Today In Wyoming's History: Tumble Inn Powder River, Wyoming

Today In Wyoming's History: Tumble Inn Powder River, Wyoming: 

Tumble Inn Powder River, Wyoming

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A familiar Natrona County landmark's history.

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.  

Nobody does that now.

The End Of A Fully Local Paper

The classic view of the newspaper press. . . now really a thing of the past.  The inky, largely all male, domain of the those who put the papers out every day.  I've known a few printers and have been in the old Star Tribune printing room once, which had the atmosphere of Navy enlisted quarters in the old days.

The largest newspaper in the state of Wyoming is, and has been for a long time, the Casper Star Tribune.

I like newspapers.  Anyone who stops in here would know that due to the fact that I frequently post old papers here, and I make reference to newspapers here very frequently.  I've subscribed to The Casper Star Tribune since I was out on my own.

I come from a family of readers, and that includes newspaper readership.  When I was a kid my father subscribed to the Tribune and he picked up the The Rocky Mountain News every day.  On Sundays we typically had the Tribune,The Rocky Mountain News (now extinct) and The Denver Post.  At one time while I lived in Laramie I subscribed to the Tribune and The Rocky Mountain News.  At various points, in addition to the Tribune and The Rocky Mountain News, I've subscribed to The Catholic Register, The  Whitehorse Daily Star, and the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.  Papers I frequently read in the past, which I didn't subscribe to, included the college journals for Casper College and the University of Wyoming, the Laramie Boomerang (which shows up here a lot in connection with the 1910s) and the Stars and Stripes.  When I stay out of town somewhere, I always buy the local paper wherever I am and read it cover to cover.  Clearly, I like newspapers.

Indeed, I briefly pondered being a newspaper journalist for the same reason that a lot of others have been in that field.  I love writing, and I thought about trying to be an author of books (which I have achieved to a very limited extent).  I was writing for my high school journal, the Gusher, and it was interesting and we had a contact with the Tribune.  Having said that, I lost that interest quickly (and in fact a speaker who came over from the Tribune helped motivate my feelings in that direction, one of a few so so experiences I've had with newspaper journalists since that time). 

So it gives me no pleasure to note that since the first time since The Natrona Tribune started publishing in Casper in 1891 there will not be a locally published paper.

1897 edition of the Natrona Tribune, Casper's first newspaper.

Oh, I know, the Tribune will claim and is claiming that its not in trouble and that its still locally publishing. . . just from Cheyenne.

Bull.

The Casper Herald, one of the Tribune's actually ancestors.  The Tribune came about due to the merger of the Casper Star and the Casper Tribune Herald.

The Tribune is publishing from Cheyenne. That much is clearly true. And its decision makes business sense.  As its publisher, Dale Bohren, noted in an article in the Tribune, outsourcing the printing to a third party makes business sense. And that third party publisher, Adams Publishing Group, already prints newspapers for the Laramie (Laramie Boomerang), Cheyenne, Rock Springs and Rawlins markets.

Well, okay.

Casper not only had two. . . or more newspapers, even while having a smaller population than it does today, there were other newspapers printed all around the county, such as this one from the now completely disappeared Bessemer.

But any reader of the Tribune would realize that the paper has gone from a substantial daily down to the size of a small town paper over the past two decades.  During that time period it was often fairly rocky in appearance and quality, although Bohren, who came from the Casper Journal which was purchased by Lee, which owns the Tribune, puts out a consistently good product. But that product is now declining down to a small town newspaper.  A reader of the Tribune, if they weren't familiar with it, wouldn't find it all that much different than The Laramie Boomerang or the Riverton Ranger, quite frankly.  It's in trouble.

It claims more readership today than at any time in its history, due to its online subscribers.  Well, I have my doubts. Subscribing to the Tribune is really expensive as it has attempted to stay in the black.  And advertising, which is the king of newspaper revenues, clearly isn't what it once was in the Trib.  I'm not saying that the electronic subscriptions aren't there, but they clearly don't tell the full story.  I frankly wonder if electronic subscribers get a reduced price of some sort (in which case maybe I'll consider dropping down to that, even though I like holding the paper in my hands and being able to browse it).  It's really questionable at this point whether its worth the price.

One of two newspapers that served Midwest and Edgerton in the 1920s.

Indeed, with the rise in price has also come a drop both in content and in volume.  It used to be that subscribers to the Tribune also received Bohren's Casper Journal.  No longer.  Ironically, at least fairly recently, the Tribune would drop Journals off at the houses of non subscribers in hopes, apparently, that they'd subscribe to something.

Well, publishing a paper in a city that's 150 miles away is not publishing it locally.  Oh, I get it, reporters will submit their stories electronically and somewhere in the Trib they'll put the format of the paper together and then get it to Adams. But distance does mean difficulties and that's just not the same.  Moreover, getting the Tribune to Casper will mean getting the print edition out in sufficient time to haul the paper 150 miles to Casper, get it out to the distributors, and getting it to  your door.  Newspapers famously go "to bed" late so that they can be up to date. In order to do that, the Tribune reporter's deadline is going to have to be pretty darned early.  One more decline in the paper.

Second Salt Creek journal, also from 1923.

This also means that on bad weather days, and if this year keeps up the way its going right now we can anticipate a bad winter, there just won't be Casper papers in Casper. That's significant for more than one reason.  If you are publishing an advertisement, let's say "Big Snow Shovel Sale!", having the paper stuck in Cheyenne isn't going to do you much good.  Same thing is true if you are waiting on the fourth publication of that legal notice you need to foreclose on something. . . snowed in that day. . . run it again . . at expense.

Not good, and frankly, potentially fatal to the paper.

And then there's the human cost.

One story the Tribune didn't tell, and that's typical of the Tribune when it reports about itself, is what this means for the 25 full and part time employees of the press room. They're loosing their jobs.  People who worked in actually printing the paper have been told that August 5 is their last day.

Newspapers generally are relatively liberal in nature and tend to be, like plaintiff's lawyers, declared champions of the working man.  If you start laying off the working man, no matter how solid your economic reasons, your claim is weakened in that regard.  And something is going on down at the Trib in this area anyhow.  What it is, isn't clear, but the reporters unionized last year for some reason.  One reporter I was interviewed by was wearing his union button when he did it. That sends some sort of a message.

Its a real change for Casper.

Local paper?  

Well. . . .

And the industry losses continue

Anadarko announced today that it is laying off 17% of is workforce.  Anadarko once owned the large, and old, Salt Creek field in Wyoming, which is near Midwest and Edgerton Wyoming, but it sold the field last year.  So the very local losses, for Anadarko, were probably already sustained here last year.

Encana, another large company, which in its case has roots in Canada, will apparently lay off 20% of its workforce starting next week.

What's with all those dire warnings. . . .

and why are they on a blog that supposedly looks at history around the turn of the prior century?

St. Francis Mission, Midwest Wyoming.

Well, as for the second question, we stray off topic a lot. But as for the first, this is something we've witnessed before, and which makes up pat of the history of this state.  A history we've experienced first hand.

I just posted an item on this, and I should note that I'd started this entry prior to writing the short one I just did.  I didn't post this one when I wrote it last week (often the posts here are delayed days, or years, before they're posted) as I'm busy and I was traveling as well.  Anyhow, those who haven't experienced, and there are a lot of people in that category, have a hard time accepting that things can really dramatically turn around here.  Employment in the extractive industries includes a lot of young people, so that means right now there are a lot of people born after 1990, as amazing as that now seems to me, who are fully adults, and have no personal experience with events of this type really.  Oh, we had a downturn around 2008, but it was nothing like those we experienced earlier.

When I was in the National Guard in the early 1980 the unit was filled with men who were using their military experience to tide them over, hopefully, until better times arrived.  Lots of those men were Vietnam veterans who had returned home after their service and then had entered the work force in the 1970s, when times were good here. They weren't all in the oilfield to be sure, but some were, and quite a few others worked skilled labor jobs of some other type.  A few of the enlisted men were, however, professionals.  One fellow was an accountant, or had been (he was working as a carpenter).  Another had an advanced degree in Spanish and at one time had been a teacher.  Quite a few of those guys were struggling to get by, and their service in the Guard was providing much needed income to their families.

One of those men had a teaching job in Jeffrey City, Wyoming.  He was an officer, but he was sort of an unusual one as he was much more like the enlisted men than the other officers and addressed us in that fashion all of the time.  He'd been a Marine prior to having gone to college and perhaps that explained it somewhat.

Jeffrey City provides a bit of a window into the concern that some of us have now.  In the 1970s it had been a booming town.  By the 1980s, it was struggling as the industry that supported it, uranium mining, was declining.  It's still a town, but certainly not a city, now, but it's a mere shadow of its former self.  It's barely there.  It is there, but it's hardly active. The uranium mines are closed.

Gillette forms another example.  When I was in high school, it was a booming coal town.  It was also really rough.  Going there during high school swim meets was always an experience.  But, by the mid 80s, it had fallen on tough times and was fairly quiet.  It started turning around dramatically with coal bed methane exploration in the 1990s, but now there's a fair amount of concern there over the future of coal, and the coal bed methane industry has pretty much completely shut down.

Wight gives us another example.  A mere road stop in the 80s, it's now a real town with lots of nice new construction. But the economy is completely based on extractive industries.  Residents of the town, if they're familiar with the histories of Gillette and Jeffrey City, must be concerned.

Further down the road are Midwest and Edgerton.  These towns are within a couple of miles of each other, with Midwest having been a Standard Oil company town that also supported the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve.  One of the streets in Midwest is called "Navy Row", as it at one time housed U.S. Navy personnel stationed at the petroleum reserve.  The reserve has long quit being a Naval facility and the sailors are all gone.  The facility itself, an experimental oilfield facility, was recently sold.  The oilfield is still active, and through the advance of technology oil wells drilled in the 1920s are still producing, but both Midwest and Edgerton have really had their ups and downs.  In the 1940s they were booming.  They were again in the 1970s.  In the 80s they were really suffering, but in the past decade they boomed again.  Now, things are starting to go the other way.

Or take the town of Lance Creek.  Lance Creek was an earlier participant in oil exploration in the state, with oil claims actually filed as placer mining claims.  The field was extensively explored during the 1920s. During World War Two the town ballooned to 4,000 or more people. The population of the town collapsed after the war, and its never recovered. There's still oil that's produced in Niobrara County, but the least populace county in the state has never seen a recovery of an oilfield economy.

The recent article in the Tribune took an interesting look at past ups and downs.  I noted, in reviewing them, that one of them drew some reader comments.  Reader comments to the Tribune tend to draw a lot of snark, but in this case they didn't seem to.  Here's what one reader had to say:

Many of us went through more busts than booms in Wyoming working the oil patch.The current slowdown pales in comparison to the bust of the 1980's.Do yourselves a big favor ...get out of the oil patch while you still can,or pay the price later,in more ways than one.

So far, I'd note, this writer is correct, and I've heard others note this as well. This slow down is less severe than the one in 1983. . . so far. But that one started out milder than it ended up. With these collapses, the collapse doesn't come overnight.  Another reader commented:

We've lived in Wyoming for six decades. We love this state but hate its busts. We were one of many families who were victims of the bust in the early 80's. Lost our jobs, lost our house...lost everything. Though we've recovered it's been a long, long road. I'll never be able to retire comfortably due to the lost time and income. Take it from a man who's been in the fire: save your money now and don't wait!

Dire warning indeed.

The point is that things can really turn around here.  But when you live through them for the first time, it doesn't seem quite real at first.  Here, in the early 80s, in this town, we saw the oilfield collapse and the Standard Oil Refinery close.  Ultimately, the Texaco refinery also closed.  This is and was a small city, but the impact was truly devastating.  Maybe we need not fear that again, but we should be aware that it happened.