Blog Mirror: Road Musings

 

Road Musings

Wednesday, August 19, 1874. Taking back.

 August 19, 1874

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 19, 1874.

It is hereby ordered that all that tract of country, in Montana Territory, set apart by Executive order, dated July 5, 1873, and not embraced within the tract set apart by act of Congress, approved April 15, 1874, for the use and occupation of the Gros Ventre, Piegan, Blood, Blackfeet, River Crow, and other Indians, comprised within the following boundaries, viz: Commencing at a point on the south bank of the Missouri River, opposite the mouth of the Marias River; thence along the main channel of the Marias River to Birch Creek; thence up the main channel of Birch Creek to its source; thence west to the summit of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains; thence along said summit in a southerly direction to a point opposite the source of the Medicine or Sun River; thence easterly to said source, and down the south bank of said Medicine or Sun River to the south bank of the Missouri River; thence down the south bank of the Missouri River to the place of beginning, be, and the same is hereby, restored to the public domain.

U. S. GRANT.

Hmm. . . .  

Last edition:

Sunday, August 9, 1874. Camp Scene Near Blue River, Colorado. William Henry Jackson.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Colorado, Colorado River, Photography, The Frontier West, William Henry Jackson

Monday, July 20, 1874. Custer enters Wyoming.

Obviously posed photograph of George adn Libby Custer in their Ft. Abraham Lincoln quarters in 1874.  Custer, wearing his dress uniform, still sports his famously long hair in this photograph.

The 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer crossed into Wyoming Territory from Montana Territory.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 12, 1874. The Lost Valley Fight.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Army, Germany, Indian Wars, Kiowa Tribe, Lost Valley Fight, Native Americans, Red River War, Texas, Texas Rangers, The written word

Going Feral: Another lawsuit over wolves.

Going Feral: Another lawsuit over wolves.: 

Another lawsuit over wolves.

Ten entities intend to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for not extending protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

When wolves were first introduced, it was my opinion that wolves themselves would not be a problem in the Rocky Mountain West, but the people who surround them.  

That has proven to be correct.

Going Feral: Another lawsuit over wolves.

Going Feral: Another lawsuit over wolves.: 

Another lawsuit over wolves.

Ten entities intend to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for not extending protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

When wolves were first introduced, it was my opinion that wolves themselves would not be a problem in the Rocky Mountain West, but the people who surround them.  

That has proven to be correct.

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things:

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things::   

This is why we can't have nice things:

 

The above is a case caption of a lawsuit brought in Montana in which Wilderness Watch is suing the U.S. Forest Service over the Forest Service program to use rotenone to take out non-native trout species so that cutthroat trout, the native species can be reintroduced in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

So, in the name of wilderness, Wilderness Watch, it acting contrary to nature.

Sigh.

Blog Mirror: The Place Where She Only Sleeps

 

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Wednesday, September 25, 1963. President Kennedy speaks in Laramie.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 25: 1963  John F. Kennedy spoke at the University of Wyoming.  His address:

Senator McGee--my old colleague in the Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social talents, must be developed at our universities.

I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.

What I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history. The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place in the last 30 years.

If you realize that when Queen Victoria sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now, suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30 years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of it.

There is really not much use in having science and its knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So, quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life. That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United States.

The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage the complicated social and economic and world problems which come across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the House, as representatives of the people.

But most importantly, as the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of Congress had to deal with.

If you feel that the Members of Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures, probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things: tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or we will perish.

So I think the chance for an educated graduate of this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you that you are needed.

This trip that I have taken is now about 24 hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the people.

Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore, they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems which require a national solution.

This country has become rich because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are going to pass on a country which is even richer.

The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.

This is not surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand, it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.

Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted. People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.

One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.

Another research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil, and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is going to make it possible.

Investigation is going on to assure at the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water. Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists, government--State, national, and local--and members of other professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity. We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States, but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's edge.

It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.

All this, I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being, 30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30 years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty. That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of 18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent.

In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize it.

Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their proper role.

I express my thanks to you. This building which 15 years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing it, will play its proper role.

Thank you.

He'd fly on to Billings later that day.

On the same day, President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic was overthrown in a military coup, having served following his election for only seven months.  His party was Socialist in nature, and the US would oppose another coup in 1965 which sought to restore him to power.

The House of Representatives approved a measure to reduce the Income Tax Rate. The Senate would later follow, and the bill signed into law in February 1964.

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.: 

Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

The Battle of the Rosebud was an important June 1876 battle that came, on June 17, just days prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Fought by the same Native American combatants, who crossed from their Little Big Horn encampment to counter 993 cavalrymen and mule mounted infantrymen who had marched north from Ft. Fetterman, Wyoming, at the same time troops under Gen. Terry, including Custer's command, were proceeding west from Ft. Abraham Lincoln.  Crook's command included, like Terry's, Crow scouts, and he additionally was augmented soon after leaving Ft. Fetterman by Shoshoni combatants.

The battlefield today is nearly untouched.

Called the Battle Where the Sister Saved Her Brother, or the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, like Little Big Horn, it was a Sioux and Arapaho victory, although it did not turn into an outright disaster like Little Big Horn. Caught in a valley and attacked, rather than attacking into a valley like Custer, the Army took some ground and held its positions, and then withdrew.  Crook was effectively knocked out of action for the rest of the year and retreated into the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming.

 

Monday, July 23, 1923. Disasters. First ascent of Clyde Peak. French Foreign Legion failure. Squamish Nation, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw amalgamation. Sigsbee funeral.

I'm often amazed, particularly in regard to weather disasters, how often headlines from 1923 read like those from 2023.

That't not to draw a conclusion that I do not intend to suggest, I m'just noting it.

Clyde Peak, left, Blackfoot Mountain, right in 1925.

Norman Clyde became the first man to climb Clyde Peak in Glacier National Park.

Clyde Peak, now. By Owen Jones - File:Red Eagle Lake.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109050999

A French Foreign Legion attack on the Moroccan town of Tagzhout Hill was unsuccessful.

The Labour Parties attempt to have the House of Commons call for an international conference was rejected by the Conservatives.

Canada's Squamish Nation, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, were politically amalgamated and adopted a democratically elected council.

The funeral of Rear Admiral Sigsbee was held.  He had been the commander of the USS Maine when it fatefully exploded in Havana.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Montana Quits American Library Association Over Marxist President, Wyoming Noncommittal

Oh heck, Wyoming, go ahead and pull out.

Here's the Tweet:

An actual Marxist woman. . . who probably has little use for the head of the American Library Association and its head.

I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity! 

And my mom is SO PROUD I love you mom.

First of all, I don't know if she's a Marxist, or a lesbian, but anyone dense enough to claim an association with British Library butt sitter Karl "look at the massively screwed up mess my children were" Marx is a twit.

And screaming "I'm a lesbian" right now is the functional equivalent of screaming "I'm whatever seems to be edgy and unpopular but really isn't". If Tucker Carlson came out with a blistering rebuke of Cocker Spaniels tomorrow, about half the people in the Progressive camp would come out as Cocker Spaniels.

Maybe she's a lesbian, which maybe is a social construct, or maybe not, but it doesn't have much to do with this role.

Or maybe right now it actually does, if her claim to be a "lesbian" is much more of a social construct of identification, rather than a weird declaration of sexual attraction orientation.  One of the things that is truly gross and disgusting has been the insertion into public school library of books that basically amount to homosexual sex manuals.  Efforts to remove them, and they should be removed, meet with "only the Nazi's burn books", which we have to assume would mean that if Public School No. 9 purchased a subscription to Playboy, it'd be okay.

That ties in with the Marxist claim, as even though actual Communist regimes quickly abandoned it in their own administrations, revolutionary Marxism, following Marx's written lead, had the personal sexual morality of alley cats.  The association of Marxism with radical sexual views isn't simply an item of right wing condemnation, but a feature of actual revolutionary Marxism, if not of actual governing Marxism.

And what does Marxism really have to do with "collective power".  Marxism was based on the theory that library butt sitters and smelly café debaters had a right to tell workers what to think, organize them, and then tell them what to do or have a bullet put in their head.  If you really want Marxism, there's a place left espousing it, and the Kim's may love a visit from you, although I doubt that Yo-jong, who is the Marxist functionary she'd probably draw, would really approve of her attraction declarations.

And Solidarity is an anti-Marxist position.  It comes from Catholic Social Teaching.

Why does everything have to involve screaming politics and gender raging in Western Society anymore?

Truly, Radical Self Centeredness and Narcissism is the Zeitgeist of our times.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Eh?

Wednesday, July 4, 1923. Boxing, Parades and Sabotogue.

Then, as now, it was the 4th of July holiday, and all the usual events occured, including parades and events of all sorts.

This event happened at Takoma Park, Maryland.

In the West, numerous rodeos were held, but in Shelby, Montana, something else was tried Jack Dempsey fought Tommy Gibbons.  

Shelby was a small oil town and only about 7,000 of the 20,000 spectators paid to see the fight, causing a large financial loss to the promoters.  Some of the deficit, like that of the much later major event of Woodstock, would be made up by promoting a movie of the event.

A crowd of up to 200,000 attended a Ku Klux Klan rally in Kokomo, Indiana in what may have been the largest rally in its history.

The Klan was very strong in Indiana at the time.

Stunt pilot B. H. DeLay died when his plane, later thought to be sabotaged, crashed.  Passenger R. I. Short also died in the event, which occured at Venice, California..  DeLay had been involved in a heated dispute over an airport, but no suspects were ever arrested for sabotage to his plane.