Modern Transportation

Changes in transportation methods were brought home to me again this week.

On Tuesday of this past week I drove 140 miles to Rawlins Wyoming, worked all day, and returned home that evening. 140 miles isn't a long distance in modern terms. My route took me past Independence Rock, where I stopped at the rest station as I always do. Then, resuming travel, down the Oregon Trail a ways further, and then across some desert country to Ten Mile Hill, a huge topographic rise just outside of Rawlins. Then into Rawlins, whose Union Pacific station is depicted above.

I have no idea if this station is still there. A lot of Rawlin's older buildings are. Rawlins itself, still on the main line of the UP, has seen some very hard times in recent years, but it seems to be rebounding, it's recovery fueled, as it were by natural gas exploration, as well as some wind energy development.

When I wrapped up my work, I turned around and was home in the early evening. A typical day's work for a litigator in Wyoming. It was an enjoyable trip really. Armed with my company supplied Ipod, I finished the book on tape version of Alexander Hamilton for the third time, and listened to a selection of episodes of "The News From Lake Woebegone".

I was to return to Rawlins on Thursday. I didn't, as I came down with the flu. Before somebody asks, no I don't know if it was the "Swine Flu". Whatever it was, it was fast moving, and I am over it now. I crawled into work on Thursday, but a partner of mine very graciously volunteered to take my place, so he repeated by Tuesday travel on Thursday.

I was very grateful for this, as I had a motion hearing in Douglas Wyoming, fifty miles a way, on Friday. I went home on Thursday and slept most of the day. The next day, however, I was back on the road to Douglas.


The courthouse depicted above is no longer in use, and I don't even know where it was. Douglas has a nice new courthouse, built, I think, in the 1970s, or maybe 80s.

This trip too was pleasant and uneventful, except for loosing my motion (rats). On the way to Douglas, I listed to an Ipod interview of H. W. Brands, speaking about Franklin Roosevelt. On the way back, I finished up the last downloaded News From Lake Woebegone I had.

What's the point of this? Modern easy of travel.

Could I have done this a century ago? I doubt it. Even had I owned a car in 1909, there's no way that I could have traveled to Rawlins and back in a day. I wouldn't have tried. It would have been much more likely that, if I had to do that, I would have taken the train from Casper to North Platte NE, and then switched on to the UP line and rode to Rawlins on Monday. I'd have stayed over in Rawlins Tuesday evening. I wouldn't have been able to have a back to back event in Rawlins and Douglas, in all likelihood.

But what does that mean? In part, it probably means that a lawyer, in this context, a century ago, would have gone to Rawlins on a Monday, and came back on a Friday. On Wednesday, he probably wouldn't have had much to do. Perhaps, were it me, I would have gone down to Parco for amusement. If I had to go to Douglas for Friday, I would have had to catch a night train.

What about, say 1939. I could have driven then, road travel was much improved. Even so, it would have been a bit of a brutal trip.

I suspect this also shows that, while travel is easier, life is faster paced. Probably nobody would have tried to schedule back to back travel plans like this "back in the day". Now, I'll often travel up to 600 miles in a day. If something is no further than 300 miles away, I don't stay, usually. That certainly wasn't the case at one time.

History of Natrona County

I'm surprised to find that A. J. Mockler's History of Natrona County is on line.

Granted, it is one of the dullest books ever written. But what an amazing tribute to the internet in that what is truly a rare book is so easily available in this form.

Thursday, June 10, 1909. The Lincoln penny introduced.

The Lincoln portrait penny was introduced with the current design by Victor David Brenner. The reverse side were shocks of wheat, which gives this version which was minted until 1958 the nickname of being the "Wheat Head Penny".

Last prior edition:

Monday, June 5, 1899. Murder of Antonio Luna

Labels: 1900s, 1909, Philippine Insurrection

Dual Careered lawyer

Here's an interesting item from today's CST history column. I'm afraid that I'm interested in it for the wrong reasons.

"Three Wounds in Head and Two in Body of S. S. Combs"

Recently retired Casper City Attorney Sewell Stanley Combs, 50, was found shot to death in his car June 10 at his ranch near Granite Canyon.

"The bullets that literally riddled his body were fired by a 'cowardly murderer' who shot the unsuspecting victim in the back of the head and body," a sheriff said.

Combs' widow, Hazel, "(h)er face ... drawn by grief, her eyes tortured by unshed tears and sleeplessness ... seemed overnight to have aged many years. She was haunted by the knowledge that while she lay asleep in their ranch home between Alcova and Leo, ... her husband was brutally murdered in his car--not a quarter of a mile away! ...

"The position of the body and other details indicated ... that Combs had been ... unaware of the menace hovering over his life when the assailant, in the back seat, shot him through the head, then emptying the gun as the man's body slumped over. ...

"Credence was ... given today to the theory that he was slain by an assailant harboring a bitter, personal grudge. ... This theory was a source of mystification, ... it being heard on every side: 'We didn't know Stan Combs had an enemy in the world.' ... Rumor was rife today that the trail of the murderer had led to Casper.

What's interesting here to me, I'm afraid, is that this lawyer apparently had a ranch way out of town. The location mentioned here is a pretty good trip out of Casper now, but in 1934, it was a very good trip indeed.

Lawyers coming from ranch families was common in Natrona County as recently as 20 or so years ago. In other counties, it remains common. But combining the professions is not common any longer. I wonder if it was at that time, and if so, how common.

Monday, June 5, 1899. Murder of Antonio Luna

Pharmacist in his civilian life, notable Philippine Gen. Antonio Luna was murdered attempting to report to see Emilio Aguinaldo, who was absent when he arrived after a lengthy trip to see him.

A difficult personality, he seems to have been killed by his rivals.  The First Philippine Republic's fortunes in the field declined rapidly after his death.

Last prior edition:

June 3, 1909. Dreadnoughts and Flyers.

Labels: 1900s, 1909, Aircraft, Army, Russian Navy, Russo Japanese War, U.S. Air Force

June 3, 1909. Dreadnoughts and Flyers.

The Imperial Russian Navy, down to four ships following the Russo Japanese War, began a program of rebuilding, laying down keels for four dreadnoughts.

The Wright Brothers returned to Ft. Myer, Virginian, with an improved Wright Military Flyer.  The prior version had killed Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, June 1, 1909. Pathfinder Dam completed.

Labels: 1900s, 1909, Alaska, Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition, Arizona, Australia, California, California (Oakland), North Platte River, Oakland California, panoramic, Platte River, Wyoming, Yukon Territory

Tuesday, June 1, 1909. Pathfinder Dam completed.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 1: 1909  Pathfinder Dam completed.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

A major dam on the North Platte, it was first of a series.

The Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition opened in Seattle.

Andrew Fisher resigned as Prime Minister of Australia after six months.  He's serve in that position again in later years.

Miami, Arizona.  June 1, 1909.

Oakland, California, June 1, 1909.

Monday, May 31, 1909. Memorial Day.

It was Memorial Day for 1909.

Postmen paraded in Jersey City.

 President Taft spoke at Gettysburg.

We are gathered at this historic spot to-day to dedicate a monument to the memory of the officers and the enlisted men of the Regular Army who gave up their lives for their country in the three days' battle. It is but a tardy recognition of the Nation's debt to its brave defenders whose allegiance was purely to the Nation, without local color or strengthening of State or municipal pride.

The danger of a standing army, entertained by our ancestors, is seen in the constitutional restrictions and the complaints registered in the Declaration of Independence. It has always been easy to awaken prejudice against the possible aggressions of a regular army and a professional soldiery, and correspondingly difficult to create among the people, that love and pride in the army which we find to-day and frequently in the history of the country aroused on behalf of the navy. This has led to a varied and changeable policy in respect to the regular army. At times it has been reduced to almost nothing. In 1784, there were but eighty men who constituted the regular army of the United States, and in Battery F of the 4th Artillery were fifty-five of them; but generally the absolute necessities in the defense of the country against the small wars, which embrace so large a part of our history, have induced the maintenance of a regular force, small to be sure, but one so well trained and effective as always to reflect credit upon the Nation.

In the War of 1812, had we had a regular army of 10,000 men, trained as such an army would have been, we should have been spared the humiliation of the numerous levies of untrained troops and the enormous expense of raising an army on paper of 400,000 or 500,000 men, because with an effective force of 10,000 men, we might have promptly captured Canada and ended the war.

The service rendered by the regular army in the Mexican War was far greater in proportion than that which it rendered in the Civil War, and the success which attended the campaigns of Taylor and of Scott were largely due to that body of men.

To the little army of 25,000 men that survived the Civil War, we owe the opening up of the entire western country. The hardships and the trials of frontier Indian campaigns, which made possible the construction of the Pacific railroads, have never been fully recognized by our people, and the bravery and courage and economy of force compared with the task performed shown by our regular troops have never been adequately commemorated by Congress or the Nation.

To-day, as a result of the Spanish War, the added responsibilities of our new dependencies in the Philippines, Porto Rico, and for some time in Cuba, together with a sense of the importance of our position as a world power, have led to the increase of our regular army to a larger force than ever before in the history of the country, but not larger in proportion to the increase in population and wealth than in the early years of the Republic. It should not be reduced.

The profession of arms has always been an honorable one, and under conditions of modern warfare, it has become highly technical and requires years of experience and study to adapt the officers and men to its requirements. The general purpose of Congress and the American people, if one can say there is a plan or purpose, is to have such a nucleus as a regular army that it may furnish a skeleton for rapid enlargement in time of war to a force ten or twenty times its size, and at the same time be an appropriate instrument for accomplishing the purposes of the government in crises likely to arise, other than a war.

At West Point, we have been able to prepare a body of professional soldiers, well trained, to officer an army, and numerous enough at the opening of the Civil War to give able commanders to both sides of that internecine strife.

Upon the side of the North many of the officers were drafted to command the volunteer troops from the States, while the regular army, aggregating about 10,000 at the opening of the war, was increased to about 25,000 during its first year. More than half this army was engaged in the Battle of Gettysburg. Eleven regiments of infantry, five regiments of cavalry, twenty-six batteries of artillery, and three battalions of engineers. The infantry of the regular army were embraced in two brigades of the Third Division of the Fifth Corps under Major-General Sykes, himself a most able regular army officer. The cavalry was included in a Reserve Division under General Merritt, and the batteries were distributed among various army corps of the entire Federal force.

Two of the most important and determining crises of the three days' battle were, first, the seizure of the Round Tops and the maintenance of the Federal control over that great point of vantage, the possession of which by the Confederate forces would have taken the whole Federal line in the reverse; and the second was the resistance to Pickett's charge on the third day of the battle when the high point in the Confederate advance into Pennsylvania was turned, and Lee was defeated and hurried back into Southern territory, never again to plant his Confederate battle-flags on Northern soil. The taking of the Round Tops and the driving back of the Confederate forces was the work of Sykes' Fifth Army Corps, and especially of the two brigades of the Regular Infantry regiments, in which in killed and wounded alone the regulars lost 20 per cent, of their full number, and some of their brigades, notably Burbank's, lost 60 per cent, in killed and wounded of the men engaged. With a desperate bravery worthy of the cause, they drove back the Confederate forces and enabled General Meade to unite the left of Sickles' 3rd Corps with the right of the 5th Army Corps, and thus presented a shorter but a firmer front with which to withstand the onslaught of Lee's army upon the third day.

Without invidious comparison and in no way detracting from the courage and glory of the other branches of the service who united to resist Pickett's charge, it is well known that much of the effective resistance was by the artillery. The batteries of the regulars and volunteers under General Hunt made the resistance to that awful charge that gave the victory to the Union forces. The soul of Cushing, in charge of Battery F, 4th Artillery, went up with the smoke of the last shots which sent Pickett's men reeling back from the point now marked as the high tide of the Confederacy.

Time does not permit me to mention the names of the heroes of the regular army whose blood stained this historic field, and whose sacrifices made the Union victory possible. With my intimate knowledge of the regular army, their high standard of duty, their efficiency as soldiers, their high character as men, I have seized this opportunity to come here to testify to the pride which the Nation should have in its regular army, and to dedicate this monument to the predecessors of the present regular army, on a field in which they won undying glory and perpetual gratitude from the Nation which they served. They had not the local associations, they had not the friends and neighbors of the volunteer forces to see to it that their deeds of valor were properly recorded and the value of their services suitably noted in the official records by legislation and congressional action, and they have now to depend upon the truth of history and in the cold, calm retrospect of the war as it was, to secure from Congress this suitable memorial of the work in the saving of the country which they wrought here.

All honor to the Regular Army of the United States! Never in its history has it had a stain upon its escutcheon. With no one to blow its trumpets, with no local feeling or pride to bring forth its merits, quietly and as befits a force organized to maintain civil institutions and subject always to the civil control, it has gone on doing the duty which was its to do, accepting without a murmur the dangers of war, whether upon the trackless stretches of our western frontier, exposed to the arrows and the bullets of the Indian, or in the jungles and the rice paddies of the Philippines, on the hills and in the valleys about Santiago in Cuba, or in the tremendous campaigns of the Civil War itself, and it has never failed to make a record of duty done that should satisfy the most exacting lover of his country.

It now becomes my pleasant duty to dedicate this monument to the memory of the regular soldiers of the Republic who gave up their lives at Gettysburg and who contributed in a large degree to the victory of those three fateful days in the country's history.

The National Negro Conference, which would become the NAACP, held its first meeting in New York City.

The unemployed paraded in New York.

Benny Goodman was born in Chicago.  He was nine of twelve children born to his immigrant parents, and grew up in poverty.

Columbia and the Hawaiian Chinese American baseball team played a game.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, May 30, 1909. Work Horse Parade on Day of Rest.

Sunday, May 30, 1909. Work Horse Parade on Day of Rest.

 

Casper, Natrona County, 1909

Another interesting item about transportation a century ago. From a recent Casper Star Tribune article, quoting the Natrona County Tribune of 1909.

"A Dozen Will be in Service During This Summer.

"... J. P. Cantillon, superintendent of the Wyoming & Northwestern railroad company, ... was the first of Casper's citizens to start the fashion. Mr. Cantillon owns a Pope-Toledo, 20 horse power. ... (T)o its use is due the fact that very few of the ranchers about here now have any teams that are afraid to meet an auto in the road. ...

"C. M. Elgin ... has a Chalmers-Detroit 30-horse power," which he drove to Casper after purchase. "The time made on the trip ... (was) eighteen hours and forty-five minutes from Denver.

" ... M. N. Castle (Shorty) owns a 20-horse power Reo . ... (He) deserves credit for a new mixture ... for fuel for his machine, but he only used it once, and says that he will never do so again if he can help it. ... (H)e ran out of gasoline and could procure no more, but the ranch where he stopped had plenty of coal oil. Shorty tanked up with the coal oil and the mixture ... sufficed to run him into town, a distance of twelve miles."

The Reo in question appears here.

J. V. Puleo, on this topic on the Society of the Military Horse website, posted an interesting photograph of a little newer Reo here.

Tuesday, May 25, 1909. Reclamation lots in Powell.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 25: 1909   The Reclamation Service sold lots in Powell, founding the town.

The Indian Councils Act of 1909 was given Royal Assent.  It caused the legislative councils of British Indian provinces to include members elected by Indians.

Israel Greene, age 85, died on his farm near Mitchell, South Dakota.  He had led the Marines who had captured John Brown.  He'd served as a Confederate Marine during the Civil War, even though he'd been born in New York and had grown up in Wisconsin.  His wife was from Virginia.

He'd moved to South Dakota in 1873.

Child labor at  Amoskeag Mfg. Company, Manchester N.H, was photographed.

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 24, 1909. European Day of Parks.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, baseball, European Day of Parks, European national parks, Kansas (Coffeyville), panoramic, Sports, Sweden

Tuesday, May 18, 1909. Sulfanilamide,

A patent was issued to Heinrich Hoerlein of the Bayer company for a sulfanilamide, the first synthesized sulfonamide. 

It was not until1935 that the antibiotic properties of sulfonamides were realized.

Hoerlien would go on to rise to power in the IG Farben company.  He joined the Nazi Party in 1934 after having campaigned against Hermann Göring's law banning testing on animals, showing how radical movements then and now had similar traits.  He went on to have knowledge of the company's production of Zyklon B and was tried after the war was a war criminal, but acquitted.  He had a place on the board of Bayer after the war.

Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, chose his 14-year-old grandson Lij Iyasu as his successor.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 12, 1909. The Taft Summer Residence.

1900s, 1909, Massachusetts, William Howard Taft

Wednesday, May 12, 1909. The Taft Summer Residence.

 

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 10, 1909. The Carters.

Monday, May 10, 1909. The Carters.

 

Maybelle Carter of Carter Family musical fame was born as Maybelle Addington in Nickelsville, Virginia.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 6, 1909. Developments in the Episcopal Church of Wyoming.

1900s, 1909, baseball, children, Christianity, Protestant, religion, Sports, Wyoming

Thursday, May 6, 1909. Developments in the Episcopal Church of Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 6: 1909   Nathaniel Seymour Thomas consecrated Episcopal Bishop of Wyoming, the first Episcopal Bishop with Wyoming solely as his territory.

The Vice President went to a baseball game.

Life's current issue was out.

Youthful employees of Chace Cotton Mills were photographed.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 5, 1909. The Saxon vote.

1900s, 1909, 2020s, 2024 Election, Colorado, Donald Trump, Education, Germany, Politics, Populism, Saxony, The 2021 Insurrection, The wealthy, Women

Wednesday, May 5, 1909. The Saxon vote.

The German free state of Saxony changed its election laws providing for four different classes of voters, those being; taxpaying men, 25 or older, one vote, men with higher incomes, two votes, three or four votes. Men reaching 50 years of age acquired another vote.

Which takes us to stuff we're not supposed to say.

This weighting of the vote was obviously based on the concept that society should be governed by men of means.  Current American politics would suggest that this certainly isn't the case.  Donald Trump is reputedly as rich as Midas, although how rich he really is, isn't clear, and he clearly shouldn't be in politics and no deliberative person should vote for him.  Many, however, are going to.

And that raises a question.  In 2024, as opposed, let's say, to 2016, or even 2020, after he attempted to defeat the results of an election, and after those who support him have gone increasingly hardcore populist (not conservative) is there something wrong with the American electorate?  It would appear so, and what it would appear to be, is ignorance.  That's an ignorance that's reinforcing itself.  We'll deal with it elsewhere, but what questions does that raise about who really should have the franchise?

Jackson County, Colorado, was created from western Larimer County.

Chace Cotton Mill, Burlington, Vt.   Female employees.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, May 4, 1909. Acquitted over Pat Garrett.

1900s, 1909, Agriculture, Crime, New Mexico

Transportation, Early 20th Century

Monday, May 4, 2009 2:02 AM MDT

Natrona County Tribune, 1909 A trip to write about -- "AN auto-stage line is to be established between Shoshoni and Thermopolis in the near future, and every editor in the state is hoping that the gasoline wagon will be in operation before the meeting of the Press association."

An item noted in today's Casper Star Tribune.

Tuesday, May 4, 1909. Acquitted over Pat Garrett.

Wayne Brazel was acquitted of the murder for the February 29, 1908, killing of Pat Garrett, the famous New Mexico lawman.

Brazel was the lessee of the ranch of Pat Garrett's son, Dudley.  The killing seems to have involved the bringing on of a large herd of goats onto the ranch, but who the killer actually was, and exactly what happened, remains a mystery.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, May 2, 1909

1900s, 1909, baseball, Sports

Best Post of the Week of April 27, 2009

Lex Anteinternet?

Niobrara County Courthouse

This is the Niobrara County Courthouse, one of the oldest courthouses still in use here. Perhaps its the oldest one still in use. Anyhow, this is an example of how they used to be.

__________________________________________________________________________

Postscript. 

Perhaps simply because this is one of the first posts that I did on this blog it has remained, for some reason, one of the consistently most viewed.  Anyhow, in checking back on it, I realized that I didn't post a link to the photo of this courthouse up on Courthouses of the West, our companion blog, in the main thread, although I did add it in a comment.

Also, since posting this, I've learned that at the time I posted this photo there were at least two, and probably three, courthouses then in use that are older than this one.  One of those, the Johnson County Courthouse, just went out of use, as a new courthouse has been built.  Another one, however, in Uinta County is much older than this one, having been actually built in the 1870s.

Transportation, late 19th Century

A modern highway map shows as distance of 211 miles from Worland, in the southern half of the basin, to Rawlins, and 293 miles from Cody to Green River, but modern transportation systems are not remotely like those of 1879. In practical terms, Green River and Rawlins were further from the Big Horn Basin in 1879 than they are now from Outer Mongolia, and criminal prosecution was nearly impossible.

There were no roads leading south from the basin, only trails. At least one yearly trip to the Union Pacific had to be made, though, because in the early 1880s this was the nearest railhead, the only real opening to a market to sell cattle and get supplies. E. W. Copps declared that the cattle drive from Buffalo to Rawlins, a trip that did not require a traverse of mountains, took eighteen days. Coming from the basin, however, a cattle owner first had to get out, and any exit required going over an 8,000-foot pass, such as Birdseye Pass or Cottonwood Pass; thus, David John Wasden's estimate of six weeks for a round trip seems about right. Of course, the return trip, when cattle were not being driven, did not take as long but was still arduous. Owen Wister describes a 263 mile excursion from Medicine Bow "deep into cattle land," a trip taking several days by wagon, while "swallowed in a vast solitude." His description sounds like a journey north into the Big Horn Basin.

Goodbye Judge Lynch, by John W. Davis.

Sunday, May 2, 1909

 

Saturday, May 1, 1909. May Day.

A major parade protesting child labor, and generally celebrating the cause of labor, was held in New York City.

The parade had a heavily ethnic character to it, and the day was regarded as "Labor Day", before that holiday was officially created as an American one in contrast to May Day.

Walter Reed Medical Center opened as Walter Reed General Hospital.

San Franciscans turned out in huge numbers to visit the Aso and Soya which had been captured by Japan in the Russo Japanese War.

The Aso, which had been the Bayan was sunk as a target ship in 1932.  The Soya, which had been the Varyag, was given back to the Imperial Russian Navy in 1916 during the Great War, was seized by the British in 1918, sold to the Germans for scrap in 1920, but ran aground whiel being towed, and was scrapped in place, the process being completed in 1925.

Last prior edition:

Friday, .April 30, 1909.

1900s, 1909, Arizona, Arizona (Douglas), Douglas Arizona, Railroads, Transportation

Friday, .April 30, 1909.

 

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 29, 1909. Tornado devastation.

1900s, 1909, Disaster, Iran, Persia, Russia, Weather