Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Sheridan

Where Ft. Reno had been.

C Club Fights, Natrona County High School, April 1...

C Club Fights, Natrona County High School, April 1...:    It seems hard to believe it now, but Natrona...

Old Picture of the Day: Blacksmith Shop

Neat item from Old Picture of the Day, with interesting commentary as well:

Old Picture of the Day: Blacksmith Shop: Today's picture was taken in 1940, and it shows a blacksmith shop. This would have been a time that was pretty much the end of the era...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Plain horse, plains, and plain table

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Plain horse, plains, and plain table

The packing geologist

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Government hunters

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Government hunters

When you could hunt in the park.

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

Reviewing the Troops

Victory In Europe Day

1945 Celebrations break out in the Western World, including one in Halifax that results in a two day riot.

From today's SMH history thread.

Anyone have any interesting events they can relate about what happened in their towns on this day in 1945?

Teepee Poles, Laramie Range

Teepee Poles, Laramie Range: These photographs depict a teepee, sans cover, in the Laramie Range. Teepee poles can last in place for eons, and typically the users...

National Guard Armory, Yale Oklahoma

National Guard Armory, Yale Oklahoma

I recently was in Yale, Oklahoma, where I took the following photographs:



This Armory was built in 1936.  Nearby Stillwell apparently has a very similar armory built in 1937.  Stillwell is only about 15 miles away.

Today, in Wyoming, we live in an era in which armories are being closed down.  Since I got out of the National Guard in 1987, Guard armories in Rawlins, Wheatland, Riverton and Thermopolis have been shut down. The Guard is smaller now than it was then, but all these towns had active armories prior to WWII, when the Guard was much smaller.  Indeed, the 115th Cavalry Regiment actually had a small section that drilled in Glenrock, which is a very small town, which never had an armory.

Transportation was, of course, much more difficult prior to WWII, but it hadn't really dawned on me how many small armories there were until I saw this one.  Newcastle in our state has a little tiny one, where today it has no Guard unit.  What a different Guard culture this must have created.  The Guard today drills once a month, for a weekend, and for two to three full weeks a year. Back then, the annual AT was just as long, but they drilled one night per week.  With armories like this being all over, the units themselves must often have been really tiny.

That's both good and bad, I suppose.  I can envision quite a few reasons why this would be less than ideal, and a few why it would have been good. But what a different situation it must have been, compared to today.

University Women’s Club Marks 100 Years with Fashion Show

University Women’s Club Marks 100 Years with Fashion Show

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Ft Reno, Wyoming

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Ft Reno, Wyoming

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Reno Cantonment, (Ft. McKinney on the Powder River)Wyoming

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Reno Cantonment, (Ft. McKinney on the Powder River)Wyoming

Holscher's Hub: Iphone?

Should anyone who stops by here haven an opinion on Iphones, please post it. Trying to decide if I want or need one.

The Sheridan Inn

A couple of weeks ago I posted on The Plains Hotel in Cheyenne. That was, as readers will recall, a Cheyenne Hotel that was built in 1911.

This is an even older hotel, The Sheridan Inn. It was built in 1893, and like The Plains, it's right across from the tracks. Indeed, it's much closer to the railroad. No doubt the idea was to keep travelers from having to carry their luggage far.

When agriculture was the industry in Wyoming

As any Wyoming resident knows today, mineral extraction, i.e., oil, gas, coal, etc., drive Wyoming's economy. But this wasn't the case. It was agriculture that really dominated the early economic history of the case, and still forms the essence of its image, as this UW article notes: Wyoming agriculture fashioned state’s national, international image

Oil and gas made an entry into the state as early as the 1890s, and newspaper reports at the time, particularly those of the Natrona County Tribune, were simply gushing over its prospects. Still, it would take some time for oil and gas to really take off, although take off it did. Nonetheless, agriculture was the dominant industry in every way in the late 19th Century and early 20th. It's difficult to overestimate how dominant it was, and how many industries it supported. A glimpse of one of those industries is provided below.

It's difficult in some ways for us today, even is a state that revers cowboys, to imagine what the agricultural Wyoming was like. The average town resident is aware of it, and not. And certainly most people are not aware of it to the same extent that the 19th Century and early 20th Century Wyomingite was.