This major public access story hit the news here Thursday.

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

I'm quite familiar with this stretch of property. As a kid, before the recent owners who owned transferred it, I used to hunt part of it.  I never asked for permission, even though I'm sure I should have.  In those days, in the 70s, we asked for permission a lot less, and it was granted by fiat a lot more.

This is a real boon to sportsmen.  It'll open up miles of river to fishing, and miles and miles to hunting.  I've passed by deer and doves in this area a lot as I didn't have permission to go where they were.  Now I'll be able to, although I hope the BLM makes as much of this roadless as possible.

I hope they also lease it out for grazing.

Indeed, I have some mixed feelings about this as I really hate to see a local ranch go out of production.  The family that owned it had started off as sheepmen in Johnson County and moved down to Natrona County when their land was bought for coal production.  Now they'll just be out of agriculture entirely, and I really hate to see that, even though I'm glad to see this didn't go to out of state interest.  Indeed, what occurred is more in keeping with the purpose of the original Federal land programs, including the Homestead Act, than what often does occur with land sales now days.

I will note that, of course, in the age of the internet this of course resulted in moronic comments, including the blisteringly ignorant comment that its somehow unconstitutional for the Federal Government to own land. That comment is so dense that it should disqualify a person from going onto land in general until some education occurs.

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

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

Tumble Inn Powder River, Wyoming

\

A familiar Natrona County landmark's history.

As noted on this entry, this is a familiar Natrona County landmark.

As also noted in the comments to this video, it may contain some errors.  One definite error is the attribution of its decline to the Interstate Highway.  That's not the case.  In Wyoming, I80 goes on the path of the old Lincoln Highway which, while it does bypass some towns the Lincoln Highway went through, doesn't run anywhere near Power River.  Nor does I25 or I90.  So whatever the source of the demise may be, that isn't it.

One of the commentors on the video is, moreover, well situated to know the history of the Tumble Inn and if that person feels there are errors, there most probably are.

It's still pretty good, however.

One thing I would note is that the story isn't completed.  Rather, the story runs through one of the last owners.  After they left it, it did continue on, but it went rapidly downhill.  The facility converted into a strip bar, an odd choice for an establishment in a small, unincorporated town some 40 miles away from Casper.  As heavy drinking is a factor in any such establishment, the trouble having a distant "boobie bar", as my wife calls them, in the county is obvious.  Particularly when the nearest competitor at the time was ten miles out of town and on a divided highway.  It doesn't seem like a sound economic choice.

Then the Inn lost its liquor license.  The allure of youthful partially clad dancers aside (the one time they were the subject of a news story a dancer looked suspiciously underage), such establishments are apparently too tied to alcohol to do without it, and it closed for good.

I was in the Tumble Inn twice, both well before the strip club era, and most likely during the era that the video closes out with.  We stopped in for dinner with in laws.  I recall rattlesnake was on the menu, as were Rocky Mountain Oysters, but they were out.

The second time was after that, when my father-in-law and I stopped to buy beer there for some function, although I don't recall what it was.  I do recall it was in the winter, as it was good and cold. The bar was crowded, full of locals, and a couple of guys somewhere between 40 and 70 who looked like they lived at the bar.

And that gets to another aspect of its decline and fall.  Having a small rural restaurant and bar is hard enough in the Wyoming of our current era.  But once you lose the locals, you're done for.

The establishment apparently dates back to the 1920s, although I couldn't find any references to it from that time period.  It turns out the name "Tumble Inn" was popular at the time, and there was another bar in the Salt Creek oilfield in the 1920s called that.  In addition, somebody's house in Casper was referred to that way, being the property of an oilman who had a lot of social events there.  The video says the restaurant/bar in Powder River dates back to the 1920s, and it might, but as noted, the only references from the 20s I could find were to the two other Tumble Inns.

At any rate, in the 1920s Powder River's 40 miles from Casper was a longer distance, in real terms, than it is now.  And Power River went through some oil booms, including one about that time, and again in the 1940s.  Indeed, at one time the town was on both sides of the highway and was actually an incorporated town, which it isn't now.

For that matter, Natrona County had several locations that were much more viable towns than the are now.  Arminto Wyoming, which is off the main highway but not far from Powder River, was a thriving sheep shipping point and railroad town.  It had a legendary bar in a hotel located there, and the bar still existed into my adult years, before a fire took the building down.  Locals attempted to drag the bar out of the burning building, but failed.

Waltman and Hiland were two other such tiny, but real towns.  They're still there, but they're shadows of their former selves.  Waltman is really a small oilfield camp south of the highway and south of the old townsite now.  Again, into my adult years, its gas station, which is now a residence, was in business, and it had a small café in it.  Hiland's gas station still operates as does its store, café, hotel and bar, its business probably saved by the fact that it's on the highway, but so distant from anything, there's nothing else nearby.

The Salt Creek Tumble Inn was in a town called Snyder, I've never even heard of.  At some point, Salt Creek itself was a small town, and no longer is.  Both would have been in the eastern part of the county.

North of Casper, there's Midwest and Edgerton, which are still there. They were much more substantial towns in their day, and in the 1920s Midwest, a Standard Oil town, very much was.  Both towns are still oilfield towns today, but they've likewise declined as oil facilities near them shut down or automated, and the U.S. Navy moved out of the former strategic reserve near there.

Of course, as automobiles and highways improved, the communities around Casper boomed and grew, and today that's where the county's population is.

Still, even as late as the 1950s, it seems that Wyomingites were willing to drive huge distances for a dinner.  Driving to Power River from Casper was no big deal to eat, it seems. And I recall people talking about going to the Little Bear Inn near Cheyenne on dinner dates, which means that the drove something like 140 miles to do that.  Likewise, people used to drive to El Torro and Svilars in Hudson, in Fremont County, to do the same, which is about the same distance.  

Nobody does that now.

December 31, 1921 Changing Times.

It was a dry New Years Eve. . . at least officially for Americans and most Canadians who, if they were following the law, had to ring in the arrival of 1922 with some non-besotted beverage.  I'm sure many did.

Miss Texanna Loomis, December 31, 1921.  She was a radio engineer.

And there was a lot to celebrate that year.  For Americans, the Great War had officially ended, although the fighting had obviously stopped quite some time prior.  For the many Americans with Irish ancestry, it appeared that Irish independence was about to become a de jure, rather than a de facto, matter.  Americans were moving definitively past World War One, and in a lot of ways definitively past a prior, much more rural, era and country.

Not all was well, however, as the economy was doing quite poorly.  There was hope that would soon change, with that hope being expressed in a regional fashion on the cover of the Casper Daily Tribune.

Also, on the cover of the paper was the news that the County had taken over ownership of the hospital.  It'd run the hospital until 2020, when Banner Health took over it, converting it back into a private hospital after almost a century of public ownership.

September 29, 1920. The American Legion expresses its (1920) view on Japanese immigration . .

and it wasn't welcoming.

The degree to which really strong anti Japanese immigrant views were once not only common, but probably the majority view of the country, is well known but still not always appreciated. We wouldn't think, for example, that the American Legion would have made a statement about it in 1920.  Indeed, it's not even clear why this was a topic for the brand new veterans' organization at the time.

FWIW, a "picture bride" was a mail order bride arranged through a matchmaker, who paired photographs of the prospective bride and groom. In this case, that was done in Japan and then the bride went to be with their husbands. The "gentleman's agreement" referred to here allowed for the immigration of spouses after the Federal Government quit issuing visas to Japanese immigrants and the exception for picture brides had been made illegal in March, 1920.  The elimination of the exception left about 24,000 male Japanese in the United States batchelors.

Japanese picture brides arriving at Angel Island, California.  1919.

For those who may wonder why that was the case, immigration by the Japanese was heavily male.  Before World War Two, Japanese in the United States (or Japan) almost never intermarried with other cultures, although World War Two would change that forever in the United States and briefly in Japan.  The role of women in Japanese marriages, moreover, placed a very heavy emphasis on women being dominant in the households and it would really take acculturation of the Japanese in the United States, which World War Two accelerated for a variety of reasons, to alter that in the US.  So the nest result was lonely lives for a lot of Japanese men, and not a few Japanese women, who were willing to take the risks of marrying somebody they didn't know over a lifelong single status.

It should be noted that not all of the brides were Japanese.  Some were Korean, at a time at which Korea was an unwilling Japanese colony. That also says something about how the male Japanese diaspora was viewed in Japan.  Generally intermarriages with Koreans in Japan, or Korea, was frowned upon, but not in the case of women being shipped across the sea.

The male motivation isn't hard to figure out, but the female one is more so.  Many of the marriages were arranged by the parents of the couple back in Japan and therefore they knew each other a bit.  Some did it as it was regarded as adventuresome in Japan at a time when women's ability to travel abroad in that country was very limited.  Some took it up simply as a means of immigrating to a new country where social restrictions on women were known to be much less restrictive.  Most were apparently shocked by the conditions they lived in at first, and disappointed with their prearranged male matches who were ten to fifteen years older than they were, but they came to adjust to them.

It's really odd to think of the American Legion, which was brand new at the time, even having an opinion on this topic, let alone an anti-Japanese immigrant one in light of Japan having been an Allied power in World War One.

It's also a bit odd to think of Natrona County having less than 15,000 people.  Indeed, I'm envious of that.

Monday Morning Repeat Of The Week. The week of May 24, 2009

Why the best?

Casper, Natrona County, 1909

Easy.

It was the only one of the week.

January 26, 1920. Hard Winters

The feeding of elk in Jackson Hole, frequently a topic today, was also a topic in 1920, and indeed was being discussed by the Department of Agriculture on this day with this release to the press.

Also discussed in the press was the murder of Natrona County rancher John J. Corbett, whose headquarters were apparently on Elkhorn Creek near the base of Casper Mountain.

Monday was off to a grim start.

Today In Wyoming's History: Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.:

Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.

Reshaw's Bridge, or more correctly Richard's Bridge, was a frontier North Platte River crossing only a few miles downstream from Platte Bridge and like it, it was guarded by a contingent of soldiers.  As noted in the plaque below, it ultimately closed in favor of the slightly newer Guinard's Bridge, which Richard bought, which ultimately came to be referred to as Platte Bridge.



In 1866, after the bridge had been abandoned, it was dismantled by the soldiers stationed at Platte Bridge Station.

While Platte Bridge Station is remembered for the battle that occurred there, Reshaw's Bridge saw its fair share of action as well.

Indeed, as we've discussed previously on one of our companion blogs, which we'll link in here below, bodies exhumed at the post when Evansville's water treatment facility was built include what are certainly two soldiers and a pioneer woman.  Generally, the Army would reclaim bodies of troops, but my minor efforts to inform the Army of this failed.

From our companion blog, Some Gave All:

Richard's Bridge Cemetary Mausoleum, Evansville Wyoming

This mausoleum was built when at least part of the cemetery of the military post at Richards Bridge was located at the time Evansville, Wyoming built a water plant near the river. The former location of the Frontier Era bridge across the North Platte had not been precisely known up until that time. When three bodies, believed to be the bodies of two soldiers and one woman, were disinterred they were reburied here, on the grounds of the Evansville grade school. The school grounds were the only nearby public land at the time.

This creates a very odd situation in a variety of ways and the mausoleum is not well maintained. While worse fates could exists than spending eternity near a grade school, it is generally the case that the Army has recovered the lost remains of Frontier Era soldiers when they were located, and it would seem that moving these victims of Frontier conditions would be a positive thing to do.

Monuments that didn't happen. November 17, 1918.

American infantrymen crossing the Armistice Line at Etain, March 17, 1918..

American troops were marching into Germany while some were denying that a prostrate Germany was prostrate.  And at the same time a proposal was made to erect a monument to the Great War dead from Natrona County in front of the courthouse.

That courthouse is now gone.  Maybe that monument was erected and is gone now, but as far as I'm aware, the only outdoor memorial to Natrona County's World War One veterans came up in the 2000s, although there were early memorials of other types, those being a trench mortar in Veteran's Park, Caissons at Washington Park, and a swimming pool named in memory of a lost soldier of World War One at the same park.

The Lions' Last Roar. The ongoing decline of service organizations.

I read in the paper earlier this week that the Lions Club is giving up sponsoring the local fair and rodeo parade, which its done for a decade.  This year is its last year.  The parade was held yesterday.

Of course, they drew that last parade in an election year, which must have been a pain.  I didn't watch but a few minutes of the parade, and that from an office window, but even at that I could tell it featured all the running politicians.

The reason the Lions are giving the parade up is a simple one. It takes about thirty people to do the parade, they reported. They're down to ten members.  As the Tribune reported, in an interview of the club's leader;

We looked at our membership. It takes an awful lot of people to put that parade on. Most service clubs have declining membership and ours has declined to the point we didn’t feel we could do it adequately. We notified the fair board officially in January but they knew it was coming. On a regular basis, we have about 10 members and it takes at least 30 people to start that parade, so we’ve taken advantage of our children and our wives and husbands.

Wow.

I've written about the decline in fraternal organizations before.  The Lions aren't really that, however. Their a service organization.  My prior posts probably somewhat confused the two and frankly most fraternal organizations have a service element to them.  Probably in the modern context they darned near all do.  But some organizations are expressly service organizations.  The Lions are one of them.

The Lions were founded in 1916 in Chicago.  It has 1.4 million members worldwide.  So it's still around and still relatively big.  But around here, it's not.  And that's common.

The Rotary Club, which seems to be doing much better, will be taking over.  Rotary International is a little older, having been formed in 1905.  I've known quite a few people who have been Rotarians, but I've also known a few Lions. The Lions I've known have been frank over the years that they were worried about the local clubs (there were at least two, maybe there still are) future. At some point, I'd think, you'd tip over a scale where the weight would be really against you.

Which is a shame, but then I myself have never been in a service or fraternal organization and don't really have any interest in joining one either.  But that's a feature of my character.  I wouldn't have been in one if this was 1968, or 1918.  It's just not me.  I'm glad its been somebody, however.

Today in Wyoming's History: June 18, 1918. Big storms and the state of rail transportation.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 18: 1918  Huge evening thunderstorms washed out railroad bridges in Central Wyoming.  Hardest hit was the area between Powder River and Waltman.

A rail line still runs between the towns today, but there are no bridges.  At the time, there were numerous ones, which shows how different rail bed construction was at the time.

Interestingly, at the time of 2018, this same day was also pretty rainy in Central Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: The City of Casper ponders closing Fort Casper Mus...

Today In Wyoming's History: The City of Casper ponders closing Fort Casper Mus...:  I've photographed Ft. Caspar a zillion times, but of course I can't find any of my photos of the post itself right now.  Anyhow...

Airport flaps and the law of unintended consequences. Parking should be free? No, it shouldn't, and it actually isn't.

 

Flying back from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  A trip which entails going from Tulsa to Denver (cheaply) and then from Denver to Casper (expensively).  Parking while you are in Tulsa is hardly going to be a significant element of your costs.

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

Maddie Ross in True Grit (written by Charles Portis)

I sometimes get the feeling recently that the Star Tribune is looking for something to do.  It probably needs something to do as its paper declines to the size of a large pamphlet and its reduced to running columns from the national syndicates.

Maybe not, but it's hard to look at the story on airport parking at the Natrona County International Airport as a real story.  Or at least its hard to get all worked up about it.  But I suppose its a legitimate story.

Here's the deal.

The airport is putting in some new parking, but it isn't in yet.  It won't be, maybe, for a long time, as its part of the airport's strategic plan, not a present project.

Big deal, you might say.

Well, it sort of is, maybe, in that there's a Wyoming state law that provides:

For public convenience, commissioners or boards having jurisdiction to regulate parking of vehicles shall provide free parking areas adequate to accommodate at least twenty percent of the number of vehicle parking spaces for which a fee is charged.

That's nice, eh?

Well, it is. And it was a law that was backed by former Natrona County Democratic legislator, Dick Sadler.

So, what's the deal, you may ask?

Well, the free parking is 1.5 miles distant from the terminal.  Quite a ways.  Probably nobody is going to park there.  At least not very many people, and not very often.

The tribune, alerted to this (it seems to have come up in recent airport board meetings), interviewed Natrona County Airport Board president Joe MacGuire on this.  MacGuire, who holds a pilots license (and whose father once kept a really neat A26 Invader out at the airport), is also a Republican state representative from Natrona County.  He tends to be blunt.  So, he told the Tribune that he knew it was a long ways away and admitted that its unlikely to be used.  He even stated , about the law;“It was kind of added in there at the very end and wasn’t even placed in a part of the statute that directly deals with parking,  Honestly, it’s kind of an unfunded mandate"

You know, it is an unfunded mandate.

Now, this is just the sort of thing that's fun for some people to get their back's arched up about.  Dick Sadler, the former legislator who often focused on Democratic populist type things while in the legislature has been working on this, apparently, out at the Airport and stated about the situation; "I passed that law and they hate my guts for it."

M'eh.

I very much doubt that.

But some folks are mad.  One friend of mine with far left political leanings commented "It's always obnoxious when rich people like MacGuire are quoted saying shit like, 'I wish everything at the airport was free.' I'm sure he's not really that much of a tool."

A very nice mural, obviously put up before terrorist attacks made extra security necessary, at the airport.  I have no doubt that most of these folks don't walk to walk 1.5 miles to the terminal. . . but I also have no doubt that saving $20.00 makes much of a difference to their trip.

MacGuire did say that, in the interview, but maybe he just deserves credit for being honest.

Consider the following.   The airport is only within $33,000 of going into the red.  That's really tight.  According to MacGuire the free parking at the airport costs the airport  $165,000. That makes quite a difference.

And now we learn, on top of it, that Allegiant Air is pulling out of Casper, and that will cost the airport $26,000.  With that loss, that $33,000 in the black becomes only $7,000.

That's really tight.

And as the airport manager noted, that's just the direct costs to the airport, not the ancillary loss, and that's likely to occur.  So that $26,000 direct loss is likely to become a bigger loss.  Indeed, it almost certainly will. Quite a few of those Allegiant travelers would have, well, parked at the airport while they were in Los Vegas (which is where Allegiant flew to from here).  That's a loss.  So, we can probably say that bare minimum, at least right now, the airport has probably less than a $5,000 margin, post Allegiant, before it goes into the red.

And while "free parking" is just the sort of "looking out for the average man" type of program that folks like to get behind, in this case, it makes darned little sense in general.

Indeed, the common thesis behind such things is that this protects the interest of the little guy. That would presuppose, in this instance, that the little guy is able to afford a ticket, set by the airlines not the airport, to fly out of Casper.  Most Casperites can in fact afford to fly out of here, but its so expensive that many, including most experienced travelers, actually choose to drive to Denver and catch a plane from there. The most expensive leg of air travel in and out of Casper is the flight to Denver or Salt Lake City.

The B Concourse (United Air Lines) in Denver.

Indeed, generally if you do that (and maybe you have to), you then park your car in a public lot that's so far from the actual Denver terminal that its located just outside of Dallas, Texas.  Or at least it feels that way.  And you catch a bus from there to the airport terminal.

Ground Transportation, Denver International Airport.

All of which makes the "free parking" at the Natrona County International Airport more than a little bit absurd.  You can shave off a little of the costs of prolonged parking, sure, but not much.  And any free parking is always going to be second best and always, therefore, going to entail an added element of risk for whatever you left there.  All this means that the thought was nice, but extremely unrealistic.

 

The view from Salt Lake City's airport.  Like a lot of business travelers, I go to both airports a great deal.

Something that the residents of the County don't appreciate much, I think, is that the airport is a real gem.  We're very lucky to have it. We're so acclimated to it that we don't realize what a major piece of infrastructure it is.  The runways are massive.  Some of the runways, I'd note, are retired from use and aren't maintained, and there's no plans to put them back in use. That's a real shame.

The entire airport is a legacy of the Second World War.  It was the third airport in the county, replacing a second that is now the Town of Bar Nunn.  There's no earthly way that Bar Nunn airport, which wasn't even completely flat, could serve the needs of the county today.  Not even close.  It was likely barely adequate at the time it closed.  The Natrona County International Airport was built as a training airbase for B-24s and B-17s during World War Two, on a much flatter piece of ground, and the runways are numerous and enormous.  Beyond that, probably a majority of the hangers date to the Second World War and are gigantic. The airport complex it self features numerous buildings that date from the original airbase as well.  It's a huge, and great, airport.  Probably the closest thing to it in the state is Cheyenne's municipal airport, once a major stop for transcontinental air mail runs, but it's a shadow of what Casper's airport is.*

The airport receives quite a bit of international traffic, given its great facilities.  If kept up, and they're trying, it'll continue to.  Better yet, if the retired runways could be put back in use it would be fantastic, but there's no money to do that.**

 

British Antarctic Survey airplane at the Natrona County International Airport.  This is a common site at our airport.  Surprisingly, they did not fly here from the UK for the free parking.  Go figure.

Which takes us back to parking.  The airport's master plan is to put in new parking near the terminal, and it will include public parking, so that will solve the problem.

But it won't solve the short funding problem.

And, everything that legislators mandate must be "free", no matter what it is, in the end, isn't.  It's a reverse tax of some sort, or it just becomes a public impossibility.  Free health care, free college, free highways, whatever, aren't really free.  When there are few public "frees" its easy to appreciate that, when there are thousands of such mandates, however, they cease to be.

Which doesn't mean that they aren't worthwhile.  Some are. Some are not.  One like this, in its intent, is perfectly understandable.

But it isn't free.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*Indeed I'll note here that the location of the Wyoming Air National  Guard's infrastructure at the Cheyenne airport is somewhat unfortunate.  The Natrona County International Airport was built by the United States Army Air Corps and it has everything, including size and an out of town location, that an airbase needs. Cheyenne's airport is surrounded by the town, on the other hand (you can circumnavigate the darned thing by car) and is smaller.  In terms of placement it wouldn't matter whether the Guard's airbase was in Casper or Cheyenne and the only reason I can think of it being in Cheyenne is that its close to F. E. Warren Air Force Base, which is also in Cheyenne. But F. E. Warren houses missile wings and nothing else, and doesn't have a large air strip itself. The aircraft at F. E. Warren are helicopters.

Maybe this is something that Natrona County should ponder, although over the years some super huge hangers have been built for the Air Guard in Cheyenne and it is, no doubt, too darned late now.

**Military traffic. . . is anyone listening?

Blog Mirror: The Aerodrome; Maybe Berlin Airlift Rates were achieved.

Maybe Berlin Airlift Rates were achieved.

Light private aircraft parked on unused runway at the Natrona County International Airport.  This part of the tarmac was used just for small private aircraft.  Another was used for private jets.

They came in, and then they left again.

Hundreds of private aircraft, arriving in time to see the August 21 solar eclipse, stacked up waiting to land and landing one right after another all morning long, and then taking off right after that.

The airport has likely never seen anything like this take off and landing rate. . . at least not since World War Two.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 27. Disasters and ships.

From Today In Wyoming's History: September 27:

1923  Thirty railroad passengers were killed when a CB&Q train wrecked at the Cole Creek Bridge, which had been washed out due to a flood, in Natrona County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1944 USS Natrona, a Haskell class attack transport, launched.

There's something in the county memorializing the latter (the ship's wheel, in the old courthouse), but not the former.

Such an awful disaster, you'd think there might be.

The Casper Record for September 26, 1916: Bryan speaks, fair a success.

Far to the north of Cheyenne, one of the Casper papers reported that William Jennings Bryan spoke in town, and that the county fair had been a big success.

Nothing on the Guard.

Fairs were apparently held later in the year at this time.

The Casper Record for September 5, 1916: "School has started--Have you got that uniform?"

Something we've addressed here before, but which would seem alien to many locals today. The era in which the local high school required uniforms.

For girls, anyhow.

Boys had a uniform they couldn't avoid, as we've already noted, but one which their parents, relieved of buying school clothes, were often glad to have imposed. The military uniform of JrROTC.  Girls, on the other hand, had a prescribed uniform.  What exactly it was in 1916 I'm not sure, but a basic blouse and dress is likely what was required.

In other news current residents of Natrona County would be shocked to see that the county fair was, at that time, held in late September.  Gambling with the weather?   And the tragic death of Mildred Burke, front page news in Cheyenne, had hit the Casper paper.

Blog Mirror: Today In Wyoming's History. Bad economic news

Today In Wyoming's History:  March 23  2016:  For the first time since 2000, Wyoming's unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

The unemployment rate only comes in a little above 5%, which shows how high the rate of employment is statistically in the country right now.   This is high enough nationwide that we fit into what used to be regarded as technical full employment.  It's never possible to have 100% employment.  In recent years, however, figures in this area have been regarded in a negative light and some claim the actual nationwide rate of employment is higher.

At any rate, the real unemployment rate in Wyoming is undoubtedly higher.  Natrona County has a 7.2% unemployment rate and Carbon County has a 6% unemployment rate.  Both counties are energy dependent for their economies, as is of course the state generally.  Given as Wyoming had a high migrant employment rate in recent years the high unemployment rate now probably reflects a significant degree of reverse migration, so the actual rate is likely much higher than what we're now seeing reported.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

This is the chapel at the Oregon Trail Veteran's Cemetery in Natrona County, Wyoming.

Does this make sense? Busing

I went out back this morning to get some trousers off of my illegal clothes line, and found that at that early hour, 7:00 a.m., a school bus was across the highway picking up kids.

7:00 a.m.

And this for a short bus ride.

Going back in, and remarking to my wife on it, she noted that the rural kids have already been on the bus for an hour.

Does this really make sense?  With our "school of choice" system here, we're busing kids all over town from really early in the morning.  Well, not "we", the School District is.  Our kids have always been taken to school by us, their parents.

When I was a kids, I walked to school the entire time I was going.  But at that time, our school choice was geographically determined.

The state picks up the tab for all this busing, but I have to wonder in an era of declining mineral revenues if they'll put a halt to it.  Frankly, in a lot of ways, it doesn't make very much sense.

Irritated With Infrastructure

One of Casper's many closed roads, due to construction.

You can't get there from here.

Or at least it seems that way.

I realize that a person is not supposed to complain about improvements or repairs to infrastructure.  Indeed, a person is supposed to be worried about how little of this occurs in the United States.

But you wouldn't realize that from around here.

Due to a really weird fluke in budgeting all sort of heavy construction that normally takes place in the summer commenced just before Fall.  This isn't the fault of the contractors, I'm sure they'd rather work in summer, when they have more help and better weather, but due to some budgeting oddity, it didn't happen that way.

And I should really be glad for all this work being done, particularly when state revenues are declining and there's a real danger now that such work might not be as well funded in the future.

But it's easy to forget that on the way to work.  I now can no longer easily get anywhere in town as there's so much road and sewer construction going on.   I should grit my teeth and bare it, but it's easier to whine.

Much of the sewer work being done is being funded by Natrona County's .01 Cent sales tax, which generates a lot of revenue at next to no pain for local residents. Signs have been put up reminding us of where the money came from, but early in the morning, before the coffee kicks in, that might not send the best message.

And in regards to signs, the School District put up a nice sign down by one of the high school construction projects about how that was budgeted.  That, however, irritates me as I can't help but continue to feel the pain over the loss of the pool at NCHS as it undergoes massive reconstruction.  It's not the only high school undergoing that, however, as KWHS is also undergoing reconstruction, and the third new campus that will serve them both is undergoing reconstruction.  Would that the strategy had been just to put in a new high school, and then perhaps necessary repairs and preservation of the pool could have been undertaken at the other schools, a more modest goal.

The reconstruction at the high schools themselves is slated to take years.  That also amazes me, as construction projects on public works that take years to complete baffle me.  They likely baffle me as I'm not an engineer and I have no knowledge of the real practicalities of heavy construction.  I looked it up, however, and I note the Pentagon only took 18 months to build.  But, in fairness, it would have taken years to build under normal circumstances, and World War Two was not normal.

So I have no real complaint there either, but I do wish the construction was complete.  Probably everyone does.  But I also wish it was complete with a pool at NC.

I also wish the highway construction just getting up and rolling (that fall thing again) west and east of town was complete.  There's construction now going in either direction. 

Here, on one project, I really have to wonder.  The state is building another bypass around the city, way out, under the concept that this relieves traffic that otherwise goes right into the city. But does it?  It seems to me that the main impact of bypasses is to direct development into a new area, so the plan never really works. 

If they are going to do it, however, and I wish in that case they were not, I do with they'd get it done. The one project, complete with a highway bridge, has been lingering in a state of incompletion for some time, and it's odd to now see it recommence.  Again, it's a budgeting thing.

The state is also doing something out by the area we call Government Bridge, but which maps like to call Trappers Route.  That rural area has undergone a slow development in recent years, but the project doesn't seem related to that.  It looks like a huge turnout for trucks is being built.  I hope that's all the more it is.

So, I guess I overall have no complaints here, but it's sure odd to experience all of this is the Fall of the year.

I guess, in context, Casper of the late teens and early 20s must have been a lot like this, as a huge amount of construction all over town was going on.