June 27, 1919. Introduction of the Volstead Act, the men of the 148th coming to Casper, an uncertain Peace, horses and oil, violence in Tennessee, Annapolis and Rock Springs.

On this day in 1919 the Volstead Act, the bill that was tailored to carry out Prohibition under the 18th Amendment, was introduced into the House of Representatives.

On this day in 1919 there was still time to have a beer. Soon, there wouldn't be.

An enforcing act was necessary in order to make Prohibition actually come into effect, something that's occasionally missed in this story.  Compounding the overall confusion, many states had passed state laws on the topic, including Wyoming, so in those places Prohibition was coming into law earlier, and with different provisions.  In some localities, such as Colorado, it already had.

It hadn't come into effect just yet, which meant that Casperites had time left to toast returning members of the 148th Field Artillery, recently discharged from their military service, just as they were also contemplating Germany signing a treaty that would end the war, but which appeared likely to result in an uncertain future.

That uncertain peace headlined the Wyoming State Tribune, which also featured an article that would be regarded as racist today, because it was.  That latter storing being how Mexican women were going to be liberated from the chains of tradition by adopting more progressive, non Mexican, values regarding their gender.

The 15th Cavalry, it was noted, was also going to appear in Cheyenne for new billets that afternoon.

Cavalry of that period was still horse cavalry, of course, and horses remained an important part of the economy in every fashion.  Advertisements for a horse auction in Campbell County appeared right on the cover of Wright's newspaper, which noted that it was published weekly "in the interests of dry-farming and stockraising in Wyoming".

Today, of course, when you think of Wright, you think of oil, gas, and coal.  You probably don't think of farming at all, let alone dry farming, although ranching is still there.

A photographer visited the Burk Waggoner oilfield of Texas on this day, giving a glimpse of what oil production in 1919 was like.

In far off Tennessee, Sheriff Milton Harvie Stephens of Williamson County, was murdered by horse thieves.  He was 74 years old and had held the office for one year.  That crime demonstrates that the value of the old means of travel, and the crimes it was associated with, kept on. The fact that Stephens was employed as a sheriff at age 74 also says something about the working environment of the day.

In that same region of the country, sort of, riots occurred in Annapolis between Navy trainees who were training to be mess attendants and local residents. The riot is regarded as part of the Red Summer, but the oddity of it was that the rioters were all black on both sides.  Mess attendants were normally black or Filipinos in the segregated Navy of that period and in this case it was black local residents who were in conflict with the sailors. The cause was that sailors had been harassing local women.

Strife and violence also seems to have broken out that day in Rock Springs.

What's with all those dire warnings. . . .

and why are they on a blog that supposedly looks at history around the turn of the prior century?

St. Francis Mission, Midwest Wyoming.

Well, as for the second question, we stray off topic a lot. But as for the first, this is something we've witnessed before, and which makes up pat of the history of this state.  A history we've experienced first hand.

I just posted an item on this, and I should note that I'd started this entry prior to writing the short one I just did.  I didn't post this one when I wrote it last week (often the posts here are delayed days, or years, before they're posted) as I'm busy and I was traveling as well.  Anyhow, those who haven't experienced, and there are a lot of people in that category, have a hard time accepting that things can really dramatically turn around here.  Employment in the extractive industries includes a lot of young people, so that means right now there are a lot of people born after 1990, as amazing as that now seems to me, who are fully adults, and have no personal experience with events of this type really.  Oh, we had a downturn around 2008, but it was nothing like those we experienced earlier.

When I was in the National Guard in the early 1980 the unit was filled with men who were using their military experience to tide them over, hopefully, until better times arrived.  Lots of those men were Vietnam veterans who had returned home after their service and then had entered the work force in the 1970s, when times were good here. They weren't all in the oilfield to be sure, but some were, and quite a few others worked skilled labor jobs of some other type.  A few of the enlisted men were, however, professionals.  One fellow was an accountant, or had been (he was working as a carpenter).  Another had an advanced degree in Spanish and at one time had been a teacher.  Quite a few of those guys were struggling to get by, and their service in the Guard was providing much needed income to their families.

One of those men had a teaching job in Jeffrey City, Wyoming.  He was an officer, but he was sort of an unusual one as he was much more like the enlisted men than the other officers and addressed us in that fashion all of the time.  He'd been a Marine prior to having gone to college and perhaps that explained it somewhat.

Jeffrey City provides a bit of a window into the concern that some of us have now.  In the 1970s it had been a booming town.  By the 1980s, it was struggling as the industry that supported it, uranium mining, was declining.  It's still a town, but certainly not a city, now, but it's a mere shadow of its former self.  It's barely there.  It is there, but it's hardly active. The uranium mines are closed.

Gillette forms another example.  When I was in high school, it was a booming coal town.  It was also really rough.  Going there during high school swim meets was always an experience.  But, by the mid 80s, it had fallen on tough times and was fairly quiet.  It started turning around dramatically with coal bed methane exploration in the 1990s, but now there's a fair amount of concern there over the future of coal, and the coal bed methane industry has pretty much completely shut down.

Wight gives us another example.  A mere road stop in the 80s, it's now a real town with lots of nice new construction. But the economy is completely based on extractive industries.  Residents of the town, if they're familiar with the histories of Gillette and Jeffrey City, must be concerned.

Further down the road are Midwest and Edgerton.  These towns are within a couple of miles of each other, with Midwest having been a Standard Oil company town that also supported the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve.  One of the streets in Midwest is called "Navy Row", as it at one time housed U.S. Navy personnel stationed at the petroleum reserve.  The reserve has long quit being a Naval facility and the sailors are all gone.  The facility itself, an experimental oilfield facility, was recently sold.  The oilfield is still active, and through the advance of technology oil wells drilled in the 1920s are still producing, but both Midwest and Edgerton have really had their ups and downs.  In the 1940s they were booming.  They were again in the 1970s.  In the 80s they were really suffering, but in the past decade they boomed again.  Now, things are starting to go the other way.

Or take the town of Lance Creek.  Lance Creek was an earlier participant in oil exploration in the state, with oil claims actually filed as placer mining claims.  The field was extensively explored during the 1920s. During World War Two the town ballooned to 4,000 or more people. The population of the town collapsed after the war, and its never recovered. There's still oil that's produced in Niobrara County, but the least populace county in the state has never seen a recovery of an oilfield economy.

The recent article in the Tribune took an interesting look at past ups and downs.  I noted, in reviewing them, that one of them drew some reader comments.  Reader comments to the Tribune tend to draw a lot of snark, but in this case they didn't seem to.  Here's what one reader had to say:

Many of us went through more busts than booms in Wyoming working the oil patch.The current slowdown pales in comparison to the bust of the 1980's.Do yourselves a big favor ...get out of the oil patch while you still can,or pay the price later,in more ways than one.

So far, I'd note, this writer is correct, and I've heard others note this as well. This slow down is less severe than the one in 1983. . . so far. But that one started out milder than it ended up. With these collapses, the collapse doesn't come overnight.  Another reader commented:

We've lived in Wyoming for six decades. We love this state but hate its busts. We were one of many families who were victims of the bust in the early 80's. Lost our jobs, lost our house...lost everything. Though we've recovered it's been a long, long road. I'll never be able to retire comfortably due to the lost time and income. Take it from a man who's been in the fire: save your money now and don't wait!

Dire warning indeed.

The point is that things can really turn around here.  But when you live through them for the first time, it doesn't seem quite real at first.  Here, in the early 80s, in this town, we saw the oilfield collapse and the Standard Oil Refinery close.  Ultimately, the Texaco refinery also closed.  This is and was a small city, but the impact was truly devastating.  Maybe we need not fear that again, but we should be aware that it happened.