Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming

Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming:

This Catholic Church in Hudson Wyoming was built in 1917.  In a way, it shows the limitations of travel at the time, as Hudson is quite near Lander, where there is another Catholic Church. At the time this church was built in 1917, however, travel between the two towns would have been time consuming.

Blog Mirror: Casper Journal; What do you do when those good mining jobs go away?

The journal has run an interesting column on the now nearly forgotten plight of Fremont County in the 1980s.  One of Bill Sniffin's articles, which are always good, it recalls a Lander Wyoming that was a mining town, now something nearly forgotten:

MY WYOMING

What do you do when those good mining jobs go away?

by Bill Sniffin

It is a recession when you lose your job. It is a depression when I lose mine. – Old saying.
With the loss of more than 5,000 energy jobs, it should be interesting to readers to read about what happened during the last Wyoming bust at the most mining-oriented town in the state. Here is that story:

It's well worth reading.

I'd guess a lot of current Wyomingites, particularly those born since 1990, would be shocked to learn that Lander had been a mining town.  Some time ago I passed by the old Taconite mine and meant to photograph it, but I was in a hurry and didn't.  I wish I had now.  At any rate, Sniffin is quite correct.  Lander was a mining town.

Indeed, Lander and Hudson were union towns and heavily Democratic.  To run for office there you practically had to be a Democrat.  Some of those old Democrats are still around, and still active in politics, but they are Republicans now.  Indeed, in the same race in which Governor Mead took his first nomination a serious contender for that nomination was a really well respected Republican Legislator, who had been a long time Democratic Legislator prior to switching parties.  The big switches that took place, and the fact that Fremont County today has some of the state's most conservative Republican political figures, says a lot about the fate of the Wyoming Democrats over the years.

And the current nature of Lander does as well.  If you went into the town today you'd be hard pressed to realizes that it had every been a mining town.

As an aside, I continue to be impressed by the columnists in the Casper Journal.  They're good.  Indeed, even though the Journal and the Tribune have common ownership, the Journal, a weekly paper, has better columnist as a rule.  Not always, the Tribune has some good ones, but it also has some that I really wonder why they run.  Bill Sniffin, of the journal,  never fails to publish an interesting article, and he's not the only one in the Journal we can say that about.  The Tribune does run some good national columnists, and some I could leave, but that's common for folks like me who read national columnists.  Some you like, and some you don't.  On local columnists their Mary Kettl almost always runs an interesting column as does Mike Kuzara, but in contrast, while Mary Billiter's have much improved, I still can't get into them. And likewise I'm consistently bored and disappointed by Edith Cook's column, which I'd not run if I were the editor.

Big Town, Small Town.

"I grew up in a small town"

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.

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*From the lyrics of The City of New Orleans, about a train named that, on its last run.