Railhead: Abandoned Chicago & Northwestern line, Powder River, Wyoming

Railhead: Abandoned Chicago & Northwestern line, Powder River, Wyoming

This is an unusual picture if you know what you are looking at.  In the distance, you can see an abandoned Chicago & Northwestern rail bed.  The line provided rail service from Casper to Lander starting in 1906, but its fortunes declined when it lost the U.S. Mail freight in 1943.   Shortly after that the Chicago & North Western began to run on the Burlington Northern line between Casper and Shoshoni, which still exists and most of the rail pulled.  In 1972 the portion of the rail between Lander and Shoshoni was abandoned for the most part, although a small local line still runs in the Shoshoni area.

This photograph not only shows the 1906 to 1943 rail bed, but also part of the original state highway that has been moved here and there in favor of a better road grade, as well as the current highway.  The old highway is to the right, the new one to the left.  The Burlington Northern is just a few miles to the north, but of course can't be seen in this south facing photograph.

This photo has made me realize how many rail locations I pass by all the time and haven't posted here.  This entire line is one I frequently encounter and could have posted long ago, and its not the only one.

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.

The Casper Daily News for January 5, 1917. Amuse your chickens.

This Casper paper doesn't have anything on the front page on the ending of the Joint Commission with Mexico, unlike the one Cheyenne paper did on this day (the other Cheyenne paper also did not).

I'm posing this one to show that, basically.  Some of the headlines are the same as those that ran in Cheyenne, some not.  Things like that, then as now, are up to the paper.

By focusing on stories that relate to the Punitive Expedition I'm likely giving a false impression that every paper, everywhere, was equally focused as the Cheyenne ones were.  Not so.  This Casper paper (one of two or three that were published in Casper at that time) did not focus on it nearly to the same extent, for whatever reason.  That's important to note.

Crime and scandal figured largely in this issue. The exploration of oil prospects near Powder River, which would cause a boom there, was going on in a major way.  And the odd item in the bottom left hand corner.  "Chickens should be amused, says expert."

Sunday Morning Scence: Churches of the West: House Of Our Shepard, Powder River Wyoming

Churches of the West: House Of Our Shepard, Powder River Wyoming:

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.

Friday Farming: Shipping and Preg Testing. 2014

Shipping and Preg Testing. 2014: ...

Many more photographs on link above.

Natrona County School District Bond Vote

Tonight, February 24, 2014, the Natrona County School District will hold the second of its public meetings to take comments on the proposed bond issue, which will go to the voters, if passed, later this spring.

As Natrona County residents know, our single school district serves a population of at least 80,000 people and covers 5.376 square miles.  To put that in a bit of prospective, the state of Rhode Island covers an expanse of 1,214 square miles.  Vermont coveres 9,620 square miles.  So, the county is about four times the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 60% of the size of the state of Vermont.

That means the single school district serves children that come to its schools from a huge expanse.  The number of rural schools is not as large as it once was, in keeping with the reality that modern school requires modern infrastructure, and for the final stage of public schooling, high school, that is particularly true.

The district has four high schools, Natrona County High School, Kelly Walsh High School, Roosevelt and Midwest.  NCHS and KWHS are by the far the largest of the schools. Roosevelt is an alternative school, set up for kids who seek the benefits of its programs, and Midwest is a small community on the edge of the county.  Many Natrona County residents probably don't even realize that Midwest has a high school.  As can be seen, the concentration of high schools is naturally in Casper, simply because Natrona County, in spite of its vast expanse, really only has six towns within it, a couple of which are no longer really full towns.  Actual towns are the greater Casper area (Casper, Bar Nunn, Mills, Evanston), Midwest, Edgerton and Alocva.  Towns that once existed, and are sort of still there, include Powder River and Arminto.  The overwhelming majority of students attend NCHS or KWHS, which have huge student populations.

KWHS and NCHS are undergoing reconstruction.  Built in the 1920s, it is simply time for NCHS.  It's a beautiful school, but its facilities are dated.  This is also true for KWHS which is not nearly as old, but like a lot of buildings built in later areas seems to have borne the test of time less well. 

In Wyoming, school construction is basically funded by the state.  Education is legally a "fundamental right" in Wyoming, and all of the state's children have the right to the same basic education.  This has come to mean, both philosophically and legally, that the state's mineral resources, as reflected in income to the state, are distributed by the state, so that counties with low mineral production are not deprived of the ability to teach their children to the same standards that those with high incomes are.

This is not universal, however, as the state at some point determined that it would not pay for "enhancements".  Naturally, the state was concerned about being asked to pay for high dollar athletic facilities and the like.

But what is, and ins not, an enhancement has turned out to be a tricky deal.

In the proposed bond issue, Natrona  County School District No. 1 may be asking for funds that are not, in a real sense, "enhancements".  They are necessities.  The first of these is upgrades to existing schools for school security, something that cannot be ignored now that we have the ability to do it.  We blogged about that in an recent entry here.

Directly related to safety is funding for three swimming pools, one at NCHS, one at KWHS, and one at Midwest High School.  In a district that covers a territory as vast as that covered by some Eastern states, the need for this should be self evident.  These schools will be lifesavers for some, and will benefit all.  We have also blogged about that in this entry and in this one.

Finally, but not least in significance, we here in this area continually are told that our mineral extraction economy produces good jobs for local residents, particularly those who grow up here.  At the same time, those of us who have lived here for all or the balance of our lives know that quite often Wyoming's biggest single expert is our young people, whom, in lean times (and we have a lot of those) grow up, graduate from high school, and then leave in search of work, never to return.  We also know that the oil and gas industry is expressing a need for skilled employees, which in many instances they end up bringing in from out of state. And, additionally, if we're serious about educating our youth for the 21st Century, we have to admit that shops built in the mid 20th Century, aren't going to effectively serve that need. The Bond would fund construction of a Science and Technology center where students who wished to pursue these talents could.  We have blogged about that here.

The bond deserves to pass. The School Bard deserves credit for taking this on.  The people of Natrona County should come out to support them.