Friday Farming: At 84, Lander horseman still makes hay the old-fashioned way

 

At 84, Lander horseman still makes hay the old-fashioned way

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven:  

Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

 

In the Apple TV series Masters of the Air, one of the characters is Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, who reports himself as being from Casper twice in the first episode.

Who was he, and was he really from Casper?

Clevens was born in Lemmon, South Dakota, on December 27, 1918, just after the end of World War One.  His family moved to Casper when he was still a child, although I'm not certain when, as they moved first to Lusk, in 1920.  He likely was a 1937 graduate from Natrona County High School, the only high school in Casper at the time (Natrona County had a second one in Midwest).  Following graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wyoming while also working on drilling crews as a roughneck.

He did, in fact, move at some point to Casper, where he was employed as a roughneck on drilling crews.  He used the money he earned to attend the University of Wyoming and was enrolled by the fall of 1937, presumably right after high school.  His name appears in the social pages of The Branding Iron as having had a date attend the men's residence hall October dance.  He was a guest of a different young lady at the 1939 Tri Delts Halloween sorority dance.  The same year he was apparently in a fraternity, as he's noted as having attended the Phi Delta Theta dance with, yes, another young lady.  In February 1939 he went to a fraternity dance with Nova Carter, whom I believe I'm related to by marriage.  A year later, February 1940, he took a different gal to the same dance.

He left UW in 1941 to join the Army, intent on being a pilot.  The October 21, 1943, edition of the UW Student Newspaper, The Branding Iron, notes him (inaccurately) as being stationed in North Africa and having received the Distinguished Service Cross, which he in fact did receive for piloting his badly stricken plane from Schweinfurt to North Africa, the flight path taken on that raid. This even is depicted in Masters of the Air.  The Branding Iron noted that he had attended UW for three years.  In June, 1944, the student newspaper reported him a POW.  He's noted again for a second decoration in the March 2, 1944, edition, which also notes that he was a Prisoner of War.

As depicted in Masters of the Air, his B-17 was in fact shot down over Germany.  He ended up becoming a POW, as reported in the UW paper, at Stalag Luft III for 18 months, after which he escaped and made it to Allied lines.  He was put back in the cockpit after the war flying troops back to the United States.

Following the war, he was back at the University of Wyoming.  He graduated from UW with a bachelor's in 1946.  He apparently reentered the Air Force after that, or was recalled into service, and served in the Korean War, leaving the Air Force around that time.

He was on the Winter Quarter 1954 UW Honor Roll and obtained a Masters Degree, probably in geology, from UW in 1956.  Somewhere in here, he obtained a MBA degree from Harvard and an interplanetary physics doctorate from George Washington University.  

He married immediately after the war in 1945 to Marjorie Ruth Spencer, who was originally from Lander Wyoming.  They had known each other since childhood.  She tragically passed away in 1953 while visiting her parents, while due to join Gale at Morton Air Force Base in California.  Polio was the cause of her death, and unusually her headstone, in Texas, bears her maiden name.  Reportedly, her death threw Cleven into a deep depression.  He married again in 1955, to Esther Lee Athey.

His post-war career is hard to follow.  He flew again during the Korean War, as noted, which would explain the gap between his bachelors and master’s degrees, and probably his doctorate.  He's noted as having served again during the Vietnam War, and also has having held a post at the Pentagon.  He was in charge of EDP information at Hughes Aircraft.  Given all of that, it's hard to know if an intended career in geology ever materialized, or if his World War Two service ended up essentially dominating the remainder of his career in the form of military service.  The interplanetary physics degree would and employment by Hughes would suggest the latter.  His highest held rank in the Air Force was Colonel.

Following retirement, he lived in Dickenson, North Dakota, and then later at the Sugarland Retirement Center in Sheridan.  He died at age 86 in 2006, and is buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his marker noting service in three wars.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XVI. And then the day arrived.

Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.

Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/

 

December 3, 2023

Oil field, Grass Creek, Wyo, April 9, 1916

Snippets of news articles from this morning:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Fifty oil companies representing nearly half of global production pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks said Saturday, a move environmental groups called a “smokescreen.”

 Smokescreen it doesn't seem to be. That's a major commitment.  But not as big as this one:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that's a huge factor in global warming.

U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.

None of this should be a surprise.  This is where we've been heading for some time, and it's inevitable.  Indeed, I touched on this back in 2017 here:

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

And I cautiously dipped my toe in the water, wondering if Wyoming should ponder a fossil fuel free future here:

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (a). The Economy again. . . the extractive industries

And here:

Before the Oil. And after it? The economies of Wyoming and Alaska.

Well, now it's coming.

Not that we'll accept it. We'll do anything but.  Our senior Senator in Washington will claim its part of Joe Biden's "radical green agenda", a radical agenda now sought after by the majority of people in the United States, and in the World.  He doesn't believe that, but it sells back home.  With a Republican Party in the state that was ready to boil Governor Gordon in WD40 for daring to say that Wyoming needed to look at a carbon-neutral future, he doesn't dare say anything else as it would imperil his position.  Our junior Senator will likely say nothing at all.

Well, the voices are getting too loud to ignore, and they include people in the oil industry and now even entire nations that depend on petroleum.  From the President, to the Pope, to the Governor of the state, the message is getting pretty clear.  We're going to have to figure out a post fossil fuel economy here.

Quickly.

But, we'll choose not to.  We'll pretend that somehow we can force others to consume the product that we wish to produce, as we've produced it for over a century and a half, and it's our economy.

That, however, isn't the way economies work.

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

Kurt Vonnegut

On another topic, the current owners of Remington are closing the doors this week to its Ilion, New York factor.  The company had been headquartered there since 1816.

It'd gone through hard times in the past.  It nearly went bankrupt after World War One when the United States Government cancelled contracts for M1917 Enfield rifles overnight, leaving them with a large stock of unfinished and partially finished rifles.  The Wilson Administration proved to be quite bad at demobilizing.  

Remington, while profitable, had the very bad fortune to be bought by the aptly named Cerebus which focused on AR15 production and drove the company under. Our prior thread on it is here:

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company's bankruptcy. A Distributist Economic Lesson and a National Tragedy. And Chrysler Too.

Cerebus is virtually a symbol of all that is wrong with corporate capitalism.  Named for the three-headed dog that mythologically guards the gates of Hades to contain the dead therein, it might well be recalled, at least since Dante included it, that the creature is in Hell and of it.

Remington's history was mostly associated, over its long existence, with hunting rifles.  That's what the company was founded on in 1816.  It did manufacture military arms on occasion, however.  For example, it was a large scale supplier of contract rifles for the Union during the Civil War.  It's widely admired by riflemen rolling block rifle had a military variant that was purchased by some states in preference to the Trapdoor Springfield series of rifles, and it was in fact better than the Trapdoor.  The rolling block was widely sold overseas as a military rifle.

By and large, however, it never invested heavily in military sales until the Great War, when the British first contracted with it to produce the rifle that had been intended to replace the SMLE, but adapted to .303 British.  The P14 was a major British rifle of the war, but its production ceased in 1917 when the US entered the war, and the same rifle was adopted to the .30-06 and used by the U.S. as the M1917 Enfield.  Remington's production capacity was so vast that somewhat over half of all U.S. troops in World War One carried that rifle, rather than the M1903, and it continued to be used into World War Two.  But the experienced badly burned Remington and nearly left it bankrupt. After that it was extremely reluctant to make military arms, and it only reluctantly took to producing, ironically, M1903s during the Second World War when the government again needed help.  No original Remington arms were invented for the war as Remington didn't try to undertake that as a project, although it did make a continual series of changes in the M1903 which resulted in the M1903A3, nearly a new rifle in some ways.

After the war and into the Cold War, Remington didn't bother with military arms.  It wasn't a contractor to the M14 like H&R was.  It didn't try to enter a rifle into light rifle contests, like Colt did with the AR15 and Winchester did with its M1 Carbine derived competitor.  That all changed when Cerebus bought the company in 2007.

Cerebus also bought the AR15 manufacturer Bushmaster, which was highly regarded in that field.  By 2012 Remington was making M4 Carbines for the Army.  It leaped wholesale into the "America's Rifle" baloney with a hunting variant of the AR15.  It reentered the pistol market, which it had not been in since a brief foray after the Civil War, with a version of the M1911 pistol.  Cerebus didn't seem to understand what it was that Remington actually made.

Indeed, it was telling that a brilliant move by Remington to introduce a fairly cheap 98 Mauser hunting rifle, the 798, came in 2006, the year before Cerebus bought the company, and it quit offering it in 2008, the year after.

In name, it still exists, but now it's headquartered in Madison, NC.  It was the oldest manufacturer in the United States at the time of its bankruptcy, and it died a victim of American capitalism.

December 13, 2023

Governments gathered in Dubai agreed to the:

transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science."

and; 

accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power" and for "tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

This is a major action, if the committing countries are able to stick to it.  Environmentalist will complain that it is too little, too late, but as economists have shown in the past once efforts are made to really commit to a goal, it tends to be reached much more rapidly than anticipated. 

In Wyoming, where the Governor has been taking flak by noting that Wyoming will have to transition away from a carbon based economy, this is going to result in howls of derision, including claims that its part of a "radical green agenda" and "impossible".  It's neither.

December 14, 2023

We can’t reverse market trends, but we can be prepared. Blaming OSMRE — or, more ridiculously, President Biden — only provides another distraction as Wyoming politicians continue to whistle past the graveyard, averting our attention from planning for our future — a new lower-carbon economy that is coming whether we like it or not.

Bob LeResche former Alaska Commissioner, former Executive Director of the Alaska Energy Authority, in the Casper Star Tribune, December 14, 2023.

I used the same phrase, "whistling past the graveyard" here recently at least twice.

But some, it would appear, are not:

This will likely spark outrage in certain quarters of Wyoming, particularly in the GOP far right.   There were howls of derision concerning Governor Gordon's statements that Wyoming needs to plan for a carbon neutral future.  But that future is coming.  Moreover, what this demonstrates is that there are quarters of Wyoming, and Wyomingites, who see things much differently.  

Fremont County does have an interesting mix of residents, people who have retired there, people who have moved there (which includes everywhere else in Wyoming now), people who work in oil and gas (and live mostly in Riverton), people involved in outdoor industries, and residents of the Reservation.  Lander is the county seat, and borders the Reservation, but it is not an oil town.  The same resolution would likely pass easily in Jackson, maybe Pinedale, and Laramie. Cheyenne?  It might.

What about Evanston?

Well, probably, maybe, not, but Evanston is mad at the Wyoming Department of Transportation's plan to put in a semi tractor/trailer parking lot that will hold over 350 trucks and trailers during emergencies.  They don't like it, even though not all that long ago, almost any Wyoming Interstate highway town would have just shrugged their shoulders and figured that some of those truckers would at least order pizzas while stranded.

December 15, 2023

Global coal demand, on the other hand, was at an all-time high last year, due to use in developing countries.

General Motors is closing two plants and laying off 1,300 workers.

Closer to home, it's clear that Governor Gordon, who will not be running for office again (too bad) feels himself free to speak what he really believes.

Gov. Gordon Agrees Climate Change is Real, Says Decarbonizing the West is Possible

On national TV and in Idaho workshop, Gordon promotes his ‘all of the above’ energy strategy

This is of course going to get him a lot of criticism, including the class "he's a RINO" by people not realizing that they're the ones who are departing from the traditional Republican mindset.

December 18, 2023

All new cars in Canada must be zero emissions starting in 2035.

December 27, 2023

10,000,000 Americans will receive raises with boosted state minimum wages on January 1. The new rates apply in 22 states.

December 28, 2023

From the AP:

MEXICO CITY — Mexico launched its army-run airline  Tuesday when the first Mexicana  airlines flight took off from Mexico City bound for the Caribbean  resort of Tulum.

Also, from the AP:

So far in 2023, Americans have bought a record 1 million-plus hybrids — up 76% from the same period last year, according to Edmunds.com. As recently as last year, purchases had fallen below 2021’s total. This year’s figures don’t even include sales of 148,000 plug-in hybrids, which drive a short distance on battery power before a gas-electric system kicks in.

Last Prior Edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XV. The 2% solution?

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Brendan Catholic Mission Church, Jeffrey City, Wyoming.

Churches of the West: St. Brendan Catholic Mission Church, Jeffrey City ...:

St. Brendan Catholic Mission Church, Jeffrey City Wyoming.

This is St. Brendan Mission Church in Jeffrey City, Wyoming.  The Church is served by Holy Rosary Church in Lander Wyoming.

This is one of those photos here that isn't particularly good, as light conditions were completely wrong for the photo when I took it.  However, as I take these when the opportunity presents itself, I went ahead and photographed the church.  If I have the chance, I'll swap it out for a better photograph at some later date.

This small church appears to have been converted from a building used for some other purpose originally in small Jeffrey City.

Railhead: Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming...

Railhead: Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming...:

Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming.

Up until now, I've somehow managed to miss putting up a photograph of this former Chicago & Northwestern Depot in Lander, Wyoming, which now serves as the Lander Chamber of Commerce building.  That may be because, as these photos suggest, downtown Lander, in spite of Lander being a small town, is pretty crowded in some ways and I missed the depot early on, and had a hard time catching it in a photographic state later.

Indeed, I never really did catch it in an ideal state to be photographed.

Lander was the western most stop on the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad.  The line sometimes called itself the "Cowboy Line" and this lent itself to the slogan "where the rails end, the trails begin".  In 1973 the railroad abandoned the stretch of the line between Riverton and Lander, and since then of course it's ceased operation entirely.  The railroad, which like many railroads, was the product of mergers and acquisitions and was doing that right up to the late 1960s when its fortunes began to change.



In Wyoming its line ran astride the Burlington Northern's in many locations but it alone ran on to Lander.  Starting in the early 70s, it began to contract in Wyoming and then pulled out altogether.  The Union Pacific purchased its assets at some point, although its now the case that all of its old rail has been pulled.  Indeed, unless you know that the CNW had once run to Lander, you wouldn't know that Lander had once had rail service at all, let alone that it had it as far back as 1906.

Movies In History: Wind River

I often dread watching modern movies set in Wyoming (I tend to give the older ones a pass) as they get things so wrong.  And, of course, as a local, let alone being a native at that, I no doubt look at anything set in Wyoming with a highly critical eye.

 

This is the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court in Ft. Washakie which also houses various other law related facilities including the police department and the jail. 

.

And that would be all the more the case here as, while I rarely mention it here, the Reservation is one of the places where I'm licensed to practice law.  I've accordingly spent a fair amount of time on the Reservation, although not in the Reservation's back country.

 War memorial at Ft. Washakie to residents of the Reservation who lost their lives in the service during World War Two.  This memorial is on what was once the parade ground when Ft. Washakie, the seat of the Tribal governments* was an army post.

.

So, when a movie is set there, I"m prepared, I'm afraid, to eye it pretty closely.  And that means I'm sort of set up to dislike it.
.

That didn't happen here at all.
.

Indeed, not only do I like the movie, but I'm amazed by how much about the state and the Reservation they got right.  This is, indeed, a really rare film about modern Wyoming as it is mostly correct in all sorts of details.

 

Post office on St. Stephen's Mission, Wind River Reservation.

Okay, to just summarize the film a tad, this movie is a murder mystery.  It starts off when Animal Damage Control agent Cory Lambert is called to the Reservation to track mountain lions that have killed a steer belonging to his (ex) father in law, who is an Indian living on the Reservation.  In tracking the cats, he finds the body of an Indian girl he knows is the high country. The Tribal Police respond and a female FBI agent responds.  The development of the plot and the clash of cultures, a three way clash, ensues.

There's a lot that could go wrong with a plot like this from a local's prospective.  Most of those things didn't go wrong on the other hand, but actually went quite right.

From the prospective of our reviews, we tend to look at the history of a thing, the culture of the setting and material details.  We know that this is a contemporary movie, not a historical drama, but we're taking the same approach here and this film does really well.

Let's start with the "history" of the story, if you will.

 Former Army stable, now BIA structure, on Ft. Washakie.

Crime, particularly crime associated with alcohol and drugs, is a huge problem on the Reservation, as Reservation authorities themselves will freely admit.  In fact, the Wind River Reservation is "dry" in that alcohol sales are banned on the Reservation, an act that the Tribal Council took quite a few years ago   Drugs are also a big problem on the Reservation and just a few years ago a fairly large DCI bust occurred there.  And some big occasional acts of violence occur there as well.

The film mentions at one point how many Indian women simply go missing in the United States and that no statistics on this are kept.  I was unaware of that, but I am aware of one case here locally in which an Indian woman's body was found by a sheep rancher I knew and it took years, and a very interested coroner, to identify the poor woman's body. She'd been murdered and left out in the prairie.  So much of this feels very familiar.

One thing, and not a good thing, that feels very familiar in the film, which is associated with that, is the haphazard fashion in which so many young people in this state are left to live their lives.  There's a comment early on about the appropriateness of an 18 year old girl being left to her own devices, but that's not so much an Indian thing here as it is a cultural thing.  That too sounds all too familiar.

 Former Army structure on Ft. Washakie, now used by the BIA.

The regional occupations, which might surprise some people, are spot on. There are Animal Damage Control agents in the state.  Not many, but a few, as well as county trappers.  To see one made the main protagonist and indeed the hero of the film is refreshing.  The Reservation really does have a Tribal Police force (it has for over a century).  I don't know how thickly staffed it is right now, and during the Obama Administration the Reservation was flooded with Federal police that were sent on some sort of anti terror funding effort, meaning that it was heavily policed for awhile.  But the normal state of affairs puts the entire Reservation, which is indeed as big as Rhode Island, in the hands of just a few policemen.  Again, I don't know how many, but I think a good example of what they face is provided by an advertisement I saw years ago for the Reservation game warden. There was only one (and there might still be only one) and the advertisement provided that the applicant had "to be able to ride into remote areas on horseback and bring out a a suspect alone".

Think about that.  2,000,000 acres to patrol, and you have to be able to do it. . . .alone.
.

That scene in the film in which the FBI agent asks if they should wait for backup and the Tribal Police chief responds "This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of 'you’re on your own'." is spot on.

As an aside, I once stopped in the Haines General Store in Fort Washakie and saw that the truck of the Tribal Game warden, a single cab Dodge, was in the parking lot.  A Ruger Mini 30 was prominently mounted to the dash.  Not exactly the AR of current police fame, but I bet that guy, self equipped, knew how to use it.

 

St. Edward's Catholic Church, just north of Riverton Wyoming, on the Wind River Reservation.

In terms of the physical portrayal of the region they also did a very good job.  I know that much of the high country scenes were filmed in Idaho, and I've never been in the high country of the Reservation, but there is high country on it and I'll give it a pass.  The scenes of towns and dwellings, including a certain horrifying trailer, look pretty familiar.  The unusual habitation pattern of the Reservation, as opposed to the rest of Wyoming, in which there are a lot of dwellings here and there, is correctly portrayed.   I had to debate in my mind if a scene showing Fort Washakie was shot there or not (I'm sure it wasn't) but the fact that I had to ponder that about a place I've been to many times says something. The prairie scenes are correct.  And there is oil and gas development on the Reservation.  There's one short shot of Lander which is actually of Lander.

Old elevator in Lander.  You can see this in the film, from a much different direction.

The cultural portrayal is also very good.  

The Wind River Reservation is the home to two Indian Tribes, the Shoshone and the Arapaho.  That doesn't directly come up in the film but it's hinted at by those who know what to look for.  For those familiar with the Tribes, European names are more common in one than the other, with Anglicized Indian names being more common in that other.  Both show up in the film.

 

St. Stephen's Catholic Church on the Wind River Reservation.

The tension between the Indians and the non Indians is subtle in the film, and its subtle in reality as well.  Likewise the strong identification of a resident non Indian with Indians is something that occurs in reality as well.  The highly rural and blue collar nature of nearly all the work depicted is also spot on for the state.  The possible relocation of Lambert's ex wife to Jackson for a "better" job, working in hotels in Jackson, is the sort of thing that would really be regarded as a better economic move for many in the state.

The survival of the endangered Indian languages, not in daily primary use but still hanging on, is depicted in one scene and likely to the surprise of most people who live elsewhere.  Indeed, the context in which it is shown, to deliver an insult to an outsider, is something I'm actually aware of occurring in a slightly different fashion.  Likewise, the survival of some distinct Indian cultural practices is correctly portrayed.

Very unusually, the regional accent is correctly delivered, which it almost never is.

The main protagonist speaks with the correct Rocky Mountain region accent, the first time I've ever seen this portrayed in film.  A subtle accent which is somewhat like the flat Midwestern accent, it is different and tends to have a muttering quality to it.  For some really odd reason, most films set in modern Wyoming tend to use a weird exaggerated drawling accident that doesn't exist here at all, and which sound amazingly bizarre to our local ears.  Speech as portrayed in accent form by something like The Laramie Project just don't occur here at all, but the speech delivered by Corey Lambert in the film is spot on.  Even some of the phrases that show up in the film, such as a dissing of Jackson, are actually used here.

 

Blessed Sacrament Mission Church in Ft. Washakie, Wyoming.

In terms of material details, the film is also amazingly accurate.  The vehicles, a minor detail I suppose but an important one none the less, are correct for the region and the conditions. . . pickup trucks and snowmobiles.  Clothing details are correct, including headgear for the region and outdoor clothing.

Firearms, which figure prominently in this film, are also correct for what we'd expect to find.  The law enforcement officers in the film are all equipped with the current 9mms popular with law enforcement officers with one exception, that being the Tribal Police chief who is equipped with a M1911, something we'd find to be appropriate for that character.  The Federal hunter was surprisingly accurately equipped.  In the beginning of the film he's shown using a bolt action rifle which is somebody in that role in this region would be equipped with.  Something that appeared in the trailers which I was prepared to criticize was that the same character was shown using a Marlin Model 1895, but in the film its revealed that this is a scabbard rifle for carrying on a snowmobile, in which case it does in fact make sense.  A surprising moment for me was when he was shown to carry a large caliber revolver in a holster slipped on to a broad leather belt, as the evening I saw it I was just back from antelope hunting and I myself carry a large caliber revolver in a holster slipped on to a broad leather belt.  I'm surprised by them getting a regional detail like that right.  About the only firearms item I'd criticize is the appearance of a selective fire M4 in one scene but the use of M4 type carbines in the role that they're shown in would be correct.

So the film is perfect, correct?

No, I'm not saying that. But I am saying that they got most things right.

So what did they get wrong?

Well one thing is that drilling rigs operate year around in this region and do not shut down for the winter.  That just doesn't happen.  I understand why that was portrayed that way in this film, but that doesn't occur.  And drilling rigs don't have security either, which is in part because they wouldn't need it as they don't shut down.

The sense of distance is off in the film as well.  What are portrayed as long distances for the film would be short ones here.  And one geographic feature that's shown to be reached inside of a day just simply could not be, although again I understand why that was incorporated into the film.  Somewhere in the film there's a joke about going 50 miles to travel 5, which is true enough, but in reality its more like 150 miles to travel 15.

A  minor matter is that a scene of what is supposed to bet he courthouse in Lander is most definitely not of the courthouse in lander. But that's not really so much of a complaint here, as simply something I'm noting.  I know why they chose the building they did, perhaps.  In movies they like their courthouses to look like courthouses, and the one in Lander really doesn't that much.  But that, as noted, is not a big deal.

The actual Fremont County Courthouse.

Another minor matter is that the name "Washakie" is mispronounced in the film and by an actual Indian actor, Graham Greene.  In his defense, he's neither Arapaho or Shoshone but Oneida from Canada.  And I sort of wonder if the pronunciation that's common here might actually be in error and I just don't know it (we use a lot of distinct pronunciations for things and people here that aren't pronounced the same way in their original languages).  Still, it was surprising and somebody should have caught that.

A somewhat larger deal is that, as seems so typical, very view of t he Indian characters in the film are portrayed by Indians.  That grates on the nerves of Indians and I can see why. There are Indian actors around, plenty of them, but its rare for all the Indian parts in a film to be portrayed by Indians.  Whether or not its politically correct to say so, Indians do not look like people of European decent and simply assigning Indian roles and perhaps applying some makeup, no matter how effectively, to European American actors doesn't really change that.

And finally, people familiar with police procedures and regulation will have to note that there's at least a couple of instances in the story of this investigation in which its likely that special affairs would have had to be called in.

None the less, it's well worth seeing.

On a note, for those who may be inclined to see it, this film is violent.  Very violent.  Some scenes approach a Sam Peckinpah level of violence.  There's a place for violence in a film, and then there's films that are simply violent. This film is sort of both.  Potential viewers should be aware of that.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unknown, Lander Wyoming

Churches of the West: Unknown, Lander Wyoming:

This building obviously was built as a church, but no longer is used as one.  I don't know what its use is today.

The local weather, August 10, 1916

Because its in keeping with the focus of this blog, and because I just realized another way to find it.

Lander, WY 

High of 69.1°F and low of 28.9°F.

Cheyenne, WY
High of 73°F and low of 51.1°F.

Sheridan, WY
High of 75°F and low of 48°F.

Nice temperatures during the day,and in Lander and Sheridan, cool temperatures at night.

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.

Churches of the West: Church of Christ, Lander Wyoming

Churches of the West: Church of Christ, Lander Wyoming:

I don't know the age of this church, or its current use, but it was under reconstruction at the time this photograph was taken.

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.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Lander Wyoming

Churches of the West: Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Lander Wyoming:

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Federal Courthouse, Lander Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Federal Courthouse, Lander Wyoming:

This is the Federal Courthouse in Lander Wyoming, however it hasn't been used in that capacity in many years. The building is leased out by the Federal government, and chances are that most people, even in Lander, are not aware that this is a courthouse or that it has a courtroom.

I once had a case, about fifteen years ago, in which it was briefly suggested that the trial could be held in the courtroom, when this building was then under lease to the National Outdoor Leadership School, but the suggestion was quickly rejected on the basis that the courtroom had not been used as one in many years, and that it was too small.

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.

 

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.

Watching the Morph. How the news gets spun by the right and left in the age of the unreliable Internet

Wyoming has a very large Indian Reservation, the Wind River Reservation, which is home to part of the Shoshone Tribe* and also home to the Arapaho Tribe. It's also the home to quite a few non Indians as well.

The Wind River Reservation has a fascinating history which includes sort of a smoldering dispute which has run for decades about the proper boundaries of the Reservation. This dispute is complicated, but what it basically surrounds is withdrawals of certain areas from the Reservation by Congress, so that these areas could be opened up for general homesteading outside of Tribal jurisdiction.  I'd note here, and it is very significant, that areas of Reservations could be, and were, opened up for settlement within Tribal boundaries.  Contrary to what is very evidently the general belief, you do not have to be an Indian to own land within a Reservation.  Indeed, the Wind River Reservation includes part of the Midvale Irrigation District, which is a very significant irrigation district which is mostly farmed by non Indian farmers who live within the Reservation. 

One of the areas that have long been disputed by the Tribes is the area around the city of Riverton. Riverton is the county seat of Fremont County, and it is located on lands that were opened up for homesteading in 1905 by the United States.  It's generally been nearly universally believed by all but the Tribes that this event took the area in and around Riverton outside the Reservation, with the Reservation bordering it.  Indeed, the general belief would be that, if you were driving West on the highway, you'd enter the Reservation just outside of Shoshoni, leave it again rapidly, enter the framing belt where Riverton is, and then cross the river back on to the Reservation, and then leave it again just before you entered Hudson.  Prior legal decisions support this view.

Recently, however, the Tribes petitioned the EPA for a status equivalent to that of a State in regards to regulating air quality. The EPA granted this petition, but in so doing it went one step further, for reasons I haven't looked into, and held that the1905 act opening up the land for homesteading did not withdraw the lands from the Reservation.

That decision is contrary to prior court rulings and it came as a surprise to everyone including, in my opinion, the Tribes, which haven't really fully reacted to it yet.  The Tribes are being careful to take this a bit slowly, as they aren't exactly sure what this would mean.  It does have real implications, as it would mean the transfer of some authority in Riverton to the Tribes, such as law enforcement, and potentially taxation. The town is ignoring the ruling, which is probably a solid legal approach to take, and the State of Wyoming is challenging it.  Ultimately the question will end up in Federal Court.

What this in no way means, however, is what is being reported on a right wing news oriented website (one I hadn't heard of before a person sent me the link to it). That site reported, amongst other things:

It appears that Obama’s habitual abuse of his executive action is beginning to rub off on the rest of his administration.  His EPA soldiers are now telling a town in Wyoming that they no longer have the right to live there. And what’s worse? They’re giving away that land that the residents rightfully bought to other people.

No, that's not accurate at all.  Not even close.

You don't have to be an Indian to live on an Indian reservation, and real property on the Reservation works the same way as it does everywhere else in Fremont County.  If you buy property, and anyone can, you record the deed in the County courthouse in Lander.  Riverton is still in Fremont County and still a town in Wyoming no matter what happens.  Just as Ft. Washakie, which has always been a Fremont County town in the Reservation, and Lander which has always been a Fremont County town outside of the Reservation, are.  

This is not to say that there wouldn't be a lot of legal implications to the boundary being reestablished. There certainly would be.  Most particularly questions regarding law enforcement, civil law, and the taxation, would be present. And there might, or might not, be somethings to work out regarding the schools, although I would note that there are Fremont County school districts which are part of the state system that are inside the Reservation.  For some reason, Fremont County has a lot of school districtions.

But what's so interesting here is how quickly this story morphed into a false one in some quarter, and a quarter that apparently had little if any connection with Wyoming.  Somebody must falsely believe that only Indians live on Indian Reservations, which is completely inaccurate.  Indeed, the Wind River Tribal Court doesn't even bother to determine if jurors it calls are enrolled Tribal members or not, and it calls Indians and non Indians in for jury service, just as the Ninth Judicial District calls in people from inside, and outside, of the Reservation for jury duty.

This sort of thing seems common in the Internet age.  Local stories, like the one about New Jersey's George Washington Bridge, get blown up out of proportion as if they are of national importance.  And a story like this, which is full of legal nuances, gets reported in some quarter as if the President has some vague relationship to it, and as if this means non Indians are about to be expelled from their homes. 

Odd how things become told as stories.

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*  The Shoshone were a fairly large Tribe, in releative terms, in the 19th Century and were truly indiginous to the region, unlike the Sioux and Cheyenne which were displaced in the East and moved to the West, becoming Plains Indians in the process of adopting the horse.  For this reason, i.e., immigration, the Cheyenne and Sioux were regarded as invaders, as they really were invaders, by the tribes already present in the region, such as the Shoshone and Crow.

The Shoshone were a very widespread tribe and are known by other names, probably not surprisingly. The Bannock, for example, are Shoshone.  While regarded as a separate tribe, the Comanche are actually Shoshone as well, distinct culturally as they were the early adopters of the horse in the 18th Century, as opposed to the rest of the tribe which only adopted horses some years later.