Three explosions at the Castle Gate coal mine in Utah killed all 171 miners working at the mine. It is one of the worst mining disasters in American history.
Nikola Tesla spoke publically for the firs time in many years to declare he had perfected a system of transmitting power without wires.
The Kingdom of Greece established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union while, on the same day, the Prime Minister was forced to resign after refusing the Army's call to abolish the monarchy.
Henry Breault, a submariner, received the Medal of Honor. He is the only enlisted submariner to have ever received the medal.
The MoH was not yet strictly a wartime award at the time and Breault won it for peace time service, with his citation stating:
For heroism and devotion to duty while serving on board the U.S. submarine O-5 at the time of the sinking of that vessel. On the morning of 28 October 1923, the O-5 collided with the steamship Abangarez and sank in less than a minute. When the collision occurred, Breault was in the torpedo room. Upon reaching the hatch, he saw that the boat was rapidly sinking. Instead of jumping overboard to save his own life, he returned to the torpedo room to the rescue of a shipmate whom he knew was trapped in the boat, closing the torpedo room hatch on himself. Breault and Brown remained trapped in this compartment until rescued by the salvage party 31 hours later.
Breault was from Connecticut, but had served in the Royal Navy in World War One, joining at age 16. He served the rest of his life in the Navy, dying of a heart condition at age 41 in 1941.
As noted on this entry, this is a familiar Natrona County landmark.
As also noted in the comments to this video, it may contain some errors. One definite error is the attribution of its decline to the Interstate Highway. That's not the case. In Wyoming, I80 goes on the path of the old Lincoln Highway which, while it does bypass some towns the Lincoln Highway went through, doesn't run anywhere near Power River. Nor does I25 or I90. So whatever the source of the demise may be, that isn't it.
One of the commentors on the video is, moreover, well situated to know the history of the Tumble Inn and if that person feels there are errors, there most probably are.
It's still pretty good, however.
One thing I would note is that the story isn't completed. Rather, the story runs through one of the last owners. After they left it, it did continue on, but it went rapidly downhill. The facility converted into a strip bar, an odd choice for an establishment in a small, unincorporated town some 40 miles away from Casper. As heavy drinking is a factor in any such establishment, the trouble having a distant "boobie bar", as my wife calls them, in the county is obvious. Particularly when the nearest competitor at the time was ten miles out of town and on a divided highway. It doesn't seem like a sound economic choice.
Then the Inn lost its liquor license. The allure of youthful partially clad dancers aside (the one time they were the subject of a news story a dancer looked suspiciously underage), such establishments are apparently too tied to alcohol to do without it, and it closed for good.
I was in the Tumble Inn twice, both well before the strip club era, and most likely during the era that the video closes out with. We stopped in for dinner with in laws. I recall rattlesnake was on the menu, as were Rocky Mountain Oysters, but they were out.
The second time was after that, when my father-in-law and I stopped to buy beer there for some function, although I don't recall what it was. I do recall it was in the winter, as it was good and cold. The bar was crowded, full of locals, and a couple of guys somewhere between 40 and 70 who looked like they lived at the bar.
And that gets to another aspect of its decline and fall. Having a small rural restaurant and bar is hard enough in the Wyoming of our current era. But once you lose the locals, you're done for.
The establishment apparently dates back to the 1920s, although I couldn't find any references to it from that time period. It turns out the name "Tumble Inn" was popular at the time, and there was another bar in the Salt Creek oilfield in the 1920s called that. In addition, somebody's house in Casper was referred to that way, being the property of an oilman who had a lot of social events there. The video says the restaurant/bar in Powder River dates back to the 1920s, and it might, but as noted, the only references from the 20s I could find were to the two other Tumble Inns.
At any rate, in the 1920s Powder River's 40 miles from Casper was a longer distance, in real terms, than it is now. And Power River went through some oil booms, including one about that time, and again in the 1940s. Indeed, at one time the town was on both sides of the highway and was actually an incorporated town, which it isn't now.
For that matter, Natrona County had several locations that were much more viable towns than the are now. Arminto Wyoming, which is off the main highway but not far from Powder River, was a thriving sheep shipping point and railroad town. It had a legendary bar in a hotel located there, and the bar still existed into my adult years, before a fire took the building down. Locals attempted to drag the bar out of the burning building, but failed.
Waltman and Hiland were two other such tiny, but real towns. They're still there, but they're shadows of their former selves. Waltman is really a small oilfield camp south of the highway and south of the old townsite now. Again, into my adult years, its gas station, which is now a residence, was in business, and it had a small café in it. Hiland's gas station still operates as does its store, café, hotel and bar, its business probably saved by the fact that it's on the highway, but so distant from anything, there's nothing else nearby.
The Salt Creek Tumble Inn was in a town called Snyder, I've never even heard of. At some point, Salt Creek itself was a small town, and no longer is. Both would have been in the eastern part of the county.
North of Casper, there's Midwest and Edgerton, which are still there. They were much more substantial towns in their day, and in the 1920s Midwest, a Standard Oil town, very much was. Both towns are still oilfield towns today, but they've likewise declined as oil facilities near them shut down or automated, and the U.S. Navy moved out of the former strategic reserve near there.
Of course, as automobiles and highways improved, the communities around Casper boomed and grew, and today that's where the county's population is.
Still, even as late as the 1950s, it seems that Wyomingites were willing to drive huge distances for a dinner. Driving to Power River from Casper was no big deal to eat, it seems. And I recall people talking about going to the Little Bear Inn near Cheyenne on dinner dates, which means that the drove something like 140 miles to do that. Likewise, people used to drive to El Torro and Svilars in Hudson, in Fremont County, to do the same, which is about the same distance.
This is a little off topic for here, as these aren't really examples of painted signs on buildings, but they are interesting in context. These are bars on the main street of Baker Montana.
Heiser's Bar in Baker Montana.
Baker is a town in far eastern Montana, nearly in North Dakota. It's a long ways to Baker from everywhere and as a result its managed to retain the classic bar/grill/restaurant in strength that so many places have lost. It's likely too far away for chains to locate in and therefore the old establishments keep on keeping on.
Today In Wyoming's History: March 13: 1918 The Ohio Oil Company commences drilling a well that would become the first Lance Creek area producing oil well.
I'm amazed that this is the first entry I've made featuring Lance Creek.
Lance Creek, Niobrara County, was the location of some major oil exploration for years and years. It started, apparently, during World War One. The town expanded massively during World War Two, but has fallen back into being a very small town today.
Everyone has heard this comment, probably a million times, and let it pass on without comment. Indeed, the American background story is, almost invariably, "I was born in a small town" or "I grew up on a farm". So archetypal is it, that rocker John Cougar penned a song called "Small Town" which is entirely about the virtues of small towns. Iris Dement, on the other hand, penned the heart breaking "Our Town" about a town that's clearly a small, and dying, small town. John Prine went one step further and penned "Paradise" about Paradise Kentucky, a real small town, that he somewhat fictionally claims was "hauled away" by the Peabody Coal Company, to their enduring irritation.
The small town of Paradise Kentucky, in the late 19th Century.
Leaving the "I grew up on a farm" comment aside for a moment, it might serve to actually look at the statement. What's it mean? That is, what is a small town, and do we really recognize one when we see one.
Do we really recognize a small town when we see one?
I grew up in Casper Wyoming. It's not a small town, it's a medium sized city. Because it is a western city, however, it's a medium sized city that's an island in the prairie to some extent, although this is now less true than it once was. Suffice it to say, however, the entire time I've lived in Casper, it's been a medium sized city, although my father lived in it when it was a small city and he lived through its growth to be a medium sized city, something he never commented on but which I'm glad in a way hasn't been my experience, as I would have lamented the change. Having said that, I have lived in a small city, Laramie Wyoming, for a period of several years, and because it too is an island in the prairie, or more accurately the high plains, the geographic feel of the city doesn't vary tremendously from Casper in some ways.
While Casper is a small city, or rather a medium sized city, I've heard time and time again, both in the past and currently, that Casper's a "small town". Far from it. It's definately not. It has ample population to be regarded as a medium sized city, and if the greater metropolitan area is included, there's no doubt of that at all. So why do people think that?
I wonder if it is, in part, because true "towns", at least in this region, have taken such a hit. A lot of them are mere shadows of their former selves, if they are there at all. For example, in this county, the small town of Powder River at one time spread across both sides of the highway and the town featured a church, post office, bar/restaurant, another restaurant, a hotel and a store. It also had a railroad station. It was never more than a small town, however.
Today, Powder River retains a church and a post office (and maybe the hotel is functioning, I'm not sure), but nothing else I've mentioned above still exists. A person cannot even buy gasoline there, and the nearest station is over 20 miles away. It's not a town that a person could live in and expect to have any local services.
House of Our Shepherd Church in Powder River, Wyoming. This Assemblies of God church is served by a pastor who is a local rancher, which adds another element to this story, as this town was always so small as to have a single church, in so far as I'm aware. Slightly larger towns, like Shoshoni Wyoming, had considerably more services, including churches of more than one denomination. The blue building to the left is or was a hotel.
Arminto, just up the railroad, may provide a better example. It was always quite small, but none the less it was at one time very active. It was the largest single railroad loading facility for sheep on earth, at one time. It had a famous bar, a store, and a population that served the railroad. Now, the bar is gone (burned down), there is no store, and the railroad doesn't stop there any more.
Arminto Wyoming, looking towards a grove of trees that stand where the bar and a hotel once did. This town has the Disappearing Railroad Blues.*
And I could go on. But, suffice it to say, in order for a small town to really survive now, it has to have a reason independant of isolation and the railroads, and even then things might be rough for it. Shoshoni Wyoming, for example, hangs on, but it's at a junction for two state highways near a very busy recreational reservoir. And even it is a mere shawdow of its former self.
For that reason, I think small cities, like Riverton Wyoming, get confused for "small towns" fairly frequently. A true town, like Lander Wyoming or Thermopolis Wyoming, is probably a larger town by historical standards. Small towns that really hang on, for example something like Hudson Wyoming, or perhaps Dubois Wyoming, are exceptions, and exceptions for a definite reason. We hardly recognize a real small town when we see one.
By rail, it's less than 15 miles from Cheyenne. It's less than five miles from Burns, another little town, albeit one that's bigger than Hillsdale. Another five miles down the Union Pacific is the town of Egbert. And a few more, maybe eight or so, is the town of Pine Bluff. In Pine Bluff, I know, there's a Catholic Church.
I've been in Hillsdale (as of yesterday) and Pine Bluff, but I've never been in Burns.
Of these towns, only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne on are the Interstate Highway. Hillsdale is probably four miles or so off the Interstate Highway, effective marooned out there in the rolling hills of Laramie County, Wyoming.
I was actually amazed that this United Methodist Church is active. The Catholic church in Pine Bluff also is. So these communities are obviously keeping on keeping on, but what a change this evidences.
All of these towns were built on the Union Pacific Railroad. Only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne are on the Interstate. Coming in from Nebraska, I'm sure that well over 90% of all travelers go right by Pine Bluff. Leaving Cheyenne (and no, not the song, that takes you to Montana), probably nearly 100% of travelers go right by Pine Bluff.
All of these towns, save for Cheyenne, must have been built as farming towns along the Union Pacific. They're not far from each other today, but when founded they would have been just far enough to travel to each other, by wagon, and get back home, which is how they served the area farmers. That is, towns in this area where just far enough from towns so that you could get into one, conduct your business, and go back home. Saturday was traditionally the big "into town" day for farmers and these towns were probably pretty big on Saturdays. I'd guess that their populations swelled during Sundays as well, but how farmers got to services I don't know. In some regions of the country the population prior to World War Two heavily reflected a single faith or perhaps only a couple of faiths (and this is still the case in some regions), and perhaps that was the case in this region of Wyoming, but it wouldn't be the case for Wyoming in general at any single point.
These towns remained viable in the early automobile era, but clear by the 1950s the handwriting must have been pretty visible on the wall. Cheyenne is the dominant city in the area, and it always has been, but for all practical purposes its the only one that is truly fully viable now. That wouldn't have been true at one time.
Recently I received some interesting comments on my post on the Railhead blog on Arminto Wyoming. The link to it is here:
Railhead: Arminto Wyoming: This is what is left of the sidetrack at Arminto Wyoming, and of a hotel along the rail line, which was located where the grove of t...
The comments were from a former resident of Arminto who lived there in the commentor's youth. The first hand recollections are very interesting as to what the town was like at that time. As people familiar with the town know, it's mere shawdow of its former self today, and is even less now than what it was when I was in my late teens in the early 1980s.
This provides a really interesting example of how the fortunes of a town can rise and fall. Arminto was once the busiest sheep shipping point on Earth. Not in the US, but on the planet. Now the sheep are mostly gone, and the town is mostly gone as well.
