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.

Old Hotels

Room in the Plains Hotel

This is a room in a renovated century old hotel in Cheyenne Wyoming. I recently stayed there while traveling for work.

I've stayed in a few very old hotels before. Many years ago I spent a night in the Virginian in Medacine Bow, but it's frankly so long ago, I don't really recall it all that well. I was quite young at the time, and what I recall about that is that every room did not have bathroom, something that I found very odd at the time, and which I bet is no longer the case.

The Virginian

Much more recently I've stayed at the Hotel Higgins in Glenrock, a nice local older hotel. I don't know the age for sure, but it's probably approaching a century in age. About 17 years ago I spent a night in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Stanley is famous for being used as the set of the film The Shining, but it also had some preexisting fame for being the location of the founding of the American Dental Association.

The reason I note all of this is because it's my observation, and one of the types of changes we note here, that hotel rooms were once pretty darned small. The rooms of the The Plains Hotel, where I just stayed, are very small. This isn't to say they were bad, they were just small. I don't recall the rooms in the Virginian, but the room we stayed in at the Hotel Higgins was small. The rooms at The Stanley were larger, however, but they weren't enormous either.

Apparently hotel rooms of an earlier era were just smaller. But then, why wouldn't they be? Most people weren't traveling with their families (and still aren't, for the most part, most are business travelers) and before television, and even before radio, what would you actually stay in your room to do? No TV, no radio, no internet, back when they were built. You could read, but then it doesn't take a very big room to do that.

Lobby of the Plains Hotel

A friend of mine pointed out that the major room in older hotels was the lobby. Above is the lobby of the Plains. I can see where that would have been true. After walking over from the train station, back way back when, and checking in, why not hang out in the lobby? The Stanley has a palatial lobby. The lobby of the Plains is pretty big. The lobby of the old Hotel Townsend, now the courthouse for Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District, was not unsubstantial.

It also occurs to me that then restaurants were a pretty significant feature for hotels, and bars. They still are for some hotels, but much less so for "Business Hotels" or "Business Motels". Reflecting the era, Business Motels usually have a breakfast room with easy to go breakfast items, but no restaurant. Older hotels, however, usually had a good enough restaurant that it drew town trade, and often still does. The Plains Hotel, The Virginian, or The Brown Palace in Denver, for example, all have restaurants or bars that draw in town trade.

I should note here that I'm not giving a negative review to The Plains Hotel. Its been renovated and it's not bad. It's just that the rooms are small.

MeridethinWyoming: In the Span of a Lifetime

MeridethinWyoming: In the Span of a Lifetime

Courthouses of the West: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block

Courthouses of the West: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block: While news isn't our regular feature here, here's something that's topical for this site: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

 This was originally posted over on SMH, as:

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

I'm reposting it here, as it related into the topics addressed here.  Here's the post:

This is a bit off topic for the forum (of course the thread in general is) but it's a question I have that maybe Joe or one of the other folks knowledgeable on vintage autos can answer.

For years, I drove a single cab truck. But, with two kids, it became impossible. Now I drive a crewcab truck, and I hardly ever run across a true single cab anymore. When I do, it's usually a company truck. I also have an old Mercury Cougar "Sport Coupe" which I bought well used as it has a 4 cyl engine, was cheap, and gets good gas mileage. It's a "sport coupe" as it has a hatch back and back seats, but my son can hardly sit back there now, and it's not practical if more than two of us are going anywhere. As its' a daily driver for me (and I'm really cheap. . .I haven't fixed the heater in the past two years, which if you know our winters. . .) it works out okay.

Now, here's my question. In the early auto days families were generally larger, and I'm under the impression that most families had a car. But I know that coups were popular.

Why?


A car owned by my grandfather.

Pat 

A couple of replies:

 They were nearly always called "business coupes" or "doctor's coupes"...a two passenger car with a trunk rather than a rumble seat. Doctor's were especially early and enthusiastic users of the automobile and a car specially suited to their needs was very good marketing. This begs the question of why? Because in the day of house calls, which ray right up to the 30s at least, the expense of keeping a horse - or more likely two horses, feed stabling and other services was a real drain. They were an ideal market in that they needed what the automobile provided and usually could afford the initial investment.

Business men were another major targeted market... presumably they could afford a car and a good many of them could afford to keep a car for business purposes... If they had a family they could have a sedan or touring car as well. My mom's godfather, a wealthy man who was an adult when the automobile was a new invention, kept a car at his summer home so the chauffeur could drive him to the train every morning... a distance of about 1/4 mile!

There are probably many more reasons, not the least of which was that they "looked good" in the popular mind and that frequently took precedence over practicality - as it still does.

 It's interesting that you note that they were called "business coupes". That's how my father referred this car, of his father's. It was a "business coupe".

I think they do look sharp. I once passed on a 1939 Plymouth Coupe that was a very reasonable price, and I really regret it. Pat

 It was my understanding that a lot of the coupes were used by salesmen because of their tremendous trunk space. They could carry their merchandise and deliver their goods saving the shipping charges for themselves.

Irish Canadian Rangers

On a day in which things Irish are generally celebrated, some posters for the battalion my great grandfather and his sons helped organize and equip. . .the Irish Canadian Rangers.

They were recruited from Irish Canadians in Montreal, but they were not able to bring the unit up to full strength. Therefore they ultimately also recruited in Ireland. In the end, they were folded into an other Irish unit in the Empire's forces.

Definitely a slice of days gone by. World War One saw the last of the privately raised, privately equipped efforts in the Empire, and the same is true in the US in regards to just prior to the war. Theodore Roosevelt would have repeated his Spanish American role of raising a special unit if allowed, but Woodrow Wilson disallowed it, and the Army frankly wasn't keen on it being done.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Armour Rations

A look at canned rations of old:

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Armour Rations

‘I ain’t Dutch’: Doug Crowe

‘I ain’t Dutch’

Disappearing Homesteads

This is a 20th Century homestead located in Natrona County, Wyoming. And it's a nice one.

It was probably built in the teens or twenties. The house is small, but it had steam heat. It also had a concrete cistern. The small stout barn has the name of the owners proudly burnt into the beams. In short, the homesteaders were prosperous. . . but only for awhile.

The Great Depression did this homestead in. It failed, and a neighboring rancher bought it from the bank. This is the story of homesteading all over the West in the 1930s. Thousands of small homesteads were consolidated into larger, neighboring ones. While I've never seen any figures on it, it would be my guess that the average actual working ranch in Wyoming today is probably made up of the remnants of at least five other ranches, all of which would have gone belly up during the Great Depression.

There was a lot at work creating this. The weather, the economy, and mechanization. The impact on the land, however, was enormous. Hundreds of families moved off the land, and into towns and cities, forever.

Casper Fire truck of old

426288_312739632117526_284375484953941_899303_185799387_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 901 pixels) - Scaled (63%)

The Migrating Memorial: Some Gave All: World War One Memorial, Laramie Wyoming

This is our entry for the World War One Memorial in Laramie, Wyoming: Some Gave All: World War One Memorial, Laramie Wyoming:

The memorial is impressive in that it lists everyone from Albany County or from the University of Wyoming (students) who was killed during World War One. Quite a list of names. That really says something about the Great War.

The reason I've cross posted this over here is that, as this entry reveals, and with links, this memorial was once in the middle of a prominent intersection in downtown Laramie. It was essentially the psychological center of the town. But only for a few years. By 1929 it had been moved to its current location.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says. It certainly would seem to indicate that at one time the memory of the Great War was of central importance to the residents of Albany County, which actually has two WWI memorials. Now, it's on a corner of the courthouse block, which is not uncommon anywhere, but the corner is the back corner actually, which is a semi quiet residential street corner.

On the other hand, it would have been necessary to move it. Maybe when it was put up right after World War One an intersection could have a memorial dead center, but no way that one could have after the mid 1920s. It would have been destroyed in traffic accidents.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Long Cavalry Maneuvers.

A look at the sad AT of 1923

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Long Cavalry Maneuvers.

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

A thesis recently advanced on NPR, but fairly questionable in our view, as discussed here:

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

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - oldtime packers

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - oldtime packers

Indian Ice Delivery Trucks, Casper Wyoming

420512_310334369024719_284375484953941_892138_2113709836_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 651 pixels)

Ice delivery vehicles. Pretty advanced for the time, in many locations this would still be done by horse drawn wagon for another two decades.

Ice was a big deal in this era. Refrigeration mostly wasn't. People kept "Ice Boxes" in their houses. My father stilled called the refrigerator the "Ice Box" well into the 70s, having become acclimated to that term in his early years even though he probably grew up in a house with a refrigerator.

Pay Scale, World War Two.

A pay scale table for the U.S. Army in World War Two. A thread on this topic is running on the SMH site.

Lots of interesting odds and ends an item like this brings up.

Connectivity

In the past couple of days, I have had instances in which I have been sitting in my office, with my computer connected to the net, and I have found it necessary to text message somebody using my cell phone.

Indeed, over the past year, not only have I found that it continues to be necessary (no surprise) to own a cell phone, but I am now text messaging on my cell phone as a work necessity. Text messaging tends to be associated with teenagers at the mall, but at least in my recent experience it's gone on to be a feature of at least the legal work place. Not all that long ago I found myself walking through Denver getting and receiving text messages pertaining to a deposition that was going on in Texas.

Here at my office, where I am right now (taking a break for lunch) I have, right where I am, a laptop computer, a telephone, a second miniature laptop, a cell phone, and an Ipod that's jacked into the computer, which allows me not only to send and receive email (including work email, and I've done that) but to keep my calendar and contacts electronically.

When I started this profession a little over twenty years ago, my office was equipped, as all our offices were, with a phone and a computer. The computer did not have net access. I don't really recall what I used that computer for, but chances are that I didn't use it all that much on a daily basis. I did write legal memos on it, and it had some programs that were used to substitute for casebooks we had in our library. It was probably three or four years after that when we purchased a computer that had net access, and we obtained West Law in our office for the first time. Before that, most local lawyers had a West Law account at the County Law Library, which was in the old County Courthouse. Having a good fax machine in that era seemed pretty neat. Now all this seems quite quaint.

It does make me wonder about the earlier era, however. Twenty years ago we were already on the cusp of a technological revolution. Even ten years before that we sort of were. But what about before that?

From probably the mid 1920s through to about 1980 the telephone was the only piece of connected technology any law office had. Fax machines hadn't arrived. If you wanted to send something, you did it by mail. Or if you wanted quick contact, you called. What was office work like then? It no doubt involved a lot of dictation of correspondence, and indeed we dictated when I first started out. Some people still do that. But we all did. And dictation in that era did place a bit of a premium on avoiding revisions, although we all revised. Revisions in that era were truly manual, and the result was, the further you go back, that the product had to be regenerated.

What about before 1920? At some time prior to that, most offices didn't have phones. How different office work must have been then. Quick contact just wasn't going to happen. Contact would have mostly been through the mail. Dictation would have been all direct. Everything was much more hands on and manual.

It'd be interesting, if we could, to go back to one of those offices, say an office of 1912, and see how they really worked, what somebody in our profession (assuming that there is a 1912 equivalent) actually did, on a daily basis, and how they did it, before communications became so instant over vast distances.

The speed of offical Justice, from Today In Wyoming's History: February 15

Today In Wyoming's History: February 15: 1933 President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami but which claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

The attempted assassin in this matter was Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian veteran of World War One who was fairly clearly in poor health and increasingly suffering from delusions to some extent. The wounded Mayor Cermak survived until March 6, 1933. By that time, Zangara had already been sentenced for four counts of attempted murder, and was given 20 years for each count.

That is, he had been sentenced in less than a month.

He was charged with homicide on March 8, 1933, due to Cermak's death. He plead guilty and was executed on March 20, 1933.

Cermak never contested his responsibility for the crimes. He was increasingly ill and suffering from delusions, but his statements made it fairly clear that he conceived of his actions as some sort of radical anti-capitalist action. What strikes me as amazing, however, is that he went from arrest to execution in a little over a month. Indeed, he went from arrest for homicide to execution in 14 days.

I am not noting this in order to make a comment about the death penalty. That's an entirely different topic and frankly addressing it in the context of 2012 in comparison to 1933 isn't really even possible. But what is really striking is that the criminal process played itself out so very rapidly. Now I would have expected a process of examination to determine if Zangara was sane or even competent to make a confession, and there's no way on earth that the process would have occurred so very rapidly

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming

A look at mining, when it was horse powered:

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming:

Visual memories of oil booms past.

Recently I took some photos for the Railhead blog we have, which is dedicated to all things locomotive, which really caused me to realize the extent to which a boom can alter the face of a town. More specifically, it caused me to realize how much the oil boom of the late teens and twenties has had an impact on the appearance of Casper, even though there's been multiple booms and busts since then.

What caused me to ponder this is that I took some photos of the walkway that's been put in across Casper on the old Chicago and North West line. That rail line is now long gone, and the old rail bed is now a walkway through downtown Casper, and a trial that stretches all the way out of town towards the East. It's an impressive effort, but of course for most of its course it is basically unimproved. Not all of it is scenic by any means, but the downtown portion is pretty neat.

In walking it, it occurred to me that a tremendous amount of what a person sees on it was built in the teens and twenties. Not everything, by any means, but an awful lot is. And some of what does not appear to be only has a more modern appearance as new facades have been added.

This in turn caused me to ponder how many other buildings in downtown Casper remain from this era. While Casper does not have an extremely well preserved downtown, like some towns do, it does show a remarkable impact form the World War One oil boom. Fire Station No. 1 remains, now in use as a private office, having been built in 1921. The Townsend Hotel also remains, and I believe that it may stretch back that far. It's now a courthouse. The Consolidated Royalty Building, still in use as an office building, was designed by the same architect as The Townsend Hotel, and was built in 1917. It was originally the headquarters for an oil company. I don't have any pictures of it, but Natrona County High School, still in use, was built in 1923.

Just off downtown, several impressive churches were built in the same era. St. Anthony's is one example. First United Methodist is another, in that it was added on to during this era. First Presbyterian was built in this time frame. A new St. Mark's was built. All of this was no doubt occurring as people were moving into town, indeed the town became a small city in this era, but it probably also reflects that the oil activity had increased people's fortunes, and they were generous with their added wealth.

Casper has certainly suffered recessions and depressions since then. One of the buildings mentioned above, the Townsend Hotel, was abandoned for a very long time as a result of one of them. A few older downtown buildings have disappeared, after have sat empty for awhile. Nonetheless, the impact of the oil boom that came about due to World War One and which lasted into the Roaring Twenties has left quite a visual impact.

Life Span, old age, and statistics

The issue before last of the National Geographic featured an article on the Teenage Brain. This past issue, which arrived last week, included a letter to the editor from a reader who somewhat grumpily suggested that the teenage brain might be the evolutionary norm, because, he suggested, back in our early days as a species, we didn't live much longer than that.

Oh yes we did.

The suggestion of the letter writer was that human beings live longer than they used to. This is a common belief, people state that all the time, but it simply isn't true. People live the same number of years that they always have. That number of years varies by population and culture, but it's generally between 60 and 120 years. Extreme old age generally seems to cap out at an absolute maximum of 120 years, a span that's actually mentioned in the Old Testament, interestingly enough. The longest any human in modern times has been recorded to have live is 122 years. There are claimed examples of people living in excess of this number of years, but they lack verification and tend to be subject to serious questioning. This is not to say, of course, that anyone can live to 120 years. Far from it. Only a tiny minority of people shall ever approach that age. But instances of advance years in any one era are quite easy to find. Chief Washakie, for example, lived to be 99 or 100 years of age and was not the only Native American of that to have done so. Adams and Jefferson lived into their 80s. And so on.

Well, if people are not actually living longer, why do we tend to think that we are? That's because life expectation is increasing. That is, average life span, or life expectancy, is increasing.

Well, isn't that the same thing? Not at all.

Life expectancy or average life span is a statistical figure. It doesn't mean that all people live to that age. No, by its very nature it means that most people will have died before that age or after it. It's the statistical medium.

But if that's the case, wouldn't it still mean that people are living longer? No, what it means is that people aren't dieing as young.

That sounds like semantics, but it isn't. When you look at what killed people in prior eras, it makes sense.

For one thing, and a huge thing at that, an enormous number of people died at (and in) child birth prior to the mid 20th Century. And this was in European and North American societies. Infant death was very common. Childhood death was also distressingly common. A large number of people died prior to age five.

The reason for this is varied, but disease and the stress of birth explains a lot of it. But what it also means is that if a person passed their fifth year, their life expectancy jumped enormously. Indeed, if you take out the number of infants who died prior to age five, and the number of women who died giving birth, life expectancy for the most part would begin to look pretty recognizable for most European or North American cultures.

They would not, of course, be identical. But that's easily explainable as well. Diseases of all types were enormously dangerous prior to the late 19th Century. The germ theory of disease itself was only discovered in the mid 19th Century. There were an awful lot of diseases that, if you acquired them, your end was nearly guaranteed, where as this would not be the case now. Heart attacks, cancer and strokes basically killed. Diagnosing dangerous diseases prior to their last phase was often impossible. None of this is true now. And accidents tended to be much more lethal in any era prior to the one we're living in right now. Work, for males, was much more dangerous in prior eras.

And, of course, warfare was very prominent in earlier eras. Most European nations were constantly at war in the 18th Century. When the Indian Wars are included, the US was basically at war from 1776 through the 1880s. And wars have become less lethal in modern times in comparison to prior eras.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps not that much, but the common modern assumption that we're living longer is simply incorrect. Things aren't killing us before we reach our natural end of life. That's what is occurring.

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming: Casper is presently served only by the Burlington Northern Railroad, whose rail line separates North Casper from the rest of Casper. But th...

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27: 1943 Contact was reestablished with Jackson after the town had been isolated due to a snowstorm. The period of no contact was six days.

This was not really an unusual event at the time. Prior to advancements in 4x4 vehicles, brought about due to World War Two, it was nearly impossible to remove significant amounts of snow from mountain passes, and towns located in mountain valleys were routinely cutoff from contact with the outside for days and even weeks. This was particularly true for Jackson. Indeed, this was so much the case that a book written in the 1950s, by a screen writer who lived in the town off and on during the 40s and 50s, maintained that the "Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole" was the entire winter, as the town was completely cutoff from the outside during that time and engaged in one huge party all winter long. No doubt that was an exaggeration, but there was some truth to the statement.

Less romantic, an irony of the situation is that up until 1970s Jackson was not regarded as a particularly desirable place to live. This was very much the case prior to 1950. Prior to 1950 agriculture, together with government agencies, formed the economic base of the town, but even there the homesteads that had been filed there were very late ones and were not the most enviable to have, as the ranches in the valley had to combat the weather and were so extremely isolated. It is only the modern 4x4 snow plow that has made Jackson the winter vacation spot it is, and by extension the home of many wealthy people.

Holscher's Hub: Sheep

Holscher's Hub: Sheep: My father took this photograph of sheep in a pen, but I don't have any of the other details and can't quite tell where it is. It's clearly on a railroad, and the building in the background makes me suspect that it's near Glenrock, but I don't know for sure.

Railhead: Out the train window.

Railhead: Out the train window.: Somewhere in Wyoming, mid 1950s. That's a highway next to the power line.

In the Star Tribune, when there was passenger service between Lander and Casper

An interesting look at when there was rail passenger service between Casper and Lander.

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...:

These photos were taken in one set, I think. I know that the Salt Lake to San Francisco photographs are part of a set my father took on a journey that ultimately went to Japan, with stops at Hawaii and Wake Island. I suspect that the first few photographs, showing a Western Airlines airliner at the Natrona County Airport, are part of this set.

The end of horse artillery.

A really interesting thread about horse artillery logistics in the U.S. Army in World War One.

This topic closely relates to some others here about the end of the horse era. Given the exploration about horses in urban and agricultural use, this topic may be particularly interesting in the context of the topics we try to explore here.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day

Here's the January first entry from the Today In Wyoming's History companion site.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day: 1863 Daniel Freeman files the first homestead under the newly passed Homestead Act. The homestead was filed in Nebraska.

While the original Homestead Act provided an unsuitably small portion of land for those wishing to homestead in Wyoming, it was used here, and homesteading can be argued to be responsible for defining the modern character of the State.

As noted, the Homestead Act has had a huge, and continuing, impact on the State's history. That's probably self evident to most students of history. But it occurs to me also, for some reason, that the Homestead Act is more representative of a bygone age than perhaps we'd care to imagine.

At the time the Homestead Act was passed, in 1863, obtaining land on the cheap, indeed nearly free, had been the American rule since Jamestown. What the Homestead Act really formalized is the granting of Federal Domain in an orderly fashion, seeking to encourage people to move West. It says something about the Union that it could afford to take this step during the Civil War, which in 1863 was only at its mid point. You wouldn't think that the country would be encouraging some of its citizens to pull up stakes and move West at that time, but it did.

The Act, or rather various Homestead Acts, continued on in force until 1934. The peak year for homesteading was 1919. But even the demise of the Act in 1934 did not mean that land was unavailable.

That's really changed. It'd be difficult, if not outright impossible, for the poor or nearly poor to take up farming today. Indeed, it isn't easy for the Middle Class to do so, or at least not in a serious manner. That's an enormous change in the nature of the country.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. The Legendary Blizzard of 1949

Nobody who lived through it ever forgot it. Whenever my father and his contemporaries turned towards discussing the weather, it came up. The Blizzard of 1949, which started on this day, and lasted for a month in one form or another.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2:

1949 Beginning of the Great Blizzard that struck the Northern Plains this year. In Wyoming, the storm started on this date and lasted until February 20. Snowfall in some areas measured up to 30". The storm halted all inter town transport of all kinds within the state within 24 hours. Seventeen people died as a result of the storm. 55,000 head of cattle and 105,000 head of sheep were lost.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. It must have been quiet, or at least different, before that.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2: 1930 First commercial radio station in Wyoming begins operation. KDFN later became KTWO and is still in operation.

Hard to imagine an era with no radio. But Wyoming lacked a commercial radio station until 1930. This was a Central Wyoming station (or is, rather, it still exists). I'd guess Cheyenne could have picked up Denver stations by then, but in Central Wyoming, having an AM radio prior to 1930 must have been pointless.