist occupies is apparently a bit too small for its needs and it had taken the opportunity to acquire and relocate into the older, but larger, church.  It can't help but be noted that both churches have pretty large outbuildings as well. Also, while they are both downtown, the 1913 building is one of the three very centrally located old downtown Casper churches, so if church buildings have pride of place, the Baptist congregation is moving into a location which has a little bit more of one.

While it will be dealt with more in another spot, or perhaps on Lex Anteinternet, the entire thing would seem to be potentially emblematic of the loss that Christian churches that have undergone a rift like the Presbyterian Church in the United States has sustained when they openly split between liberal and conservative camps.  The Presbyterian Church was traditionally a fairly conservative church, albeit with theology that was quite radical at the time of its creation.  In recent years some branches of that church have kept their conservatism while others have not and there's been an open split.  As noted elsewhere this has lead in part to a defection from those churches in a lot of localities, and a person has to wonder if something like that may have happened here, as well as wondering if the obvious fact that a split has occurred would naturally lead to a reduction in the congregation as some of its members went with the other side.  We've noted here before that the Anglican Community locally not only has its two Episcopal Churches in town, but that there are also two additional Anglican Churches of a much more theologically conservative bent, both of which are outside of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming.

A person can't really opine, from the outside, if something like this is "sad" or not, but it's certainly a remarkable event.  We've noted church buildings that have changed denominations of use before, but this is the first one where we've actually witnessed it.  And in this case, the departing denomination had occupied their building for a century.

February 2, 1920. Changes.

Siberian girls pose for camera, February 2, 1920.   Their world was in a state of massive change at the time this photograph was taken.

Monday, February 2, 1920, saw the implementation of changes here and there. Some great, some small, in context, and others temporary.

Chief Clerk R.M. Reese of the Dept. of Agriculture administering the oath of office to Edwin T. Meredith the new Sectary today. On Mr Meredith's right is Mr Houston former Sectary.  Meredith is wearing a decidely modern type of suit showing how the patterns of Edwardian suits were taking a modern form.  The U.S. was slipping into a major depression lead by a major decline in the agricultural section as this photo was snapped.

A new Secretary of Agriculture was sworn in for the United States.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the gallant, or self sacrificing, Guy Spiker traveled with his sister in law to meet with Emily Knowles.  Knowles, we are now informed, appeared here for the first time two days ago when she was described as a girl whose relationship with the married Lt. Pearly Spiker had resulted in her pregnancy.

While she was earlier a "girl", we now know that she was a member of the British Women's Auxiliary service, a type of wartime British quasi military body formed to relieve men of some of the service roles they held  normally, thereby relieving them for service elsewhere.  That more easily explains how Lt. Spiker and Miss Knowles met, and as we learned from the entry the other day, it would also explain how she met the man she would, a year later, leave Guy Spiker for, and also abandon her association with her infant as a result of that.  So she turns out, at least, not to be as young as we might fear.

The Casper paper also reported on a perennial problem, that being that graduates of the high school in Casper were expressing a desire to take off as soon as they graduated.  Wyoming continues to suffer this problem today.

In 1919 they could hardly be blamed in some ways.  Casper was a boom town with that boom (about to be a bust) all centered on oil production.  It was busy, dirty, and dangerous, and featured a large district dedicated to vice of the classic types.

In far off Central Asia the Russian protectorate Khanate of Khiva came to an end when its last hereditary ruler abdicated.

The deminished Khiva in 1903

It had existed since 1511.

Khiva (Karasm) in the 18th Century.

Khiva had fallen to Russian aggression in the early 18th Century after which it became a protectorate, becoming increasingly smaller, until the Soviets just wiped it out as an entity entirely.

On the same day as the last Khan resigned in Khiva, the Soviets recognized the independence of Estonia.

Signing of the treaty recognizing Estonian independence.

The Soviets would get over that in 1940.

In the same region, under the Treaty of Versailles, the French occupied Memel, the eastern most region of East Prussia.

Memel was effectively the German frontier in the Baltic's and had long had a mixed population.  Given the German influence in the Baltic's, that in and of itself was a problem of sorts.  The French occupation would have given some time for these issues to be sorted out and in fact an Memel independence movement, an odd thought given its small size, developed during the brief French occupation.  However, in 1923 it became Lithuanian by way of a Lithuanian revolt in the region which the French did not suppress.  Indeed, the French were on their way out due to their occupation of the Ruhr at the time.  The region would become German again in March 1939 when the Nazi German state demanded its return and the Lithuanians acquiesced.  It changed hands again as a result of World War Two and it remains Lithuanian today, with its formerly significant German population having been largely expelled by the Soviets following the war.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20, 1920.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20: 1920  Bert Cole, who was the pilot in the incident that resulted in the loss of the life of Maude Toomey on the January 14, was already back in the air, piloting for a stunt.

I'm frankly a little shocked. That seems awfully soon.

Will the bad news never cease?

Forget the impeachment, forget the imbroglio about Ukraine, forget Vladimir Putin scheming to make himself Russian Czar for eternity.

There's really serious bad news out there.

Taylor McGregor is leaving her position as a sports announcer for AT&T SportsNet in Colorado to take up one as a reporter for the Marquee Sports Network in Chicago, where she'll cover the Cubs.  She covered the Rockies in Colorado.

Will the tragedies never cease?

For those unfamiliar with McGregor, the tall blond sportscaster combined Kate Upton quality good looks (it's my blog. . . I can say that) with really excellent sports delivery.  Indeed, it was that delivery that makes her a great sportscaster. 

McGregor is one of Keli McGregor's daughters.  Keli McGregor was the president of the Rockies and died of a heart attack, due to an undetected viral infection, at age 48.  Taylor was 17 years old at the time.  Since that tragedy she went on to the University of Arkansas where, as in high school, she was a standout athlete in her own right.  At about the time of her graduation she was seeing baseball player Ty Hensley who was about to break out into the major leagues, but never really did.  Hensley plays with the Utica Unicorns now.

Hensley's star may have faded, although he's still achieved something I never will in actually being a professional baseball player, but Taylor's has risen.  After graduating she was located as a sportscaster in Casper Wyoming for awhile where it was obvious that she was headed for a lot more than broadcasting local sports.  Indeed, I've noted that before.

What a radical shift from not even all that long ago.  The other television channel, KTWO, was for some time the only local television station and its news department was a big deal when I was a kid.  Locals, for whatever reason, welcomed it when they got competition, but now they're back to being the only local broadcast station.  Both stations, for some time, have had the feeling to them of being training grounds for television news folks who are moving on to elsewhere, however, with those younger broadcasters being of varying qualities, sometimes great (like sportscaster Taylor McGregor who is now back in her native Denver and broadcasts particularly for the Rockies, at which she is excellent) and sometimes not so much.

I guess that gives Casper bragging rights really.  Just like we do over the small number or pro players from here or who played here at one time.

Sigh.

But watching Rockies baseball will never be the same.

Chasing Carlisle. November 21, 1919

The Hole In the Wall Country, November 2019.

On this day in 1919, the newspapers were reporting that Bill Carlisle was headed for a location that was the archtype of destination for regional bands. . . some twenty years prior.

The Hole In the Wall.

After all, where would a Wyoming train robber on the lam go, other than to the same place that Butch and Sundance had?

Scene from the Red Wall Country, November 2019.

Well, it was a romantic notion.  Wyoming in 1919 wasn't the Wyoming of 1899, or even 1909, no matter how much the thought of a wild flight to the Hole In The Wall might have been fancied the imagination of a people for whom that region had been an impenetrable criminal fortress only a couple of decades prior.

In 1919, the territory was still wild in many ways.  Indeed, the first decade of the 20th Century saw an ongoing range war in the form of a cattlemen v. sheepmen killings.  As late as the latter part of the first decade of the 20th Century a criminal escapee simply disappeared forever.

But by the same token, by 1919 the criminal sanctuary no longer was one. There was no more Hole In The Wall Gang.  Most of the former members of that group were dead, in prison, or reformed.  Following the Tipton train robbery by The Wild Bunch, the authorities were no longer willing to tolerate the lack of law enforcement that allowed it to continue to exist and were willing to expend the resources necessary to penetrate it.  Prior to that happening, the badmen dispersed. Some would return, and as late as the 00s, but they weren't hitting trains.

Carlisle was.

Buffalo Creek Canyon, December 2019.

Indeed, part of the appeal of the Carlisle story is that he was already an anachronism, in his own time.  In 1919, the year after the Great War had ended, a war which had featured aircraft and submarines and mass violence on a mass scale, Carlisle was out on his own, in the vast countryside, raiding trains, badly.

People were sort of rooting for him.

Even as they knew, he'd be caught.

November 20, 1919. Rumors

Carlisle was being reported as sassy and successful on this day in 1919.  In fact, his attempt at robbing a Union Pacific passenger train near Medicine Bow failed due to his own scruples. . . he couldn't rob soldiers, and he'd been wounded disarming a passenger.

Rumors were circulating that he'd sent a bragging telegram.  I'm not that familiar with the details of this story, but I don't believe that he did.

He had been lost track of, that's true.

But I don't believe that he'd made it to Casper.

The press was giving him greater abilities than he had.

Armistice Day, 1919.

Today was the first Armistice Day, now converted into Veteran's Day, in U.S. history.  It came, of course, one year after the Armistice that had brought about an end to the fighting on the Western front in November, 1918.

Plans had been made in advance to celebrate the day, which of course was celebrated around the country.

In Central Wyoming the day's events were muted by the arrival of snow.

Which makes the day in 2019 a nice bookend.  Snow again.

In Washington, the Prince of Wales was visiting and marked the day, which was likewise being celebrated in English speaking countries around the world.

In Centralia, Washington, violence erupted between the American Legion and the Industrial Workers of the World, resulting in six deaths.

November 10, 1919. First flights, births and observances.

"Henry Lee Milledge, the 16 month old son of Maj. John Milledge, Air Service, is believed to be the youngest passenger every carried in an Aeroplane. The flight was made at Bolling field in the Curtis "Eagle." The baby was carried in the arms of Maj. Milledge"

It isn't the intent of this blog to be the "100 Years Ago Today Blog", or something like that, but as we close in on the last year that's the central focus of this site, 1920, we continue to note some interesting items that occurred a century ago, as they occurred.  Some are just things that are interesting, like little Henry Lee Milledge's first flight. 

He's crying, and I don't blame him.

Others are more significant.

Of the significant, the United States Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Russian Jewish immigrant Jacob Abrams, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for distributing leaflets opposed to American intervention in the Russian Civil War.  The conviction was harsh and would clearly be regarded as unconstitutional today.  There were two dissents, including one by Oliver Wendell Holmes which signaled the direction the Court would take on free speech in the future.

NVA soldier participating in Vietnam War prisoner exchange.  The stamped receiver would indicate that this is most likely a AKM although it could be a second generation Soviet AK47.

In Revolutionary Russia itself, Mikhail Kalashnikov was born.  He'd become famous as the inventor of the assault rifle archetype, the AK47.

The AK series of weapons were introduced by the Soviet Union in 1947 and went on to replace the rifles and submachineguns used by that country.  Ultimately, it went on to be the standard weapon of all Communist nations everywhere and was the basic arm of every Soviet and Chinese sponsored revolutionary movement all around the globe.  It's likely the most distributed weapon ever made.  It's cheap, inaccurate, but functions.  

It's inventor was born of a father who was ultimately sentenced to Siberia as kulak.  Sentenced to Siberia, the family had to supplement its table by hunting, something that people generally don't realize was allowed in the Soviet Union but was.  Mikhail accordingly became a lifelong hunter at an early age.

His early dream was to become a poet, but this was interrupted by World War Two.  He entered the Red Army as a tanker and was wounded in action.  He conceived of his design while convalescing.  The weapon's design is simplistic, building upon a concept that had already been pioneered by the Germans during the war and in fact bearing a superficial resemblance to wartime German designs, but having no mechanical similarity to them at all. The cartridge that the rifle fired was designed for another weapon and preexisted it.

A design can't be blamed on its inventor, and at the time of the first work on the weapon the Soviet Union was engaged in the titanic struggle against Nazi Germany.  It went on to be an inexcusably prolifically distributed weapon, however, and virtually defines the misery caused by the mass distribution of weapons of war by major countries.  While much of that misery was shared by the United States, and still is given that the weapon remains in common use around the world, Klashnikov went on, oddly, to be admired in some quarters in the United States.

The misery of a recent war was on people's minds on this November 10 as people were getting set for the nation's first Armistice Day the next day.

The news from the Casper paper reflected hat, but it also reflected something we haven't dealt with here which was the degree to which Casper was a corrupt mess.

People always look back on earlier eras romantically, but the early history of Casper can hardly be justifiably looked upon that way.  Prior to the big World War One oil boom Owen Wister had already noted it to be a real hole.  The World War One petroleum boom had transformed the town overnight, but it had also brought in a flood of vice.  As the nation headed towards Prohibition that wouldn't go away, and in fact it really wouldn't until after World War Two when returning veterans were so disgusted with it that they dedicated themselves to eliminating it, something that would take all the way until the 1970s to really achieve.

The byproduct of all that petroleum, automobiles, was the topic of today's Gasoline Alley a century ago.

I've been running a lot of these, linking them in from the Crittendon Automotive Library website. They're public domain due to their age.

I'm not a huge fan of the modern Gasoline Alley by any means, but these 100 year old ones do provide an interesting insight to the times, including prices of things.  Some things are quite familiar today, including the topic of a wife preferring to trade in a car over the view of the husband, or at least its familiar in this household.  Receiving a cigar for buying a tire, however, is almost unimaginable.

October 17, 1919 Airborne visitors to Casper and more crashes.

Mishaps continued to take a toll on aviators and their planes participating in the 1919 Air Derby.  Included in the mishaps were a directional one, that took an airplane all the way to Casper.

At the time, Casper's air strip was near Evansville.  Portions of it can still be seen there, but you have to know what you are looking at in order to appreciate what it was.

With the ongoing toll on American military aircraft its quite frankly surprising that the race continued, but perhaps at this point it would have been embarrassing to stop it.  Even with that, however, the airplane mania continued, as the flying school mom item gives evidence of.

One of the features of the aircraft in question is their short engine life.  No doubt more than one engine was replaced on more than one craft during the race.

In other news, it looked at the time as if the Reds were about to fall in Russia.

In the U.S., some worried about homegrown Reds.

New York Herald Cartoon, "To Make America Safe For Democracy", October 17, 1919

October 10, 1919. The Air Race

The 1919 Air Derby was the big news, already displacing the Red Sox's victory over what would become to be known as the Black Sox in the 1919 World Series.

The race in Wyoming, however, was marred by the news that a pilot had gone down near Elk Mountain, or more accurately sought of Elk Mountain over Oberg Pass.

The aviators were actually flying near Coad Peak, but the result was just as deadly.

Death would also be visiting a 16 year old in the state. . sentenced for murder.

And Casper was getting into the aviation world as well with plans to become the aviation center of the state.

It would in fact achieve that goal, but not for some years.  Cheyenne, in fact, would become that first, and then lose that position given its close proximity, in air miles, to Denver.

Naval base, Hampton Roads, Virginia.  October 10, 1919.

Mixed news for coal. .. and a glance at Glenrock.

Wyoming's largest utility to retire majority of coal-fired power plant units by 2030

Wind Farm north of Glenrock as viewed from Muddy Mountain south of Casper.

This includes units at Dave Johnson, outside of Glenrock.

At the same time, the sale of mines to a Navajo corporation has been given the go ahead in spite of some questioning by members of the Navajo nation on whether the purchase is a good idea.

The reason that  might be questioned is because a person might legitimately look at the trend line for coal and not be too optimistic about it.  The closure of coal fired electrical generation units right withing the state really puts that into focus. Most of the coal  mined in Wyoming goes elsewhere, but if generating units are being closed down in the state, where transportation costs are obviously the lowest, there's reasons to be pessimistic about coal's future in general.  Particularly when the owners of one of those plants announced one of the units was being converted to natural gas.

Glenrock may be in the very epicenter of what we're seeing in terms of changing times and reflective of them.

I like Glenrock.

Indeed, in an odd tidbit, I guess, my wife and I spent our first night as a married couple in Glenrock where we stayed at the Hotel Higgins.

The little Converse County town between Casper and Douglas was originally Deer Creek Station, an Army post along the Oregon Trail.  It shares that sort of history with Casper, which of course was the site of at least three "stations" during the 1860s, and which is bordered on both sides, if you include the neighboring communities, by the locations of former Oregon Trail bridges.  In being an Oregon Trail place marker, Glenrock also shares a common history with Casper, as it was a marked place on the trail.  A small batholith there was the "rock in the Glen".

Glenrock as a town is at least as old as Casper, or at least I suspect it to be.  It supported ranching in the area, when transportation was much more primitive, and was an established compact town prior to World War One.  Oil was discovered between Casper and Glenrock in 1913 and the Big Muddy field was in development by 1916, fueling the refineries in Casper.  A refinery was built in Glenrock in 1917 to take advantage of the production which was closer to Glenrock than to Casper.

My father took this photograph of sheep in a pen, but I don't have any of the other details and can't quite tell where it is. It's clearly on a railroad, and the building in the background makes me suspect that it's near Glenrock, but I don't know for sure.

Following that, like all of Central Wyoming, Glenrock was tied to the oil and gas industry, and it has been ever since. But at some later point, and I don't actually know when, the major Dave Johnston Power Plant was built there.

Dave Johnston borders the North Platte River and is just a few miles away from a coal bed that at one time fueled it.  It became the economic hub of the town for decades.  It's been there my entire life and its so much in the background that its one of those things I don't ever think of as having not been there.  At least one of my earliest memories involves me going with my father to hunt east of Dave Johnston when I was no more than five.  My father's 1956 Chevrolet truck became stuck and we started to walk out, but a railroad crew stopped and pulled us out before we had to walk too far.  I recall my father was impressed that I hadn't been worried by the event.

St. Louis Catholic Church in Glenrock.

During the 1970s and 1980s Dave Johnston was a mock target for the Strategic Air Command, and occasionally you could see B-52 bombers flying low over it, using it as a mock Soviet target.  And during winter months you always take note of the plants steam rising up from a distance, a marker that you are near Casper if you are heading that way, or not far from Douglas if you are going in the other direction.

For many years now, the workforce at  Dave Johnston has been declining, and the town has been hurting as a result.  During  the oil boom of the 2000s the town picked up in economic activity as oil and gas workers passed through it.  Some lived there, but  many more were temporary residents or Casper residents, pulling off of the Interstate Highway to access the oilfield north of town.  An effort to boost the local agricultural community by putting in a sale barn failed, as modern transportation, perhaps, continued to give Riverton and Torrington, the established barns, the regional advantage.

And as wind has been coming in, the same is true.  Now, when you go by Glenrock, you not only see the massive coal fired power plant steaming just east outside of town, but massive wind turbines turning north of town.  If you take the highway out of the town, you run right past them on the highway.

Where this leads is yet to be seen. Converse County is having a major oil boom right now.  And it has a lot of wind turbine construction going on at the same time. The ranches in the area remain, but the town has also seen, very slowly, a unique retirement phenomenon in which Casperites retire there, wanting to stay in the region but tired of Casper's growth.  No fewer than three of the men I've served with in the National Guard have settled their in retirement, with two in Glenrock.

Glenrock was a way station on the Oregon Trail. Then a small ranching town.  Then an oil and gas town, and a power company town.  Where it's headed can't be known, but through Wyoming's boom and busts, it's remained remarkably viable, if not always fully well, compared to many other Wyoming communities.  It likely will weather the storms it seems to be facing fairly well.

Wednesday July 23, 1919. 1919 Motor Transport Convoy arrives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Cheyenne publishes a big newspaper. Red Summer spreads to Pennsylvania.

On this day the convoy went from Clinton to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, making 87 miles in 10.5 hours.  On the way the Trailmobile kitchen broke some springs.

A Trailmobile was a trailer, made by the company of that name.  They're still around.  Their stout trailer was used for a lot of applications, including the mounting of vehicle hauled kitchens.  There were a variety of trailers built by Trailmobile and I frankly don't know what this particular trailer was like, although a lot of them were four wheeled trailers that had an appearance that closely resembled horse drawn freight wagons.

The White Staff Observation car a large car built on a 1 ton White truck chassis.

The Red Summer spread to Darby Pennsylvania when a mob gathered and attempted to lynch the arrested Samuel Gorman.  Gorman, 17, had been an employee of a hay merchant that he killed in an assault when the hay merchant terminated his employment due to lack of work.  Upon learning of the murder, the mob gathered, but authorities prevented the lynching from occurring.

The Cheyenne State Leader, coincident with Cheyenne Frontier Days, published a massive twelve section edition of the paper that might hold the record for the largest Wyoming paper published up to that time, and which would frankly dwarf the weekday size of any newspaper published in Wyoming today. . . if not any edition of any Wyoming paper published today.  Included in that was a section that heavily featured boosting advertisements, including some for towns, and including one for Casper.

I've noted before the massive change to Casper that occurred because of World War One, and you've seen it here in part due to the qualitative change in its newspaper.  This advertisement really brings that out.

Casper had gone from a city of just over 4,000 people (which is a city under Wyoming's definition) to one three times that size in just a few years.  Oil was the reason, as this ad boosted, but the Great War is the reason that oil became such a big deal, something that coincidentally the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy accidentally emphasized.

And then as now oil tended to be the focus of the local economy, with other industries taking second position. The reference to other industries here is interesting, however, in that the sheep industry, which was a major agricultural enterprise in Wyoming up until the 1970s, was featured and in fact was centered in central Wyoming.

Tourism, however, also shows up. And tourism by automobile, which was just getting started at the time.  That three legged stool we talked about here in connection with the last general election had appeared.

Of course, you have to wonder what those 4,000 residents, assuming they remained, thought of the change.  The majority of Casperites were now new residents, grossly outnumbering the old, and the town of 4,000 had changed forever.

Painted Bricks: Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming:

Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Grant Street Grocery in Casper Wyoming is the only surviving small neighborhood grocery store in the town and even advertises the same.



Opened in 1921, the store was converted into a specialty grocery store and deli some years ago, and features meats and cheeses, as well as many other items, that are unlikely to appear on the counters of regular grocery stores.  It's featured here for its simple sign, as well as being a remnant of something that was once very common, a neighborhood store.

I've mentioned this once before, but even during my lifetime a trend away from residential grocery stores, which was already really pronounced when I was a kid, has really developed.

When I was a boy, there was a grocery store that we could walk to and occasionally did for gum and the like on Ash Street.  Downtown there were two more, one on Center and another in North Casper one more on the Sandbar. There was yet another on Elk Street. Finally, there was one downtown on Yellowstone Street.

Today, all of these are gone and only Grant Street remains.  The Sandbar store was the last to close and it morphed into a butcher shop alone, under the same name, that still exists.  Meat was always their strong point.  Grant Street itself closed for a time and was remodeled as a specialty grocer, as noted above.  Prior to that brief closure, it hung on by delivering groceries, being perhaps a bit ahead of its time in some ways in regard to that.

The store on Ash is a t-shirt shop now.  I don't know what the Elk Street store is.  The one downtown, the old Bluebird, is a restaurant.  One of the old groceries is a private residence, which I think is what it was even at the time it was open, its owners operating it the really old fashioned way and living on the premises.  When they retired, they kept on living there, I think.