The Oldest House in the United States, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Oldest House in the United States, Santa Fe, N...:

This structure in Santa Fe exists on foundations dating back to approximately 1200, and was continually occupied up in to the 1920s.  Interestingly, it's directly across a very narrow street from San Miguel Church, the oldest church in the United States.

Postscript

It's been pointed out to me that I was remiss in not saying who had built the original foundation for the house.

This area of New Mexico has been occupied by Pueblo Indians of various groups for a very long time.  Natives from one of these bands constructed the original foundation, and Pueblo Indians from the Tano group occupied the pueblo in this area until around 1435 or so.  The area may have been vacant for some time thereafter, but was reoccupied by Tlaxcalen Indians, who came into the area with the Spanish in 1598.  They also built the nearby San Miguel Church.

Churches of the West: San Miguel Church, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Churches of the West: San Miguel Church, Santa Fe, New Mexico:

This church is the oldest church in the United States.  Built between 1610 and 1626, the church is still an active Catholic church offering two Masses on Sundays.
 

This church serves as a reminder that our concepts of North American settlement are often somewhat in error.  This church in is the American Southwest and has been in active use for over 400 years, a figure longer than any church in the American East, and a demonstration that much of what we associate with European civilization in North America was already further West at an early stage than we sometimes credit, and that what became the North American civilization was already less European, in significant ways. This church, for example was constructed by regional natives.

Modern Technology and the Public Building

Recently, on our blog about courthouses, I posted an item on the Townsend Justice Center, which is the courthouse for Natrona County Wyoming.  In that photo I posted a picture of a circuit court courtroom.

I should note that the circuit court is much, much, smaller than the district court courtrooms in the same courthouse.  As I'm set to be a little critical of those courtrooms, I want to make that plain.  The district court courtrooms are much larger.

Anyhow, one of the recent features of public buildings has been the incorporation of a lot of new technology into them.  I'm not wholly opposed to this, and regard it as inevitable, but one thing that I think people really need to keep in mind about this is that certain types of public buildings reflect design lessons learned over centuries, to address their specific functions, and incorporation of technology that's only a couple of decades old, or maybe even less than that, isn't necessarily going to improve their function or even really work very well.

 

 The Niobrara County Courthouse in Lusk Wyoming.  This old courthouse has one large courtroom, typical of older courthouses.  While heating and air conditioning were lacking in effectiveness the last time I was in the courthouse, the big courtroom does nicely accommodate projected voices.  The thread on this blog from 2009 featuring this courthouse remains a freakishly popular one here.

To start with, I'll note audio systems. This is a routine feature of almost any modern building where a person is expected to give an address of any kind, but by the same token almost any building built prior to the mid 20th Century lacked one.  If a building was expected to have public speakers, such as a church or a courtroom, it was built accordingly, and that worked just fine.

Churches are a particularly good example of this, as some churches, including very old churches, are huge.  The person at the ambo had to be able to address the person in the back as effectively as the front, and without yelling. While some no doubt had problems doing that, most didn't, and that's simply because people in that role learned how to project their voices, and were aided in that by the architecture of the building's interior.

 

 Interior of the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in Dallas Texas.  Built in 1902, this church has classic architecture which wold have allowed voices to carry to the back of the church quite easily.

Courtrooms worked the same way, although the lawyer and court didn't really have to address the entire audience in the gallery, except during voir dire, but just the jury.  Still, they had to do that, and learned how to speak effectively in order to do so.

All of this is still true, but now audio systems have been incorporated to achieve that. The problem is that they aren't really always needed, and when incorporated into older buildings you get weird results on occasion, such as cutting in and out, voices that are way too loud, or distortion. Still, people have become so used to the systems they never simply dispense with them, but endure the glitches and press on.

Audio is one thing, but a bigger thing is becoming the incorporation of computer and visual systems.  People can be absolutely fascinated with them.  So we now see buildings with all sort of projectors, monitors, and the like.

One of the most distracting examples of this I've seen was in a church in Ft. Collins, Colorado, in which some sort of projector was used to flash poorly drawn images apparently depicting the gospels being read as part of the readings for that Sunday.  It was distracting, and not really well done. The building itself was fairly poorly constructed for public address at that.

But its in courtrooms where this has become really pronounced, and not really to uniformly good results.

The courtrooms of Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District are a good example.  From some point in the 1930s, up until relatively recently, district courts used a Depression Era courthouse. That building featured a very large single courtroom, if a very tiny axillary courtroom is not considered.  Over time, however, the existing makeup of the court became simply too small, as with three district court judges, and one courtroom, something was clearly needed.  The original purpose was to remodel the beautiful 1930s vintage courthouse, but a bond measure to do that was defeated. So in the end the State ended up funding the remodeling of the old Townsend Hotel across the street from the old courthouse.

 

 The Depression Era Natrona County Courthouse, now no longer used for court purposes.

The Townsend Hotel had been unoccupied for a couple of decades at the time, and something really needed to be done. The remodel is really something, and the entire facility is very impressive inside, even if the outside looks a lot like a 1920s vintage hotel.  But the courtrooms in it drive me nuts.

The Townsend Justice Center, the remodeled Townsend Hotel.

The courtrooms themselves are beautiful really. Not as pretty as the old big courtroom in the old courthouse, but still, they're really nice.  Nobody could rationally complain about their appearance.  But up in front of the bar, they're uncomfortable.

The problem is that they've been wired to the nth degree for every sort of electronic device going.  Each juror has their own television monitor, a huge television monitor hangs from the ceiling.  All the counsel tables are wired so that counsel can plug his computer in and run the monitors.

That all sounds great, but what that means is that tables are fixed in place.  And not only are they fixed in place, they're small.  In contrast, counsel tables in older courtrooms are capable of being moved, and are also gigantic as a rule.

That may sound minor, but its not.  In a typical multi day trial, its impossible in some modern courtrooms to effectively seat more than one attorney, or an attorney and a paralegal, and the client.  No small matter. And in any multi day trial, no matter how high tech the lawyers may be, there are boxes and boxes of material that must go somewhere, and hard paper exhibits.  Without the ability to move tables, join tables, and rearrange, the ability to actually operate in the courtroom is impaired.

Circuit (not District) courtroom in the Seventh Judicial District.

It is the case, undoubtedly, that the ability to present a case electronically can really enhance a presentation, but it can distract also.  In almost every instance of extensive courtroom technology being used for a presentation that I've seen, somebody screwed it up.  I've seen family photos presented for evidence, and a lawyer sort through photos that included some that were somewhat questionable in nature (good thing to keep off your legal computer, I'd think), and a person have to go back and forth and back and forth.  And I've also found that a fair number of attorneys who are really comfortable with electronics are no longer comfortable with the court's electronics, so they pack in their own, adding to the enormous assortment of stuff in the courtroom.

None of this is to suggest that this should all be ripped out of the courtroom, and even if I argued for that, it wouldn't happen anyhow.  But, rather, a person needs to be careful.  Electronics aren't the end all and be all of presentation, and to some degree their diminishing the ability to effectively present in some circumstances, while greatly enhancing it in others.  It's one more tool.  But when things are built to accept the new tools, perhaps the reason for the old construction should be carefully recalled at the same time.

Being surprised by past conditions

As everyone who stops in here knows, one of the purposes of this blog is supposed to be to explore historical conditions.  The blog itself, of course, meanders a fair bit, so a person could be legitimately excused for not knowing that, but that's the general theme of things here.

Given that this is the authors' focus, you'd think that the authors themselves wouldn't be surprised by the very things they note, but in fact that's not always the case, which demonstrates, I guess, how accustomed we can become to noting things in our own neck of the woods, while running off of general assumptions in regards to other areas.

People stopping in here have no doubt noticed that there are suddenly a lot of photos or reflected posts on Hawai'i up here and that the authors have recently been there.  For me, it's not the first time, but the first time in a very long time.  I think I was last there in about 1975 or so, but frankly, it could have been as long ago as 1972 or 1973.  It's a while back.

At that time, I was pretty young, and while I recall being there, I also frankly wasn't as prepared, rather obviously, to be surprised by one thing or another of the type we generally note here.  This time, much older than I was back then, things are a bit different.

In travelling to Hawai'i, I'll note that we went to Maui and Oahu.  Last time, I went with my mother to Oahu and then to Maui.  We went to Oahu as my mother had a great aunt who lived there, and who actually had been born and raised there.  So we spent most of our time there.  I recall that Maui, where one of her daughters lived, was less developed than Oahu  and I remember visiting the extremely impressive Haleakalā National Park.  I also recall that my cousin was married to a Native Hawaiian and that he was quite the hunter, which really impressed me.  But I didn't run around looking to make observations on old Hawai'i.

 Hunting is a traditional activity of the Polynesians and is very much a local activity in Maui.

I didn't this time either, but perhaps for some reason, I can't help but not do that. So I did a bit. And there were plenty of things that surprised me.

For one thing, I was surprised by the serious nature of cattle ranching on Maui. Frankly, I shouldn't have been, but for some reason I assumed that ranching on Maui was probably a touristy remnant of days long gone by. Not so. There are cattle everywhere outside of town.  And a lot of the country looks like pretty good cattle country to.

I feel downright stupid in making that observation, as its' probably the same sort of observation that tourists make here that I find rather lacking in one way or another.  "You have a lot of cattle here!"  Well, no kidding.  Well. . . they have a lot of cattle there too. And reading up on it, cattle have been a pretty big deal in rural Hawai'i for a really long time.

One thing I wouldn't have been prepared for at all are some of the efforts that were made to develop the cattle industry beyond that which it was.  For instance, one of the islands visible from the southern coast of Maui is a small island most recently used by the Navy as a target range.  Now its a state park, closed to general access, but at one time in the late 19th Century a Wyoming rancher and his partner tried to make the entire island a cattle ranch.  I would never have guessed that.  I guess that also says about how lucrative big time ranching in general was, and how comparatively cheaper Hawaiian land was, prior to air transportation (and more on air transportation in a moment).  No way a Wyoming rancher could buy an island like that today.

 Kahoʻolawe.  During and after World War Two this was a Navy target range, but in starting in the mid 19th Century it was ranch land, and was one big ranch owned by a partnership made up of Wyoming rancher Angus McPhee and Maui landowner Harry Baldwin from 1918 up into the 1940s. Even at the time it was first a target range, it remained a ranch.

That cattle were and are such a big deal shouldn't have surprised me, as pig have been since before European contact.  Pork is a major Polynesian food item, and the pigs sure didn't swim to Hawaii.  Indeed, there were no mammals at all on the Hawaiian Islands before the Polynesians started to colonize them around 1100. They brought the pigs with them.  Before that, the islands were the domain of birds and spiders.  Some really big birds too.

Some of the birds are now extinct.  That's not a surprise to me, but what probably is a surprise to many is that the Polynesians had a major hand in that, in the early colonization process.  The Hawaiian Island were partially deforested in the process of Polynesian colonization, and some of the really tiny remote ones were virtually completely deforstested.  Bird life also took a pounding.  I'm not saying, however, that the Polynesians were bad people for doing that.  They were trying to survive against incredible odds, and to the extent that they recreated the islands to suit their needs, well, it's pretty impressive really.

If pigs are no surprise to me, and cattle shouldn't be, one animal that really, really is, is the horse.  I wouldn't have expected any significant horse use on the islands at all, outside of ranching, but I was very far off the mark.

 

Saddle Horses today on Haleakala, Maui, Hawai'i.

Horses were apparently introduced to the island relatively shortly after European and received very widespread use.   That really shouldn't have taken me off guard, given the general difficulty in getting around the island, or in transporting anything, at the time.  The last Crown Princess of Hawai'i, Victoria Kaʻiulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawekiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, actually died after dying from a cold she caught while riding on Oahu, although her heath had otherwise become weak by her concerns over the fate is the islands and her loss of climatic acclimation by living abroad.  Still, it's interesting that riding had become common in the islands.

The Hawai'ian monarchy had actually established a cavalry unit in order to be able to rapidly deploy troops in an environment in which it otherwise was difficult to, and the U.S. Army consistently deployed cavalry to the islands after the US annexed them in 1898.  Foreign invasion of the islands was a major military concern for the US and while we now principally think of the Navy in this context, the Army had a major role in defending the islands.  A lot of that mission was fulfilled by cavalry, the only type of unit that was capable of going from one spot on the islands to another quickly.  Cavalry remained stationed in the islands as least as late as the 1930s.

I don't know if it was the Army that brought polo to the islands, but I've read that George Patton, who was station in Oahu in the 20s or 30s, played a fair amount of polo while stationed there, which isn't surprising as polo was a huge Army deal at the time.  I noticed that Maui has a polo grounds, which doesn't mean the Army brought it there, but I do wonder.  Anyhow, an area has to be pretty horsey before polo will show up there, particularly a place like Hawaii as it isn't as if it'd be easy to ship your polo pony there, or that it'd be even easy to ship a horse from one island to another.  Anyhow, it says something about how common horses had become.

Indeed, horses were such a factor in the Army's role in Hawaii that Hawaii was one of the first locations in which the Army made a dedicated effort to phase them out.  Mechanization of artillery started to come in during World War One, but it was still something that was somewhat underway as late as World War Two.  Anyhow, while a surprising location, to me, for such an effort, Hawaii was one of the areas where the Army mechanized artillery nearly immediately after World War one.

One thing that very much surprised me, and shouldn't have, is the lack of sea transportation in the islands. As close as they are, you'd think that all the major islands would have ferry services.  They do not.  There are ferry services that serve very nearby islands. For examples, the islands that are within very close proximity of Maui have ferry services, which makes sense. But if its a major island, it won't be in ferry contact with the others. That struck me as really odd, until I realized later that the economics of it just don't allow for that in the modern era.

Traditionally, of course, the Hawaiians traveled from one island to another by seagoing outrigger canoes.  But you can't carry much in a boat of that type.  The Polynesians themselves used more substantial boats, albeit still pretty small, for long distance travel  No doubt that was the norm in the islands up through, and after World War Two, as well. That is, people who lived there went from one place to another by boat.  I guess a ferry existed that operated between Maui and Oahu within the past 15 or so years.  So why not now?

 Traditional outrigger canoe.

Well, it probably doesn't make economic sense.

In my mind's eye, I imaged a situation, for example, where a businessman in Oahu might want to go to Maui for the day and work.  A car ferry would allow him to take his car over, do his work, and catch the ride home that evening.  Makes sense, right?

Probably not.  For one thing, being a landlubber, I probably don't' appreciate the number of hours involved in a trip of that type.  It'd probably be a three day deal, allowing for transportation. And in thinking on it, it makes a lot more sense to just fly over to Maui, rent a car, do your work, and go home.  That's probably a lot cheaper.  Indeed, depending on prices, that's what I'll do quite often if I need to go to a town or city over five road hours away.  I can do it quicker and cheaper by flying and renting a car. That should have occurred to me.

Pearl Harbor, by air.

Maui, by air.

So that air travel has become as vital, for intra islands transportation, as it has become for intra state travel in Alaska, shouldn't have surprised me.  I'm still not entirely convinced that some sort of passenger ferry wouldn't be somewhat viable, but it probably isn't.

On air travel, the airplane has made modern Hawaii what it is, for good or ill.  That's not a criticism, just an observation.  Hawai'i is beautiful and much of it remains unspoiled, but frankly Honolulu is a place that I think only a person who loves really big cities would love.  It's an obvious major destination for Japanese tourists, and has been for decades. Signs are frequently in English and Japanese. Chances are to residents of crowded Tokyo, it's pretty neat.  But no matter what, you couldn't have done a Japan to Hawai'i vacation without the airplane.

For that matter, you really had a hard time doing one from the US to Hawai'i, although one of my grandfathers had done just that. As a young man, his health deteriorating, he was sent to Oahu to live with relatives there.  This was prior to World War One, and it involved a long sea voyage, quite obviously, as part of the trip.  His health was pretty bad at the time, and they sent him there for the weather, activity and to relax, which he apparently did.  I've seen one photo of him from that time period (I never met him myself) and his is indeed a skinny, very sick looking, young man in the period.

But that a rarity indeed, made possible by his father assisting in it and by the fact that his cousins and aunts were living there, making it somewhat cheaper than the norm.  For most people, traveling to the islands wasn't even a remote possibility until the airplane made it easy, although tourism was already a factor in the islands economy in the early part of the 20th Century. Still, on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, while there were hotels there, they weren't garden variety tourists for the most part, but fairly well heeled ones.  

The pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel, built as a luxury hotel (which it still is) in 1927.  As a complete aside, this photos has two Japanese tourist in the foreground, with one posing for the other with arms raised.  While not to seem culturally insensitive, this seems to be very much a Japanese cultural affectation, as Japanese tourists seem to invariably strike one of about three poses when being photographed.  This is one, with the person being photographed having his fingers in the "V" sign.  The same sign, with arms at the side is very common, and young female tourists seem to like to pose for male companions in a hip swung sort of pose with arms at the side as if pointing to something, no matter how dense the crowd near them may be.

Air travel to the islands was, at first brutally expensive, and prior to World War Two it was something that was really only undertaken by the very well to do.  After the war, however, air travel, while still not cheap, became much more affordable.  By the 60s it was very affordable, and now, while not cheap, it's well within the reach for Middle Class Americans.  In the meantime, air travel has expanded to where it is now possible to fly directly to Maui as well, which was not the case until 1983.

 

The first intra island air travel was on a plane like this. Well suited for its role, it'd be slow for most air passengers today.  Model at the Pacific Aviation Museum.

 Pan American in its post World War Two glory days.  This aircraft model, at the Pacific Aviation Museum, depicts a Pan American Strato Cruiser, a commercial airliner variant of the B-29 Stratofortress of World War Two.  Pan American used this long range aircraft to replace its prewar flying boats.  This airplane was the type that was used to fly all the way to Japan, with stops in Honolulu and Wake Island.

While tourists come to Hawai'i by plane, it's still the case that a lot of what's used in the islands still is local in one sense or another.  I've spoken elsewhere about local breweries, which tended to be lost in the US and reappear, but they were never lost in Hawai'i, other than during prohibition.  And the same is true of a lot of other products, some being surprising.  Portuguese sausage, for example, has a long local history, reflecting the immigration of Portuguese farmers to the islands in the early 20th Century.  And the islands still farm sugar cane and mill sugar, shipping the product back to the US.

Anyhow, some odds and ends in observations.  And I guess a final comment.  I wonder what it says about a person who picks up such observations while on such a trip? 

Forgetting why things were built that way.

Recently, a series of events has reminded me of how much people have forgotten why certain things were built a certain way, to our occasional detriment.

One of these events happened when I was at Sunday Mass.  A power substation blew out that morning and took power down to at least half the town, including my house, and the Church. When I entered the Church, built in the classic style, the reason for the big stained glass windows was immediately apparent.  The interior was fairly well lighted via the windows alone.

Now this particular church was built in the teens or early twenties; well before audio systems.  At some point within the last 30 to 40 years, an audio system has been put in.  Somebody, used to the audio system, must have thought that we'd be unable to hear the Mass as everyone was seated as close to the front of the Church as possible, given a pretty compact feeling to the the pews.

That was completely unnecessary.  In actuality, traditionally built churches require no audio system at all.

 St. Luke's Church, Forest Hills, New York, circa 1940s.  This church has electric lights, clearly, but it wouldn't be hard to see inside without them. And it wouldn't have had a PA system at the time this photograph was taken.

The large vaulted interiors of traditional churches are more than ample to naturally amplify a person's voice, at least if they are speaking in a manner which projects their voice, which not all people do, of course. But for those who know how to do that, and it's an easy thing for at least most men to do, the mere design of a church is all the amplification enhancement that they'll require.  Indeed, the first speaker of the morning, prior to the audio coming back on, was plenty loud enough simply through his own voice.  We've just forgotten that churches were designed that way for a reason.

So were courtrooms.

The only people who really need to hear in a courtroom are the lawyers, the witnesses, the judge and the jury.  And just about any courtroom fulfills that requirement just as is.  Be that as it may, in recent years courthouses have been almost completely retrofitted to give everyone a microphone.  It isn't necessary, and I don't like it.  My voice is plenty loud enough without amplification, and I often find myself brushing the microphone aside or walking away from it, as I don't need it, and it's just an irritating distraction. But nobody else needs it either.  In those instances in which a person is extremely soft spoken, the microphone actually doesn't help much anyhow, so they aren't really achieving anything.   None the less, all the new courthouses have audio (and visual) systems and by this point in time, probably nearly all the old ones do as well.

 This is the photograph we use as a flag on this site.  It depicts the original Federal Courthouse in Cheyenne, now no longer standing.  Note the extremely high ceiling.  This room was built for natural audio, and natural cooling as well.

Just as older churches and courthouses have been retrofitted with audio systems, older office buildings have been retrofitted with new windows and air conditioning systems.  The two don't always work well, or even work together.

I work most days in a century old office building.  It's a nicely preserved building, but it was clearly built before any kind of air conditioning.  It was also basically framed up while in progress, which was very skillfully done, but which also meant that the windows were set by workers in a less standard way than today.  Indeed, only the front of the building really has a uniform window pattern, as the original thought was that the sides would probably not need them long, as it was anticipated other buildings would be built of a similar five story height along side of it.

None of that is a problem, but some years ago, quite a few now, the decision was made, and wisely, to put in a set of nice new windows. They look great, but they're modern office windows.  I.e., they seal up very nicely but they aren't really made to open.  Indeed, they take a key to open them, and when we first had the windows in, we never opened them up.

The problem there is that the building wasn't built with an air conditioning system in mind.  The air conditioning system was the windows.  As noted, an air conditioning system was put in, years ago, but its always fighting the basic design of the building.  At first, we would try to assist it by not opening the new windows, but over time, everyone has given up on that and we've unlocked some of them, although they don't open wide like the original, not very attractive, windows did.  The other day the air conditioning system was down and we actually had a very warm day. By the time I went home in the afternoon, I was sick from the hot, still, air.  It isn't that high heat actually bothers me, it does not.  But dead still air trapped in a building does.

I'm not suggesting that we do away with the air conditioning and put old style windows back in.  But what I do think is interesting is that it's been forgotten in most buildings of this type that when they were built, they worked in hot weather.  The east and west facing windows were opened, and the ceilings were high.  Probably a decent breeze flowed through them on such days.

Indeed, the 19th Century buildings at Ft. Laramie remain very cool even on blistering hot days.  I've been in them when the temperature was over 100F outside, and they were cool. The reason has to do with the construction.  They were built with very high ceilings. The builders knew that if the windows and doors were left open there'd actually be a nice cooling breeze flowing through them.  I'm sure today, if they were in private ownership, somebody would be trying to put in air conditioning.

 Old Bedlam, the oldest building in Wyoming, on the grounds of Ft. Laramie.

In the southwest there are very old, very stout, buildings also built with cooling in mind.  Thick adobe buildings were common in the Southwest, and quite a few still stand.  They do not get hot, in spite of very hot weather.  People just knew how to build them.

For that matter, when I was a kid here people generally did not have air conditioning.  A few people did, but it was uncommon.  For the most part, people just opened windows.  My parents house, before some additions were made to it, stayed uniformly comfortable in very hot weather.  An addition of a glassed back porch partially defeated that, but even then, comfortable areas of the house could be found.  Basically, you didn't need air conditioning.  When people did have it, at first, they tended to have a window mounted unit or a swamp cooler.

The schools here didn't even have air conditioning when I attended them.  Granted, school gets out here in May, before the weather generally gets really hot.  Some of the schools are pretty hot in the summer, based upon the limited number of times I've been in them. But I'll bet they're all built today with an air conditioning system.  When we attended them, if it was warm, they just opened the windows.

We have, at home, a swamp cooler.  Truth be known, I hate it.  It may be just me, but I always find about any setting on air conditioning in houses to be annoying, or even arctic.  I never turn ours on, but my wife, who likes air conditioning, and who is always hot, does.  I tend to be always cold, so I'm not keen on it.  It'd be different, no doubt, if we lived in a really hot climate.  And, indeed, a person needs to be careful what they complaint about.  While it was blistering hot in her recently, now the air conditioning is on line and it's absolutely freezing, in my view, in the building.  The system may be old, but it sure works.

Another thing that people have forgotten the purpose of is the strip of land, found in some areas of this town, and in many towns, that runs between the sidewalk and the city streets.  This feature is a thing of the past for the most part. The feature existed so the city could expand the streets if it needed to. It's nice for property owners, and pedestrians, as it allows people to walk away from the street.  But it's really just a convenience and that small strip of land actually belongs to the city.

This presents no sort of problem at all for the most part, but one somewhat bad thing is that in older neighborhoods people planted trees in these strips, which is again, perfectly find, unless they're obstructing vision on busy corners, which on some here they really do.  Nobody seems to recall that the strip actually belongs to the city, and perhaps the city ought to take those trees down when they obstruct vision at busy corners.  Of course, they aren't going to, and people would be upset, as the trees are nice. But, as with the other day when the traffic lights were out, some of those corners are really scary.

Traffic lights themselves are something that they city seems to have forgotten the purpose of.  In recent years the City, to save fuel, has changed the setting on traffic lights on weekends so that some of them, on very busy streets, just flash red (or yellow), rather than turn green.  Well, saving fuel isn't their purpose.  Stopping traffic on really busy intersections is. The weekend streets are really now a little scary.

Here's one that takes younger people completely off guard:

That's an ash tray.

More specifically, it's a nice stainless steel ashtray affixed to the wall by our elevator.  Nobody every uses it, but at one time people did. That's because at one time smoking was so common, and so accepted, that it could be anticipated that people would need an ash tray just standing there, waiting for the elevator.  Now, if you got on the elevator smoking, people wouldn't be happy, and smoking isn't allowed anywhere in this building. The very few smokers who work in the building have to go outside to smoke. But even when I started work here (which, granted, is a quarter century ago) people smoked in the building. Some smoked at work.  And just a little earlier than that, people smoked in waiting rooms and lobbies.  A thing like this was then needed.  Now, it's just a weird stainless steel oddity.

Speaking of weird oddities, how about this:

There's one of these on every floor of this building, in the stairwells.  What are they?  Little access panels for banks of phone connections. . .long since out of operation and disconnected, and totally inadequate for a modern phone system.  Indeed, updating a building, such has been done, is not easy, but one oddball thing it does is leave the entire old phone system there, just not connected.

Here's one that we were using up until just a couple of years ago, but which I've still heard people wonder about.  It's a mail box. That is, an official U.S. Mail drop box.  The post office doesn't let us use it anymore, however.

The reason that we can't use it is that the lobby of this building isn't open 24 hours a day, and there's a postal regulation that requires 24 hour, seven day a week, access to mail boxes.  That is, they must be open for people to drop mail in, 24 hours a day, and this one isn't.  But, at one time, every office in this building dropped its mail here, and the Postal carrier picked it up.  Pretty handy.  It's still here, of course, but it's blocked so that we cannot use it, and they don't pick the mail up from it anymore.  My guess is that people occasionally forget, and some mail will be in it forever.

From the obscure to the ultra obscure, this is a display case for cigars.  At one time some small scale merchant had his small shop here in this lobby.  It probably was that way from day one, up until maybe the 50s or 60s.  A little cigar shop that also sold newspapers and magazines.  No doubt a lot of businessmen bought their newspapers, and cigarettes and cigars, in the lobby everyday. There's still a cigar shop up the block, which also sells malts, but not newspapers.  Even when I first practiced law that cigar shop did a thriving business, in a space about the size of a closet, selling newspapers, cigars, cigarettes, candy and, oddly enough, pornography.  It was bizarre.  Now it's returned, under a new owner in a much cleaner fashion, selling only malts, cigars and, oddly enough, history magazines.

Not noticing the familiar until its unfamiliar.

The west side of Natrona County High School is an area I didn't go to much when I was in high school.  I walked to school for one thing, so I didn't have cause to park over there.  And that area, surrounded by a bunch of very old small houses, was regarded as a bit rough for some reason.  Indeed, when I was a senior there was a riot on this part of the school, although I was there at the time.

Given all of that, I've never really taken note of the neighborhood to any great detail.  But now it's been torn down, as NCHS is gigantically expanding onto the neighboring blocks.  Over the next couple of years, it'll become a much bigger high school.

Now, because of my route to work, I drive through this area ever day.  And as it comes down, probably about a century after it first went up, I've actually taken note of its appearance for the first time, and what hte small houses all look like.

A matter of prospective

Observation by Army officer Thaddeus H. Stanton, about the Powder River Basin, in April 7, 1876, as published in The New York Tribune:

The country lying east of the Bighorn Mountains, along the Rosebud, Tongue and Powder Rivers, is extremely uninviting.  It is generally a badlands country, with high buttes of indurate clay and sandstone, attaining almost the magnitude of mountains.  But in this entire region there are no auriferous strata, and no rock harder than that above described.  I feel compelled to make this statement in opposition to the statements of many maps of that country which are being scattered throughout the land, upon which gold  is represented as among the minerals to be found in the Panther and Wolf Mountains (the highest badlands buttes above described), and where there is not only i no gold, but where the country has not a single gold-bearing strata or feature.  The Bighorn range of mountains, one of the finest on the continent, doubtless is rich in precious metals and this region is large enough to give room for a large mining population.  The Black Hills country does not compare with it in extent, and probably not in the amount of concealed treasure.  But between the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains there is no gold, and no gold-bearing country. Neither is there any land that would bear the hardiest grain or vegetable.  There is no timber worthy of the name; and water is scarce and of bad quality usually, and grass is poor and thing.  Altogether, nearly the entire region lying south and east of the Yellowstone River, from the Bighorn range to the Black Hills, is utterly worthless.

Major Stanton's opinion seems a bit harsh.

The Post World War One Homesteads

Recently, on our companion site Holscher's Hub, I posted two photo threads about Post World War One homesteads.  Those posts are here and here.

 

People commonly think of homesteading in the 19th Century context, often having a really romantic concept of it.  What few realize is that the peak year for homesteading in the United States was 1919.

That's right, 1919.

Homesteading itself carried on until the Taylor Grazing Act ended it in 1934 in the lower 48 states.  It carried on in Alaska for longer than that, under the Federal law, and still exists under Alaska's state law, although its really a different type of homesteading than existed in the lower 48.  There were some exceptions, which I'm unclear on, that opened lands back up after World War Two, on sort of a GI Bill for the agriculturally minded type of concept, but the enthusiasm for it was apparently limited.  In Canada I think that homesteading may have continued on into the 1950s.

But it was World War One that caused the last big boom in U.S. homesteading, and it was they year immediately following the war, which was also the last year that farmers had economic parity with urban U.S. populations, that saw the greatest amount of homesteading.  And it was a homesteading boom, in some ways, that was uniquely 20th Century in character.

Truth be known, homesteading was never really viewed the way that we have viewed it in the post homesteading era.  Our modern romantic view of it is unique to the post World War Two industrial era in some ways. There's always been a strain of romanticism attached to it, to be sure, because it fit in with the Frontier character of the country that existed in the 18th and 19th Centuries. And it also tended to define, as we've forgotten in modern times, a real difference between Americans and Europeans.  American farmers, which meant most of the population, could own land and do well by it.  European farmers, which meant most of the population, often did not.  Europe became an urban center earlier than the US in part for that reason, as the landless could have a better chance of owning something of their own off the farms, and getting  a farm of your own was extremely difficult, if not impossible, in most European nations if you were not born with ownership of one.  Indeed, the desire for land fueled immigration to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and various other areas that Europeans colonized, far more than any other source.  We may imagine that immigration was mostly the tired, hungry, and downtrodden, and of course it was. But land hungry made up a big percentage of immigrants as well.

19th Century homesteading, even at the time, was seen as sort of a transitory affair, and you can find a lot of contemporary articles about farmers being the vanguards of civilization. This is particularly true of stock raising homesteaders, i.e., ranchers, who were seen as a pioneering, but temporary, force, except by themselves.  Theodore Roosevelt, himself a rancher, commented in one of his late 19th Century articles about how herds of stock inevitably gave way to the plow, comparing ranchers to Indians, which meant that even he saw his ranching activities as doomed by history.  If so, he misjudged the progress of the plow.  Even as late as the early 20th Century, however, people seriously believed that "rain follows the plow."  It doesn't.

20th Century homesteading was something else, however.  The homesteading boom  of the teens was fueled by the globalization of the grain market, and a unique but temporary boost in the market and a unique, but temporary, increase in the amount of annual rainfall.   All of these combined created the conditions which allowed for a spike in homesteading, followed by an inevitable collapse in the agricultural sector.

The unique and temporary boost in the market was caused by warfare.  The second decade of the 20th Century was one of the most violent of the 20th or the 19th Centuries, and even the horror of World War One did not occur in a vacuum.  European wars started in the teens with a series of Balkan Wars; wars limited to the Balkans and Turkey, but which presaged the international conditions which would expand past that region and into Europe in general. The Mexican Revolution broke out south of the border in 1910, and was really rolling by 1911.  But it was World War One that really strained the global agricultural system to the limit.

In the abstract, how a war could do that is sometimes difficult to understand, in our modern, overabundant, era.  But the reasons are fairly plain.  The war put millions of men into the field, in harsh conditions (the war was accompanied by unusually harsh weather in Europe) where their caloric requirements were high.  Additionally, and now much more difficult to appreciate, the war also put millions of horses into the military service with a high caloric requirement as well.  For the men, their needs were met with meat and grains, and for the horses, grains and fodder.  The requirements were vast.  And this was compounded by the fact that animal production also provided the leather and wool upon which the armies also depended.

Not only, however, were the requirements vast, but the labor to do the work was now serving in various armies. Not only did the war require a lot of agricultural production, but it required the men who were doing it, in large part, to serve in the armies.  This caused a shortage of farmers, just as there was a great need for them. And not only was there a shortage of farmers, but of farm animals as well, as agriculture remained mostly horse driven.

 War time poster encouraging the saving of wheat, based on a famous contemporary photograph of women serving as the power for an implement, in the absence of draft animals, in France.

Farm labor shortages were partially made up by pressing women into service as farmers, everywhere.  There's a very common myth that women entered the workplace during World War Two, but it simply isn't true, or even close to true (we'll address this in an upcoming post).  Women entered the factory and fields in massive numbers during World War One.  Their role in food production became a national campaign in most Allied nations, where there were official efforts to put them into the field.

American Women's Land Army poster.

U.S. poster encouraging men below the age the Army was then seeking to serve on farms.  In short order, the Army would be taking me down to 18 years of age.

The American appeal was more rustic than the Canadian one, which made a martial appeal to young men to serve on the farms, relating that service to military service.

Resources became so tight that, even though rationing was never required on a national level in the United States (at least one state rationed, however) there was also an official campaign to encourage food conservation, and even conservation of some particular foods, so that more was available to feed the troops.

Canadian wartime poster encouraging consumers to switch to other foods to save food for the armies.

The war also had the impact of physically taking millions of acres of land directly out of production.  Not everything can be produced everywhere, which is fairly obvious.  Grains remain the staple of life in modern times just as much as they did in ancient, and this is particularly true in the case of grains. Grain can be grown, and is grown, in many regions, but large scale export grain crops are not. Grain production has greatly increased since World War One, but something that may not be readily apparent is that grain growing regions have expanded as well.

During the First World War era, grains were widely grown in Europe, North America, Argentina and Russia.  Much of the European production, however, was part of a regional market.  Italy, for example, has always been a grain growing region, but we tend not to think of it as a grain exporting region (although it actually is to some extent).  Of these regions, only two remained unspoiled by the war that being Argentina and North America.  Russia, one of the worlds most significant grain producing regions (well, the Ukraine actually) was taken completely out of the picture by the disaster of the war, which was followed immediately by the Russian Civil War.

This is also true of livestock production.  Horses, a critical item for every army, were so much in demand that Europe was basically stripped of them, nearly causing the extinction of one breed, the Irish Draught.  The United Kingdom, a major horse user, had always replied on imports for military horses and had worried about the supply pre-war, and now found itself fighting with an ally that had the same concern.  The large horse producing regions of the planet, North America, Australia and, at that time, Argentina remained relatively unscathed.  This was true for beef cattle production as well.  It was less true of wool production, which was a critical fiber in the war, and the United Kingdom itself was a significant producer.

 Wartime Canadian poster appealing to economic opportunism and patriotism.

While all of this was a human disaster, it was an agricultural opportunity of unprecedented scale.  A vast demand for agricultural products was created, and in certain regions, the means to exploit it existed.  And not only did the means exist, in the United States the government was encouraging it.  The US government encouraged homesteading, particularly for grain production, as if the boom would never end. And, as the Homestead Act remained in effect, and as the weather was unusually wet and therefore farming easier than usual, a land rush was soon on.

And the boom was experienced in other areas of the agricultural sector as well.  Horse ranching went into a massive boom in the West, starting just as soon as British and French remount agents started scouring the US and Canada for horses; a need which could never be fully met, in spite of a global effort.  Soon, with the Columbus, New Mexico, raid of Pancho Villa, the U.S. Army was in that market as well, pushing off French and British agents in the US so that it could acquire the horses and mules it required for a much larger Army that was nearly completely horse powered.

 

Remount shipping point.

Thousands of Americans who had previously had no direct connection with agriculture entered the rush, so lucrative was the grain trade at first, and so little, it seemed, had to actually be done in it.  In Kansas new towns sprung up full of such entry level farmers, many of whom didn't actually live on their farms, but in the towns, a practice that is common in some regions, but in this instance reflected an urban centric way of thinking.  Soon, these thousands were joined by discharged or soon to be discharged servicemen, many thousands of whom did have practical farming experience and agricultural roots, but who had the surplus cash to start up a farm, or small ranch, for the first time.  In Wyoming, hundreds of tiny homesteads, at most 640 acres in size, were filed, which with the favorable weather and market conditions, were actually viable in spite of their tiny size.

The boom couldn't last.  It trailed into the 1920s, but by then the prices began to fall. Soon after, the rain began to stop falling. An agricultural depression hit the US far earlier than the general Great Depression did.  By the 1930s the situation was desperate, and not only had the economy turned against farmers, but the weather had as well. Finally, in the early 1930s, the government repealed the Homestead acts, and new entries stopped.  Many of the teens homestead had already been abandoned by that time, once prosperous hopeful small units, but out place both economically and, as it turned out, climatically.

 Related Posts:

When Resources were Tight.

Disappearing Homesteads.

Dugout.

The Old Homesteads.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 4: The Dams

Recently the Today In Wyoming's History blog ran this item:

Today In Wyoming's History: February 4:

1905  Construction starts on Pathfinder Dam.

Presently construction is undergoing to raise the height of the dam to take into account a century of silting.

 Walkway on the top of the dam, soon to be removed due to dam being heightened.

View from the top of the dam, on one of the rare occasions that water is released through a tunnel from it.

It occurred to me that this illustrates a massive physical change in our region.  One we're so used to that we hardly even recognize it.

Pathfinder Dam is on the North Platte River, a river that runs from northern Colorado, north into Wyoming, before turning East and Southeast and flowing to Nebraska.  It's one of the most controlled rivers in the world.  I honestly do not know the most upstream of the dams on the river, but I believe there's some sort of small such structure in Colorado.

In Wyoming, the most upstream dam is Seminoe Dam, which was completed in 1939.  Below that, just a few miles downstream, is Cortez Dam, a dam apparently so obscure that it doesn't get much mention anywhere, except by locals, even though its a pretty impressive structure.  It likely was built about the same time.  Below that is Pathfinder Dam, depicted above, the only dam of its particular vintage and necessarily the first of the dams on the river.  Below Pathfinder is Alcova Dam, which started impounding water in 1938.  A couple of miles below that is the very small dam, Grey Reef.  Miles downstream is Glendo, and then Guernsey.  All of these dams, except for Pathfinder, were part of the Kendrick project, a project designed to bring irrigation to Central Wyoming.

Prior to the dams, the North Platte River flooded every spring, and then was a trickle by fall.  Paintings of Ft. Caspar from the 1860s show the river in flood stage as being absolutely massive, something that would surprise people in the area today, but which squares with contemporary accounts.  In the Fall it was the opposite.  Very clearly the river as we know it today was not the river that existed at least prior to 1910.  It isn't even the river as it was known in the 1940s, as at that time the Bureau of Reclamation didn't worry about choking the river off in Fall to impound water.  Now it does, as that's a pretty destructive process.

The difference between having water all year long and not is too great to really expound on.  We're used to having it all year round, and its part of the background to our lives.  It wasn't always that way.

The Joy of Field Rations

Somebody recently drew my attention to this blog, and it is neat;  The Joy of Field Rations.

Now, most people wouldn't regard field rations as joyful, but they'd sort of be missing the point of the blog if they didn't look beyond the title.  The blog isn't really about compressed rations, like C Rations, K Rations, or the dreaded Armor Rations.  It's about Army food served in the field. And not just the American Army, but all armies.  Most of the entries are actually about the rations of foreign armies.

It's really interesting, particularly in light of the theoretical focus of this blog, as its also a look into food habits and field food of earlier eras.  Now, nobody would claim that, in the case of most armies, that armies in the field routinely ate well.  But what could be done, and therefore was done, is interesting.  So, while we know about hard tack and bad bacon for the U.S. Army, those who have studied the topic also know that this is an incomplete picture.  This blog presents a much more complete picture.

Many of the entries are really interesting.  For example, here's one for Beef Pot Pie, but with biscuits for the crust. This recipe dates to the 1940s, but given its nature, I suspect it was probably a much older one that was still around.  I really like pot pies, and this one is cooked in a dutch oven.  I've made pot pies with pie crust in dutch ovens, but it would never have occurred to me to try this.  I may give it a try.  I note that there's some similar recipes for British meat pies.

More in keeping with the time period we're trying to focus on here, here's one for Beef Hash.  I don't know if I've never had beef hash (although this recipe will work for pork or corned beef, according to the blogger), but I love corned beef has.  Problem is, I very rarely ever have it. And by rarely, I probably mean once ever five years or so. Again, this is another recipe I'll have to try.  I'm surprised to find it as a U.S. Army recipe, but I probably ought not to be, given as its something made from scraps.

Army menus, even early on, were more varied than most suspect, and I've seen a recipe for Army chile dating back to the 19th Century.  The recipe isn't that much different from generic ones now, except that it was pretty much a complete do it yourself type of deal, rather than "dump in canned beans now", type of affair.  I really like chile, and make it quite often, but mine does feature the "dump in canned beans now" type of procedure.  Anyhow, one thing this blog helps illustrate is the variety in Army cookbooks, even quite a ways back.  For instance, here's a recipe for El Rancho stew, which apparently is still in the Army cookbook, but which has evolved considerably since its 1917 appearance.

There are a lot of bread recipes on the blog, which probably isn't surprising, given how much of a staple bread is.  And I must say, they look good.  Sheepherders bread is the only type of bread I've ever tried to cook in the sticks, and its easy to do.  Some of these are probably tougher, but they look good.  For example, there's this field recipe from 1916 for a yeast bread.  It looks good.  Here's another, meant to be cooked in a mess tin.  And regarding breads, here's one for coffee cakes.  Given that its' from 1941, this shouldn't surprise me, but it does.  I'd think of this as more of a mess hall item, and I wonder if it was.

Anyhow, this is an interesting effort, and I hope the blogger keeps it up. It's surprisingly varied too, with German, British and Russian entries, in addition to US ones, so far. 

Carnegie Library, Lewistown Montana.

This is the Carnegie Library in Lewistown, Montana.  The library has an addition, clearly visible, which makes for quite a juxtaposition of architectural styles. Still, in spite of that, it works quite well.

Just recently Natrona County Wyoming's voters turned down an effort to build a new library, thereby opting to keep the county's strained library.  The current library in Natrona County dates back, I think, to the 1970s, with an older portion of that library dating back to the 30s or 40s. That older portion replaced a library that was an original Carnegie Library of the same approximate vintage as this one. 

I note that as it shows, perhaps, how the importance of libraries has changed to communities over time.  Or perhaps it says something only locally, as at least one other Wyoming community recently passed a bond measure to expand their library.  Anyhow, I've been in libraries all over Wyoming, and indeed, in a few in other regions of the country, and note how much use they still receive.  They don't, however, always figure in the public's mind like they once did.

This library is a good example of how central they once were.  The original small library is direction across the street from the courthouse in Lewistown, and courthouses tend to get pride of place in a community's downtown. That this library was constructed in such a central location says a great deal about how the residents of Fergus County Montana viewed it at the time they received a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to build it.

Images of Oil Production

Oil Field, Grass Creek Wyoming, 1916.

Some other "big picture" oil photographs from outside of Wyoming:

The "small picture":

1920s:

 Lance Creek, 1920s.

Moving Drilling Equipment, Lusk, 1920s.  Public Domain from Wyoming Tales and Trails.

1930s and 1940s:

Loading facilities, Cody, 1930s-40s.

Geologist at work.

I find this photograph interesting as it exactly how I recall doing this in the early 1980s.

All photographs from our Flickr site.