Showing posts with label Laramie River. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laramie River. Show all posts

Sunday, May 19, 2019

May 19, 1919. Laramie to get a refinery, Daniels comes home, Ataturk in Samsun



Big news in Wyoming, and most particularly in Laramie, was that the Midwest Oil Company, which was very active in Natrona County, had determined to build a refinery in Laramie.

People in Laramie today may be surprised to know that this was even considered, let alone that it was actually built, which it was later that year, although the remnants of the refinery remain there.  Indeed, oddly enough, discussion has been going on for several years on how to clean the remnants of the refinery up, a project that has been ongoing, and on May 5 of this present year a legal notice regarding the final work on it was published.

The refinery operated from 1919 to 1932, making it a plant that closed during the height of the Great Depression.  The same location was later operated for a few years as a Yttrium plant, although most of the refining equipment had been removed in the 1930s.  Clean up of the site is nearly complete.

Navy Yeomanettes welcoming the Secretary of the Navy back to Washington, D.C., May 19, 1919.

On the same day Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was welcomed back from Europe by female sailors at the new Navy Building.
The first anniversary of air mail was commemorated.

The Post Office and the Army, which provided the flyers, were also commemorating the first anniversary of ail mail service in the United States.

Cambridge and Harvard, May 19, 1919.

And Cambridge and Harvard were photographed.  I don't know what this area looks like today, so I don't know how much this view has changed. Does anyone here?


And students were doing toothbrush drills at the school located at the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company.  At the time I was a student we didn't do drills, but we were instructed in school on toothbrush use and given some odd stuff that would color our teeth prior to brushing to see if we were effective in the use of our toothbrushes.  If we were, the stuff would brush off.  I recall that we did that for several different years, so toothbrush instruction was still going on at least as late as the 1960s and 1970s.

Today is regarded in Turkey as the centennial of Turkish independence, we should note, but because Mustafa Kemal Ataturk reached Samsun, a city in Turkey, and set about organizing military efforts.

The dating to this date seems oddly subject to propaganda in my view, as Ataturk went on to be the post war leader of Turkey and was the central figure in the new Turkish state.  In reality, the Turkish War of Independence was ongoing as it was effectively the Greco Turkish War, which had started a few days prior.  That war itself was one of the odd ancillary wars of the theoretically over First World War, as it started off as an Allied licensed Greek landing in Turkey in anticipation of carving up the Ottoman Empire.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Today In Wyoming's History: February 8. An Enduring Controversy

Today In Wyoming's History: February 8: 1918  Oral arguments heard in the United States Supreme Court in Wyoming v. Colorado.  The controversy surrounded appropriations on the Laramie River